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.

Poets and Quants

 McK said yes.

I feel humbled and I feel infinite gratitude. I am indebted to so many people for helping me shape my life the way I wanted. N, Z, Abhi, S for their continuous and always positive support. My family for being there at any cost and in any scenario. 

I can think of quite a few things I am going to do for both our families, for the kids in our families, for a few causes that are close to my heart- education, female empowerment and languages. 

All my life, people have told me that I was wrong. Dead wrong. Not just in my calculation, but in my way of calculations. The way I thought about things. The way I looked at things. Society gaslighted me left right and center.

It was only when I went to grad school that I started seeing things in perspective, and realized that maybe I wasn't wrong about everything after all. My life after coming back was one difficult war, but I actually came out a different and super resilient person.

I like studying cause and effect. This has been my lifelong pursuit.

I think I have things to do. No time to waste.

Abhi thinks it sounds fairy-tale-ish that I applied to just one place, and that place was McK, and they said yes. On my part, I feel more satisfied and relieved than blissful.

Surprisingly, I feel no negativity. I do not feel 'relieved' to get a chance to run from my current situation. I have learned to love the current moment. As I was just lecturing Z, life is an incredibly rich and complex phenomenon, something that none of us can grasp fully. We, the poets and the writers, try but fail mightily. But even in our failure, we retain a very nuanced view of life, as compared to the democratic point of view.

Still, my main feeling is gratitude.

Pure frustration

 I have frustration, and nothing else. Nothing, really. The only jobs in the market are from my current employer and my last employer.  My salary is good for wiping tears and nothing else.

My preparation for Sunday seems to be crap. Yet I don't think feeling bad is going to fix anything. These cases are inherently hard and my brain refuses to think. Still, it is what it is. 

I miss Karachi but life here is nice. I am a bit tired of being no one but such is life. The money over there would be tolerable and I am not beating myself up over anything. Of course I will find another way, if it doesn't go well, which is really hard to predict right now.

We are super excited to move to our new house and have a stable life for once. Yesterday I had crazy fun at an office party. I will be working hard and partying hard now.

The loneliness strikes again

 My take home salary in 2023 is about half of my MS stipend in 2017. I should calculate the derivative.

I woke up in the evening and feel slightly depressed. My emotion regulator is back in Karachi and I am trying to resolve things on my own. 

For quite some time, I have been realizing the faults in the way I see the world. I have always been able to see the faults in the way other people process the world, but being able to see mine is very rare.

Anyways, I went to an office party today and I was surprisingly social. Very social, by my standards. I talked to a lot of people and it was fun. My agenda was to get integrated back in the team, and get integrated well. It worked.

As for the work, it is what it is. Same goes for my salary. After all, there is no point in whining about things. That is not going to change anything. Why waste your effort in doing something that will yield no result? I think I complain because deep down I know that I am not doing anything meaningful to change anything.

Not doing anything is an exaggeration, I do try very hard at times. It is just the lack of consistency that results in weird dead ends. My current interview situation is tricky, with a third one scheduled to evaluate me properly. I haven't prepared for it yet, and I think I mostly need to prep and stay confident.

After all, I did give a very nice first interview. Prepping is the only thing I can do to change my situation. If it works out, fine. If not, fine still, and I will try something else. Most importantly, I do not hate my present the way I used to do once. The trick is to keep working.

I have been hibernating since 2018, and it shows. I have no economic capital, no social capital, no career capital. I have been getting by on super duper easy mode. 

It shows.