Observing life

 I am sick, and I am sipping y second cup of coffee. The afternoon is nice.

I need to upgrade quite a few ideas.

Life is alright.

How to calmly ignore important things

 I have a good sense of the relative importance of things. This has been supremely helpful to me, in ignoring important things and focusing on whatever is left. This is an interesting strategy for living life and ensures that you never do anything important incorrectly, since you just don’t do such a thing at all. The right recipe for a perfectionist heart. 

However, the calmly part is something I still struggle with. Right now, I have an important call in like half an hour. I would need to keep my video on, all in a super messy room, and inform the other person that I haven’t been doing anything recently. So naturally I need to find other things to do in the next half-hour. Through some glimpse in the past, I realized that this place has always been a sanctuary for me in hard times.

I guess I need to stop twitching inwardly about my call. This person is supposed to guide me about things, about my development. The concept I’m fairly skeptical about.

Right now I’m just scathing over the lack of coffee here. Not good coffee, mind you. Just coffee. In a city known for impoverished, out-of-work citizens, not a single soul is willing to get me average coffee, excellent coffee not being an acceptable concept here. Sigh.

\What other complaints do I have? I wish I could get up in the morning. As it is, I spend half the day sleeping. Just when I’m trying to get my eyes to open fully, N is back from work and he doesn’t like me focusing on a laptop when he is around. So essentially I spend my days sleeping, and doing nothing.

Sigh.

And I have to travel at the end of the week, to another city. Another sigh.

Life is so full of mundane things, I just have no idea what to do. How to cut through this cobweb of boredom. I guess I’ll start clearing up the view in my camera.

An incredibly dull life

Life today was extremely dull. I spent the day doing nothing as a protest, and it would have ended at that note, as so many days in my life have, but N arrived home and dragged me out of my bubble. He can't bear to see my resting and relaxing when he is sitting there, going over his stuff.

Life is very very dull as we speak. I have plans for the short, mid and long term but nothing right now. Last night I did cooked some specie of karahi and I can go eat it if I want, but what is the point?

Everything is incredibly dull. The surroundings, the people, the culture. People often have a ready diagnosis to spring at the symptoms of our-well, issues- from moral decay to economic ailments. I think we are just dull, pure and simple. The dullness reflects in everything, from my lack of access to human-edible strawberry to being unable to find information the way I want.

What is the solution? Should I dabble in something challenging? It has to be the right amount of challenging. Neither too much, nor too little. Plus, there has to be some utility. Maybe I can read Madni's kulliyat with a lughat. Participating in a DS competition won't give me that, I suspect. It is mostly about using the right amount of boosting.

Some time ago, I had been reflecting on how the last time I indulged in some competition was in 2015. Even then, I was kinda sure of the results. Anyways I indulged in some this year (or the last year?) and apparently there wasn't much competition this time. People my age have mostly given up on things!

Between the serious inflation, balancing my time and energy and making plans, my life overall is amazing. Still, I need to do something hard for once. Maybe I'll go study a course in statistics. Sadly, can't do topology or real analysis.

Building a day, a career, a life

 So I have gotten a lot of lectures on socializing in my life. Lack thereof, actually. My rude interfacing with people. My family, mostly my dad's family, never let this rest. I would get chided for being asocial in general, for reading in the middle of a crowd, for being awkward, everything you can imagine, and more.

Some time ago I got a similar lecture from my boss. That I did not interact with the team. That I came over and did not meet anyone. Kinda mother-in-law-ish. Since my MIL is a super chill woman, other people must compensate.

Today I realized that I interact and socialize and network just fine, when I need to. If I am leading a team, I get super chatty with people there. I try hard to find points of common discussion with S, since he barely talks. I get stellar reviews from my in-laws and have always gotten excellent job referrals.

N pointed out that people act very awkward with me. I simply mustn't take all the blame myself.

Life consists of swinging between major excitements and minor let-downs these days. My full offer consisted of a couple of extra elements that I had missed and the total goes up significantly when they are added. Aby already told me that I was going to be rich. The 1/2 week long orientation is going to take place in some nice location. Hopefully it won't be too hot.

A LOT of my worries are going to simply vanish in thin air. I recall my life in Pitt and the lifestyle I had on a student stipend. I was happy there, and this is a major upgrade. A major, major upgrade. The city has a lot of pros and a few cons, with one major con. In general, boises here tend to make me feel isolated, but it is definitely their loss.

I have realized a couple of new things. First, money and materialism has a repulsive component, when I see how most people live in the world. I am not going to let go of this part of myself. It is a very real realization about the world that I have, acquired after a lot of suffering. Never forget.

The other thing is that people at work are going to be very smart but a bit cautious, going-by-the-book kind of people. Consulting work is that kind of work. You are required to be creative, but not too creative. This is another part of me that is going to remain with me, just toned down for work. But the adventurous, curious and intrepid side of me is something that is not going away, ever.

The world is always trying to mold you in some shape that suits it, that is compatible with it, that thrives with it. I refuse. The other day I was talking to my dad and I realized how he has always been a big obstacle in the path of me being myself and how he simply lost all power over me. The bullies all lose their power one by one. With my skills, there simply aren't enough challenges around now.

The world is a very small oyster. Almost no power over me. Randomness yes, people no.

I have also realized that in terms of big picture thinking, there are always like 4-5 cascading pictures at any time. You have to choose to focus on any one at any point of time. Different timeframes, dimensions, systems.

I feel sick at the idea of all the money, considering how people get by on scraps and work hard for them. The world is unfair and cruel.

One needs to be very non-emotional to see things as they are. At the same time, it requires fine-tuned emotional circuitry to be able to see things in detail. I guess an emotional circuit requires fine control.

In all the big/small pictures in my life, I need to reduce my screen time. By a lot. Grocery shopping videos are great fun, but and ultimate waste of time.

Going to get some work done now.

Emotion management training

 So I definitely need to train my emotion regulation circuitry. Not that I disapprove of it or anything, but I'm here looking at lifestyle videos for a certain city, when I don't have the formals pinned down yet. They were supposed to get back to me yesterday but did not. I am not bothered by the idea of them reneging but my total compensation is going to determine a lot of things so it matters whether it is closer to 150k or 300k.

N is super excited and he went through some summary of the history of the country under discussion.

This waiting is not super comfortable, but most of life is waiting. Plus, I am learning how to live life one day at a time. Really, today is the only day we have.

My only experience of living abroad has been around amreeka and although it is a wonderful place to live, my experience there was rather limited by my student financials. This is going to be a big jump and hopefully I can afford to be far more liberal with my finances. 

With the delay in the incoming offer, there is some likelihood of the location shifting to another city but whatever, I'm me and I'll do okay in any place. Also, daydreaming is fine and I am allowed to be happy. If it does not go according to the plan, I'll not be chiding myself for my bout of excitement. I am allowed to be happy and to daydream.

About work. I need to learn, really learn how to work smart. I have had some issues since childhood around it. I have produced a lot of output, but always after spending so much time and inwardly recoiling in self doubt. There is a certain clarity that was missing. I have found it now, a bit. Somewhat. Still discovering it.

The dynamics go something like this: someone would give me a task that would take 8 hours for 7/10 quality. I can produce 9/10 in 2 hours because all I have to do really is to sit down and do the work. Still, I would doubt myself and get stuck at totally irrelevant places and would take 32 hours to do 8/10. This has been my life. Even when I would study, I would waste a lot- A LOT- of time in opening my books, cleaning stuff, and would totally get stuck on super unimportant stuff. These are lapses of thinking behaviour that I am recognizing now, at 31 years of age. If I am going to a demanding place, I better be good at churning out quality work fast. I should be able to vary the quality intentionally.

Surprisingly, everyone else knows these things by default.

Z helpingly pointed out some time ago that I was having a mood swing in the morning about work. I could never have realized this all by myself. It was super helpful.

I think there are short term emotions (nice nuggets today!), long term emotions (I feel satisfied with life), and then way you feel about things. These are different levers you can tweak to vary your emotional state.

Okay with more delay, I feel the probability of a location switch increasing but even if that happens, I'll be disappointed for five minutes and then back to my joyful state. Life is too short to waste in regrets and disappointments.

Clearly I have changed.

Life is a fairytale, according to Aby

 Still, that is her perspective. From my side, things look okay and I hope this is going to continue. Personally, I felt that I was living a fairy tale on the day of our nikkah. This feels okay, mostly. 

A chance to work, most of all.

Last week I worked hard at an office assignment and my boss loved my presentation. Finally my grip on reality seems to be returning.

A lifelong pursuit of causality should enable one to always get the desired result merely by putting in the required amount of effort.

Anyways I think I will do some work now.

Also, I have a shopping list to prepare.

Employee of the month

 Guess who got dropped at office before 8:30 today. Answer: someone who got moved around at the gym at 6 am today.

I am up for an award, for sure. 

Life does seem to be different. Cleaner, more efficient, more roomy. We are super excited to settle in our life here. 

I have quite a few ideas of things to do.