Monday, March 20, 2006

Something else...

You always want to do something else....when you are in school you look enviously at the independence college goers enjoy...you think your dad is so lucky, he need not go to school...When you are in college you look back fondly at your days at school...you long for the friends lost until their memories fade away and new ones take their place...You look at your seniors landing jobs and think "20k per month; life cant be bad then"...Then you start working...A few weeks into work you look back at college like it happened ages ago...you wish engineering had been a 5 year course...As the years roll by, work ceases to interest you as much as it did in the beginning (for some this happens much more quickly, some never reach a stage where their work fascinates them). You wish you'd rather be on a ship headed to the Arctic, or take pictures of Nilgiri Langurs hanging off trees in the forests of Kerala, or just go off and live in a shack by the beach in Goa, swimming whenever you want, just laying back drinking beer and reading whenever you want. You prepare yourself for such an eventuality...you do random courses which you think will give you credibility when you set out to do something besides technology. But you dont take the plunge...You wait.. You build a safety net beneath you...You think you need multiple zeros in your bank account before you can experiment. You put life on hold. Time passes by. Real fast. You tell yourself, "Next year, i'll definetely take a sabbatical and try a different line of work." And the "next years" pass by.

But this time, 'next year' is going to be 'the' year. You know technology is your bread and butter. Not just that, there were times, rather years, when work was the single most important thing in life, not out of necassity, but out of choice and inclination. Its been nearly 7 years now. You ought to go out, take a look at other things, play out some other pages in life, and come back with the kindof zeal you had a few years back...or, maybe, discover something else that excites you more...and do that until that loses its charm (yea, with time, everything loses its charm, and you cant be non-cynical even when you are discussing a fantastic virtual future for yourself).

And late next year you may come back and read this while uploading pictures of the elusive big cats in Perambikulam wildlife sanctuary, or read it with a wry, sad smile on your face, from your office, after having succumbed to a really bright carrot that offered itself as a virtual bait to strengthen the 'all-too-important' safety net beneath you.

5 comments:

Prerona said...

nice post. yes u always want something else. somethings are worth going for though - moving, making the change, abandoning the old

balai said...

A great post. Everybody wants to something else.Just as "fido dido"-of 7up fame- said....Normal is boring. At some point in time, u shd stop adding more ropes to that safety net and take the plunge when you are still young. When u do that, even if it was a bad plunge, age would be on u'r side to rectify it.

Parth said...

That's a neat enough summary of what seems to go on in most our lives. There's always the golden snitch just out of our grasp.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I have pummelled tons of short stories to my loyal band of readers (about 5 in all) to get them to expect a 'style' attached to my writing :-)

frissko said...

prerona - thanx...yea, but it is difficult to actually take the plunge, particularly for someone who doesnt shake up his life too much too often...

balaji - thanx...well, it is not about being normal or not-normal...it is about doing stuff u want to do at the point in time when u want to do it...the thing u want to do cud be normal..

parth - yea..but i seek to grasp it, even if it is for just a brief stint(like a million others who eventually dint grasp:)...and am getting a hang of your writing..(even that poem u posted promised weighty things and turned out to be someone's attempt at poetry..liked it).

See Bee said...

hmm yeah

the grass is always greener on the other side

but most ppl are too guarded to do anything about it...