Reflections and grouchy talk.

No resolutions this time too, only reflections on how I survived the past year and what to do to make 2016 better. It was only yesterday that I realized that it’s the year-end already. Imagine how full your mind has to be for you to not even notice the year ending. 

Present status: I have a job I like, but I hate having working Saturdays and having to travel so much and thus being in constant interaction with uncivil beings. 

Desired status: Be so much in love with work that nothing makes me unhappy. At the present, a lot of things (and people) do. Try to ignore it (and them).

How well did I do in 2015?

1. Work wise: better than before, but need to think of ways to get to goals more ‘easily’. Having to struggle each day sucks.

2. People wise: not very well. I still dislike people who lack ethics, and I am totally vengeful (unfortunately, only feelings-wise) towards those who’ve hurt me. It’s only been aggravated by annoying people I’ve met recently. It’s not a good thing, I know. I’ll see what to do about it when I have the time.

3. Book-reading wise: very well through the year, except towards the year-end. Still, I think I crossed the 50 mark without counting, and read qualitatively, and reread and enjoyed old books (Harry Potter, for instance) too. Unfortunately, did not read all the books I’d planned, mostly because of work requirements.

4. Personality-development wise: not much. There’s just no time to think of presentation and planned speech when you have to run all the time. I’m still the harried-look-just-like-in-college person. Give me a break, and I’ll think of how to make new braids. Maybe.

5. Mental-development wise: apart from irritation and anger issues, I feel like I’ve aged a 100 years. Things I used to like and talk about a year or two earlier, are either too trivial or too boring. (Help me!!!)

While thinking about what I had resolved to do in 2015, I thought of ‘write, write, write’, but then I checked and found that I had written it in 2014!! This is NOT fair. I want a life where I can actually keep track of time. Get a LIFE, life!

What to do in 2016 to get a life

Keep calm: People in the metro and on the roads are only going to get worse. STOP worrying about them. Yes, I’ve faced a setback due to realizations of the truth and how what I thought of the world was so away from reality, but still, I need to GET A GRIP. I’m supposed to rule my life. I am supposed to be happy for the people who’re concerned about me. Either ignore those who act stupidly, or give it back to them (yes, that’s better).

Prioritize work: I must get that heavy project off my head as soon as possible, even if it takes two months of hibernating (as much as can be managed anyway, what with blood-sucking job and all). After that, plan career stuff. All this while, act chill. BE chill. Time is supposed to go slowly (the rocking time, not the sucky time).

Be happy: G is doing so well! YOU are doing well too. The book fair is coming! (“I have no friends to go with this time!” “You have mom!”) You’re gonna go on trips! You might even be on an airplane after all these years’ gap!

Do something: Ghostwriting has made me realize that I can actually write my own book. But it’s also made me realize that to make it happen, I’d need at least two months’ break. All right then, let’s stick to the original plan of writing after 40.

I need to learn to speak up for myself if anyone wrongs me and if it is unfair. Stop ignoring things that must not be ignored. Shut them up once and for all. Do not hesitate to hit an annoying fellow-commuter and pretending that it was a mistake. Hint, hint: It can be done just before getting off the train. (No. I’m not going to be so mean.)

I’ll also try to (no, I WILL) go ahead with a plan I made to get kids to read more (or any) books. Will give details if it’s carried out.

Read and write: Read those books I got two-three years ago! Although since some time at work is spent reading so many excessively cute children’s books, I’m not complaining much.

Lose weight: I’m serious, and this one is not going to go unchecked. Ask a girl the horror of not being able to fit into her clothes, and you’ll know! Although I’m proud to say that I’ve lost some with my ardent will power (of not eating junk food). Yay!

My point!!

Generally, I’ll try being less of a cribber and more of a happy person who loves life. I don’t love it at the moment, and I’ve become so crude that it doesn’t even matter if I’m posting it. It’s the truth after all. I mean, I am grateful for a lot of things, but the general ‘feel’ at the moment is lacking. It’s like I see nothing to complain about when I really think about it, but it only makes me feel more upset because it seems like I’m complaining for no reason. Oh, wait. Perhaps it’s just that I’m in one of my mood swing modes. Don’t let it get you. Have a blast and have a wonderful new year 2016! (TIME FLIES!) Let the new, new year be a year you'll forever remember! (Don't go to jail, though.)

What are you gonna do?

The road to dreams

Taking the road to reach your dreams is not easy. In fact, getting started on that road in itself is an achievement. After all, you must have overcome so many obstacles to have been able to get started at all. You would have had some sort of moral support, to begin with. You would have had to be mentally strong enough to wade through your fears (and those of your loved ones), many expectations, social culture, etc. It is entirely possible that it'd have been easy for you, but because of all kinds of pressure we live under in these times, most of us are faced with difficulties if we want to pursue anything our parents, family or society thinks is not lucrative, ideal, interesting, or whatever else. Many people, especially those who've lived enough to know, think that the best way to live these days is to follow the most practical way. They're not wrong. Practical ways make life so much easier, as anyone who's had to survive a difficult job would understand. Practical ways are liked and preferred by many people, which is both safe and, well, practical. If you're one of those who's tired of being asked to go the "practical" way, and think that these people who so willingly live that way are people without ambition, this post is for you.

The first thing to understand is that perhaps those people are also ambitious, but due to some reason, they're stuck with their "practical" ways. Not everyone can be wildly successful, can they? The world won't work if it's like that. Besides, they might have grown used to it and thought that their dreams were just those, dreams. Do not judge or resent them. Try being more with people whose thinking matches yours. The company you keep will influence your own perspective, so choose where you spend the better part of your time.

If you really, really want to do something but no one else seems to support the idea, do a bit of work yourself. Go out (or online) and find people in the same or related fields who could help you. You cannot act shy if you've to do this. Even if it means going out of your comfort zone, do it. But please do not be too naive or clingy. Read up on the subject/field first, decide what questions you want to ask, and show genuine interest. People, especially those who work genuinely in whatever they do, do not appreciate time-wasters. If you get some advice, it's highly likely that it's going to be useful. 

After you've done that, draw a time centered plan of your career/life, chart in as many details as possible, and then go talk to your elders. More than the unfamiliarity of what you want to do, they are scared of you being as lost as they are. Since they don't know much about, say, being an artist, they wouldn't support you because they can only support you unless they know what to do, or when they're sure that you know what to do, and trust you to do it. If you work hard without wasting your time over the things widely considered 'cool' (but are actually cool only to those who've got it all settled, or those who don't want to have anything settled), you're more likely to gain their support, which will be quite useful. You could obviously go against everyone and do your own thing, but then you will lack mental peace, and stress never makes you happy, even if your job does.

If all goes well and you've begun on the road, you start feeling like a heavy load is off your head and you taste the sweet fruit of freedom. Life is yours to mould. It's yours to enjoy, to do whatever you like.

Beware. It's not going to last. After the initial exhilaration, you might start to think, "I've got enough of working in one place. This is nowhere close to my dreams. Will I really have to slog hours and days and months just to 'gain experience'? What next?" Once you begin to think so, you might look to your close ones for support, just as you've always done before. However, this time, despite wanting to, they might not be able to help you, because they don't know much about it. You're on your own. Being on your own is exciting, but it entails a lot of responsibility. You have to work harder than others, even if it means sacrificing your holidays, some friendships (in the sense that you can't give them time), everyday pleasures in the same quantity as you had before, and many other things and activities you have been used to. I'm not suggesting you have to isolate yourself and forget everything else, but you must be aware of the things (and people) that waste your time, and consciously try to stay away from them, and spend that time in improving yourself as a professional and as a person. 

It's also likely that you might initially have to work in a place where you feel that the majority of people are different from you or your ideas, even if they're all working in the same field. Do not lose hope, because even then you would be learning something valuable. No kind of learning ever goes waste, really. Just be sure of where you want to go and what you want to do, be on good terms with people (ignore those who try to intimidate you), and concentrate on your work. Be on the lookout for opportunities to get better (because you can never learn enough) and keep taking up those, even if it means sacrificing your sleep in winters!!

Keep going. If you look at everything you learn as a reward, you're going to start liking it more and more. :)

I'm not giving gyaan out of generosity but because I need to keep telling these things to myself.

Metro Diaries #7: Sweet Revenge

Remember how I'm spending two hours at least in the metro train every day 'cept Sunday? (No? Why are you even here? Go read my previous posts first.) You thought I was done with metro posts? Have you ever been more wrong in your life or what! When you have to suffer (safar) for so long in the women-only coach, you're bound to have your mental peace shattered to bits. (Oh oh, there just broke out a high-pitched argument, as always, between a middle aged-older woman and a younger one, with the older woman, as always, trying to find 'space' and the younger one finally lashing out at her - "There is just no space! My size is such that I can fit anywhere, right? You're only creating trouble for others." Travels are interspersed with such amusements, sure.) Okay, perhaps not have mental peace shattered to bits, but they do make you clench your teeth so many times that your jaw bone gets weak and starts troubling you (true story. Who's going to compensate me for that? DMRC, or countless parents of these people?)

Anyway, while I had less time to travel or when I had friends to pass the time with, I stood well away from the seats. Who would bother about fighting to get a seat? But when there's nothing but early morning lethargy and a book to read and loads of time to stand, you can't really be so dense as to not look for a seat every day. If you don't, you might as well get your knees checked along with your jaw. So then I started looking for seats. That was when I was really initiated into the world of the seated and the seat grabbers.

Before I begin, let me take my revenge. You, Ms Red Sweater (such a glaring, tacky shade, too), you took the seat I was supposed to get by asking the aunty to shift in front of me where I was going to sit, and parking your bum into the now-empty slot in front of you, all the time acting as if it's nothing. You're one heck of a sinner, madam. And ugh. Your super red lipstick is a really gross shade.

The Seat Grabbers

Apart from the kind mentioned above, seat grabbers do the following:

(What luck. Just got a seat thanks to millions getting off at RC station, and sitting next to Ms Red Sweater. *minimizes brightness*)

1. Grabbers standing so close to the seated that they might as well be sitting on their knees (which could be another possible cause for early arthritis). There was one lucky day when I had a seat and it was the rush hour. I was absorbed in a book when I first felt something brushing my face. It was a lady's handbag, with the lady herself wedged in the space between my feet.

2. Sympathy gainers: (excluding real cases). Some people will try getting a seat by way of sympathy (apparently, it is is not dead). These are the people who make such innocent, tired faces that people feel sorry for them and automatically get up for them. Sometimes they'll look at a seated person with such a pleading look that when the person has to vacate the seat, they'll give it to no one but the sympathy gainer.

3. Aunties: Some of them would say stuff like, 'beta badon ko seat de do' or would just huff and pant so much that someone would give them their seats just so they don't look like sadists.

4. Centre of Attention: They're always at the centre of the doors on the platform. The logic (according to them) is that the lines on both sides are made up with fools who don't know how to grab a seat (or how important it is). They want to be the first to enter the coach to get a seat. They don't really give a fig to others. They'll blatantly flout all rules, and barge in as soon as the doors open even if they can see they're likely to collide with bulging tummys. (Not even belonging to women. Ugh!)

5. Those who let all traces of niceties vanish when they hurry to the seat everyone can see you are about to occupy (which takes you a couple of seconds because you don't want to seem like one of those people who're greedy for a seat). And when someone else grabs it right from under your nose, all you do is to try to maintain a calm face and pledge to take your revenge by writing about it (and them).

Ouch! (Added in haste: There are also those who come running to occupy the seat next to you and end up stamping on your foot.)

The Seated

Only one category comes to mind, thanks to recent interactions with them. There are people who won't budge from their seats until the door to their station opens!! OMG. I really think there's something wrong with these people. Why are they so insecure about seats? The other day, I got about half a bum's space to wedge myself in, and since I had 40 more minutes to go, I thought I might as well just sit on whatever's given. The next station was RC and an unbelievably thin girl went to the doors, leaving her space for me. It was so tight a space (made more difficult by the sad fact that I'm expanding at the rate of the Big Bang) that I was about to slide down. Half a minute passed and the two women on my sides did not even budge. (Fyi, when someone sits like this next to me, I shift as much is possible without getting on to another lap to give the newly seated as much space possible to sit comfortably.) The train stopped at the station, and as I was a centimetre away from sliding down, I thought of getting up, when something really weird happened. The woman on my right and her companion next to her got up to get down at the station where the train had stopped!!! Have people absolutely no sense? If they can SEE (heck, the whole coach could see) someone about to fall down, and you KNOW you're going to get down at just the next station, can't you manage to stay standing for two minutes? Good lord. I'm quite positive I lost any remaining dregs of hope for humanity then.

***

I've typed this in the metro while going to work. First, I have no time left for writing blog posts while I'm home. Second, I'll be too busy for the next couple of months, so please if you don't get a post, don't leave! (Honestly though, I'm saying it to make you feel important. It's not like you read or comment anymore, do you?)

PS- I do give my seat to people who really need it, but sometimes when you're tired and want to sleep and have been granted a nice seat because you travel so far, you really don't want to sympathise with others. Think about it, does anyone sympathise with you (unless you're fainting)?

(My laptop with a new motherboard and newly formatted still works like a sloth, so I'm not bothering with a picture for this post. Time is a rare commodity, people. You'll realize it one day.)

Kbye.

These days...

I'm going to write about how I have spent the past month of my life. That's also how the following ones are going to be like, if things go the same way, that is. If they don't, I hope it'll be better.

First, who the heck says that work life is fun? Perhaps they got the word wrong. Work life can be good or comfortable or exciting but 'fun' is just not the word! I like my job, really. Most of it anyway, if you keep aside the travel time and condition. I get to sit among people who are keen about books and dedicated in their jobs, and some of them know their jobs so well that I feel like I know nothing! 

Nevertheless, the new schedule is anything but comfortable. It is horribly, terribly trying and tiring. First off, it's a six-day work week. I had grown so accustomed to five days' work and take-work-from-home-any-day-you-feel-like that travelling just so far for six continuous days reduces my mind to near-zero (unfortunately, it has so far not had any reduction effect on the body) See? I don't even know what I'm writing here. It's only because I didn't think there was anything else (apart from writing a blog post) that would make me feel lighter. 

I mean, have you even paused to consider how arduous a task travelling so much in the metro would be? Sure, I don't have to change the train even once. BUT STILL! It's not even about the lack of rest one gets because one (that is, me) chooses to travel only in the women-only coach (because with so many women packed together, you cannot get a peaceful environment. Besides, I got to observe really exotic varieties too, but that's for another post). It's the horrible fact that I have to get down at a station in another and, pardon the honest expression, extremely-lacking-in-civic-and-feel-good-sense state, out of Delhi. I don't really hate Delhi as much anymore. :/ 

To begin with, I had two options--taking my own auto from one station, and taking a shared auto from another. Honestly, both are terrible in their own ways. How is one supposed to deal with that on an everyday basis, that too in the morning? Wait, I shouldn't be so pessimistic. I've been managing it so far, and I will manage it. Thank goodness for good people at the workplace who help during the afternoons! (God Bless You. May you never have to travel for work more than 15 minutes away)

Then there are the whole work days, which essentially leave me with barely four hours a day for myself, half of which are spent either eating (because I'm starved during evenings) or settling down to rest. For the rest of the two hours, there's the only program on TV I started watching but which has turned horrible so I don't watch it anymore, there's talking to people offline and online, and well, just staring into space and thinking about life and then preparing to sleep. I know, I could use that little time to do something exciting or useful like blogging (finally managed it after a month, eh?) or anything else. But most days are too mentally tiring to do anything except staring into space and thinking randomly. 

This is how I look like these days

Did you wonder why I didn't mention reading so far? Oh no, I'm not going to not mention it, because behold! The upside of travelling so much and among noisy women is that I can immerse myself into a book and ignore it all! Ha! You can't beat that kind of freedom (although it is sometimes beaten by the sheer number of women in the coach. No one cares about population explosion anymore). So I have actually gotten around to reading the books I never picked up in my leisure time, because it is a very clever way of forced reading. It goes like:

"Read this book or deal with the aunty who's been picking her nose. She's standing right beside you, too." 

Or

"Wouldn't you rather use all your focus trying to comprehend this excessively difficult piece of text than looking up and finding this made-up-like-a-toy girl reading 50 Shades of Grey on her phone?" (No offence to reading choices, but still. Seriously, woman?)

So really, there's little choice. In this time of a month, I managed to read:

1. (Wow. I actually had to hop on to Goodreads to see what I read) Roads to Mussoorie by Ruskin Bond (you know why)

2. What Katy Did by Susan Coolidge (A children's classic; bought months ago from a book-flea market)

3. Moonfleet by J.M. Falkner (A children's classic I had been meaning to read for YEARS! It's wonderful. Find my review here)

4. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka (of which The Metamorphosis was the best, followed by umm... maybe three more stories that I liked. The rest were, for the time being, mildly interesting. No wonder people called his texts 'crazy' and incomprehensible. It still takes a crazy mind to decipher his meaning)

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (Oh boy. Do read this one. Just DO it.)

6. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (Again, a children's classic I'd had for a couple of years. I remember always putting it off, so had I not had this job, this book would have stayed unread for a loooong time)

7. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede (A children's book AGAIN! It's about an unprincessy princess who chooses to be a dragon's princess, enjoys working for her dragon, deals with wizards and gets into fights with them, and finally saves the day.)

My current read is called A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which would have remained unread for years had I not dedicated this metro time to it. It's anything but short, and anything but a light read. Sure, it's definitely fun in the way it's written--the author's mentioned some of the popular and great contributors to science, and provided details of how someone slouched so much on the sofa that his butt touched the floor or how someone was called a buffoon by another popular guy. Of course I don't remember all those names now. The thing I did learn, however, was that there have been people thoroughly devoted to their work and have discovered such amazing things. What am I even doing in my life? Seriously need to give it a thought. I also learned that if you do find out something amazing, don't be a shy-baby or be secretive, because someone else will either steal your ideas when you are dead (or alive), or will discover it a century later. Then the world (and school textbooks) will remember and credit them for what you did before, only because you thought keeping quiet was decent manners.

Coming back to my month, nothing else that is exciting has happened, except:

1. Looking at three books I had worked on, in print. And what a beautiful print, too! :D

2. A 12-hour trip to Agra, of which 8 were spent sitting in the car. And then realizing that Agra looks good only in history textbooks.

3. Riding a motor-bike just a few hours ago! I didn't get it in the first attempt (in which I ended up riding it as if it were a camel. It just did. not. go. smoothly!), but looking at G getting it right in the first attempt, I made a second, much successful one. 8|

4. That's all. I can't really spend the last half hour before I sleep using my brains even further. They're already exhausted today, thanks. 

I also wanted to mention a couple of things I have not been liking these days. They're more like revelations or things that I have known but those that are annoying me all the more now. One is the obvious dependence on and love for social media, but let's just not get into it right now. The other is the apparent breaking up of some friendships with the concerned people acting like nothing's wrong, while it's quite obvious because we haven't spoken in... months now. It's annoying but it's also sad. What can we do, though? To each his own. If I had the time and mental space I'd have done something about it, but guess what, I can't, and it turns out that I feel like I don't even want to. There's also an age-limit for doing and accepting drama in one's life, I think. 

Anyway, there's a fever and I've been sitting typing this out and I've to get up early for work. Ciao!!