coulda woulda shoulda

 

 

I wonder how long a day at work can feel like. You know its 8:03 but you still look at your watch when you enter the office, when you sit at your desk, when you go for the morning meeting, when the morning meeting ends, when you grab your first cup of coffee, when you finish it, when you receive your first ping of the day on gmail, when you stop chatting, when you put on your coveralls, when you remove your coveralls and its 10:03.

So this is the first two hours of the day passing by so excruciatingly slow you want to rip your eyes out and pray to God the next two are slightly better and then one fine day you realize, hmmm… the year is ending. Another 365 days of your life gone by. It makes you question the concept of time. Maybe its playing mind games with you?

You think about the awesome times.

Vacation in India – 21 days, vacation in New York - 9 days, vacation in India – 21 days. That’s about it.

You make a mental count of the moderately good days… most of them you ended up drunk and rambling on about nothing with your friends almost all night long.

You make a mental count of the excessively bad days… most of them you ended up drunk and throwing up over and around your friends almost all night long.

Then you think about the remaining 279 days. Must’ve accomplished something in all this time other than the miniscule contribution to your gigantic firm because that is a lot of days.

You made some good new friends. But then you lost touch with some old ones too.

You had some life enriching experiences. Did some weird things and you were even able to surprise yourself. But then you missed out, maybe even consciously, on so many opportunities that could’ve probably changed track of your current life massively.

You performed fairly well in your job, got a promotion et al. But then the curve of professional dissatisfaction was an exponential one as the year went by.

You wrote a few interesting posts here and there. People made sure they let you know how much they enjoyed them… may be even identified with them. But then you didn’t write even close to as many as you would’ve liked to.

You enjoyed your independence. One year of paying your bills, buying your groceries, getting the lights fixed etcetera etcetera. But then every day coming back to a sad apartment where you live alone does make you a tad less excited about the apparently over-rated freedom.

So it pretty much balanced out is what you would conclude. And it did; even if the sad kind.

But what differentiates 2008 from the past 22 years is that 2008 was the year of introspection. So just like the time curve is kind of screwed up, so is the learning curve. I learnt more in this one year than I could’ve hoped for, even though the way I learnt it could’ve been easier. But then easy is boring at the same time right. So in the recent past, I figured out some of the big questions in my life and about life in general. What I want. What I don’t want. How evasive happiness is. Where it could be found. The word I am looking for is consciousness I think. I wish I could say that this one thing has no flip side to it but then there is always a flip side isn’t there. Ignorance is a hobby. You play as long as you like it and when you’re bored, you move on. Consciousness, on the other hand, is a one way track. It changes you forever. You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.

 

~ by neha mehta on January 17, 2009.