Feeling Nervous

The MBA is finally getting on to my nerves. I did not get shortlisted for a role which has always been my dream job. While I was aware that it is very difficult to convert that particular role I never imaged that I would not even get through the initial short list. Feeling dejected I started to question the whole reason of doing an MBA. Entertaining counter-factual thinking, wondering what would I be doing if I were still in my old job makes me more sad. The whole things is difficult to deal with at this moment. I might laugh it off once I get through this but I can clearly see that getting through is definitely not going to be easy.

With all these thoughts going on I am at a critical point which makes me wish that the entire universe ceases to exist - right now at this very moment as I type. Thinking about job, career, EMIs, and not to mention marriage and settling in life - all things make getting though this moment more difficult. It's not like I am bad at studies. I am doing decent and would be in top 10% of the class at a decent MBA school. So if I am so stressed about life I can only imagine how others would be feeling. May be they do not stress so much and just go easy. What's the point of all my education if more of it is only making me more nervous? If ignorance is bliss why am I trudging towards knowledge and success?

B School is a tough place to survive. If not for anything else the sheer element of comparison and competition sucks the fun out of learning leaving us gasping for some sort of validation of our capabilities to reassure ourselves that we are not here by accident but rather our achievements. I doubt if I will ever be successful with this state of mind as my fickle definition of success itself keeps changing. That man, whose definition of success is not his own, has already lost even before he begins. I am lost in a way for I don't know what I truly seek as I keep seeking what others desire. 

Feelings of farewell

Do you remember the feeling that you have as you say bye to someone you would be missing so much. I used to have it a lot as a kid. After every summer when I said good bye to my cousins it was always there. It used to come back ten times worse when I had to say good bye to mom. I never understood why one has to go through such feeling. Why can't we all be together forever when we enjoy each other's company so much?

I do not feel that anymore. I am trying hard to remember how it feels like and I might have an idea of how it would feel like but there is no way for me to be sure if I cannot experience it ever again. When I was a kid I always wished that I never had that feeling again and now it is strange that I am wishing for the very same thing. When we are with someone special time flies by and though we enjoy every passing second we barely pause for a moment to reflect on how happy we are at that instant. Only during these partings do we really perceive the depth of our bonding. We need these moments of farewell to pause and be grateful for the relations and bonds we hold.

My life has been mostly running away from things. For some reason I feel more comfortable among total strangers than among familiar faces. I wish I go back to my older self and I wish I get that feeling once more. I wish that I meet someone who makes me feel that way again. A while back I thought I found one. My heart should have broken into pieces when I said farewell to her knowing very well that I might never see her again. Instead I felt relieved that it would now be easy to forget her. It makes me a bit sad but not very much because I tell myself that even though I still try to remember, she would have completely forgotten about me. Well, life is complicated and random and I am trying to keep it as simple as I can by not taking any chances. But what chance do I have of meeting someone then?

She haunts me

I was planning to meet L for a while. She recently had a loss in her family but I couldn't muster the courage to go check on her. I am usually lost for words in such situations and the whole thing makes me very uncomfortable. I typically don't have anything better to say; and I typically choose not to go. But this was not a typical situation.

It has been too long now so I finally managed to drag myself to her place. She looked very pale with a gloomy dead expression that made me cringe as if it were my fault. The interior made me restless, so I asked her out for a walk. I often find walks refreshing especially the ones taken during twilight as I get to put 'life' on hold and drift around pointlessly. Alas this wasn't one of those walks and I could feel the pressure of the situation as we strolled. The silence between us was interspersed with scant words and she barely looked at me all the while. Things were over between us but I realized how I could never get her out of my head and for a moment there I hated myself for thinking about my feelings at such an odd moment. As I bid good night I felt how she sensed the desperation in my eyes but all she could reciprocate was pity. I hated myself once again for making her feel that way. Nevertheless all hope was not lost as I would be extremely delighted to even settle for pity, if not love.

She looked better the next time I saw her. She was holding a flier about a forest trek, studying it intensely.  On the spur of the moment, with her head still down, she blurted out 'N shall we go?' and N gave her the quintessential boyfriend look of dismissal. Sometimes in life you grasp so much in tiny little moments and this was my moment. She realized my presence and gazed at me for a while before she asked if I was interested. But by then I was already all torn up as my heart broke into a billion pieces. It felt as if someone was stabbing my heart over and over again. As always she could see what was going on with me but I was totally oblivious to everything else as I brooded over the reality of my situation.

I felt a deep unbearable pain in the heart that lasted for a very long time. Deep down I had a sliver of doubt that this might happen one day but being an eternal romantic I always hoped that things would work out. You love someone so deep and blind with all your heart but love can be piercing cold when it mocks at your misery. The jolt was long due and I had better move on as it was not romantic anymore; rather pathetic. Utterly hopeless that I am, I gravely wished I could move on.

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"Ok relax!" I said to myself as I heaved myself out my bed. That was a terrifying dream which made me gasp as I made sense of my surroundings. Through it was a dream, the characters and events are real - the me, the L and the N and not the least the rejection. And in some way the situation was a reconstruction of what really happened.. in a very vague sense so to say. But when I got up I was actually feeling the pain in my heart. It was as painful as it was in the dream and it was a very long time before it eased off. Phew! I am mid-way through my end terms, two down and two more to go. I slept for more than six hours which in itself is a crime at a Bschool especially during the exams but the dream was bad enough to keep me alert for the next 16 straight hours of study! I learned more about Supply Chain Management in these hours than I had in the entire part of my former life. Of course I kept thinking about L and I just couldn't get her out of my mind for the next day or so. I barely know her and I do not even remember her face anymore but she still haunts me. The weirdest part was the real physical pain I felt - excruciating to the core! My dreams are a mystery. They are powerful, scary yet motivational too. They fill me up with energy which gets me to trudge through the rough parts. They are as much a part of me as my real life is!

- 04 Oct 14 12:16 PM

Gut instincts, Perturbing Decisions and Math of our life

When I think about it most of the major decisions in my life have been gut instincts or haphazard decisions taken for the silliest of the reasons. I think I understand the human behavior enough to know about the wonderful power of the human mind to rationalize, so I generally don't even bother to explore the craziness of these reasons as that would only trigger the defensive internal behavior which ends up reinforcing commitment to the decision before I can fully sense its impact. During these moments I generally sleep on the idea and later try to evaluate it is as objectively as I can to see if the decision makes sense. Within the bounds of my objective rationality I asses the decision from different perspectives to check if it makes social, economic and financial sense and only then do I take the plunge.

The reasons were always the weirdest, most bizarre and puerile but the decisions I have pursued always turned out to be prudent in ways beyond my understanding at that moment. They shaped me, made me more mature and into who I am today. One important thing to realize here is my firm belief that decisions are not right or wrong but sometimes could be stupid and life should be OK as long as you can avoid those stupid ones. A smile spreads over my face whenever I revisit these reasons. I smile both at my stupidity and for my ability to deal with it. We are a sum of our experiences and each decision we make adds (sometimes even multiplies) up to the sum that makes us today. It's the math of your life and as long as you do not see your next step as a subtraction or a division, trust your instincts and go with it.

Some of the decision I had taken in increasing order of their impact.
- Getting a crazily expensive bike (the one that weights a couple of Kgs and you need to pedal)
- Deciding to buy my first House in a frail financial situation
- Deciding to pursue MBA on loan after I just brought the above home on loan

We all have our reasons for doing things that we do. So take your decision and move on!

How much more can I leverage myself?

Most of my early education was sponsored/subsidized in life, so when I had to pay for college I went with an education loan. Later when I was working and paying back loans I felt its burden for the first time. Nevertheless, there is nothing wrong in picking up loans to study. I worked for a while and in the process ended up buying a house despite initial resistance. Of course, with the help of a loan. I moved into my new home and it was all good, but I slowly started feeling the burden of paying loan every month again. I stretched myself a bit here and things were getting little tight. I did not see a very great career ahead in my current job. So finally I decided to go for an MBA (which was on the back of my mind for a while but now it felt like the push came to shove). You might have already guessed the next part - an other loan! The current program I am in is quite expensive but the bank manager saw the worth in me and my degree and gave me a loan despite already having a home loan. Now I thought this is leveraging myself to the maximum.

Two things happened today which prompted me to put down my thoughts. May be when I revisit this post in a couple of days I might be able to evaluate my dilemma more objectively. A couple of weeks back few friends of mine were discussing about a start-up idea and I ended up in the team. I told my mom and sis about this idea and though they were excited initially my financial situation slowly dawned up on them. My sister is paying my home loan now. She agreed to help me till I get back on my job which made perfect sense at that time. But if I were to go start a company she would have to support me longer and I really cannot ask that of my kid sister. Anyway, today I got two emails.
              The first one from Google mentioning that they have selected our idea for Google Startup launch program - a program in which Google provides mentoring and assistance to startups to fast track their implementation. They would provide monetary assistance in terms of Google cloud credits and also mentor-ship.
               The  second email is from my school asking me to remit the second installment of my School fees in the next few days.

So my dilemma is how much more and how long can I leverage myself? Do I take a job and pay back my dues or give the startup a shot? My teammates are fully aware of my situation as that was the first thing I told them before I joined the team. They can go on even if I am not there so it is up to me to decide what to do next! Startups are not easy. We are fully aware of the risks. The success rate is very very low and even at that rate it takes some time before an idea can fully materialize.

Don't you ever feel like starting something of your own and giving it your full shot. Who cares if it does not work out!! We know for certain that we are going to die but that does not stop us from enjoying our lives. Startup is also a similar thing - you could have fun making something and unlike death, at-least there is a small yet finite chance that it would work out! Though all this sounds exciting and I am biased to convince myself towards what attracts me the question still remains - how much more can I leverage myself?

Pleasant news

Unexpected but pleasant things sometimes make us more happy. Having done relatively bad in the past term I was not really looking forward to see my mid term scores today. I scored cent percent in two of the three exams but I was not feeling anything much. I was not pissed off like the previous time but I did not really care much anymore. Anyways, then this friend of mine called few mins back with a good news - he's got a job as an Assistant Director. Now this news really made me so damn happy. This friend of mine left his job in the States, moved back home and was trying to get into the Movie industry. But this is a really difficult field to get in if you really do not have much connections or resources. He has been trying for a while now. We even made a short movie couple of months back so that he can showcase his work to introduce himself (guess who the Cinematographer was). But finally he got his break.

We all have dreams and quite often they are crazy too. But we are scared to go after them because of fear of not making it or fear of the uncertainty. We get so terrified to even entertain the possibility of pursuing them. Only few dare to chase their dreams and I believe they are the ones who would be truly happy at the end of their journey when they look back. The first time he seriously told me about his movie making passion was exactly two years, five months and two days back. We had a long conversation on a rainy day at the other end of the world in California. Though I did not fully comprehend his concepts I could see how serious he was. I was in a confusing situation myself, without clarity about future, but it felt good to see a friend with such strong convictions about what to do in life. I knew that it was going to be a long and hard journey. It has been a while since then but he is finally on track to realizing his dreams. He has a long way to go but regardless of where he ends up in his life, I am sure that he would relish every moment of the adventure.

Cost Of Liesure

I don't read anymore. At least that is how I feel even though I keep going through pages and pages every day. I am so caught up in the business of learning that sometimes I worry that I have lost the ability to get pleasure out of reading for the sake of reading itself and not with the intention to learn something. School gets so busy but when it gets too busy to even enjoy a book it makes me wonder if my time is well spent here. If this is not the place where I can read I wonder where else it could be. All I hear is loud music every where with chants of 'Drink..Drink..Drink'. I hear screaming girls and when I peep out of my window I can see them passed out on the lawns. So may be it is me who is at the wrong place.

I dream about reading a book by the lake side in the valley beside the snow capped mountain. But I do not have the money to afford that kind of leisure. (To put it in my newly learned business jargon - my 'opportunity cost' of leisure is too high.) So I need to learn not read, so that I can earn not money but leisure. In that case may be being here is not very unreasonable. Is it?!