phhhhheeewwww

Talk about having balls in the air. Let me tell you my life routine, the choice of which remains with me..but between being alone at home or maybe going to the gym or meeting little fur ball, man and the rest of the friends that are camping there, there is not much of a choice is there.

So here is the day; yesterday.

Get up at 7am, have idealistic plans of gng to the gym, pack a bag accordingly, get ready to leave by 8.30 am, drive like a mad women reach office; moan over electricity issues, go shopping for office n other supplies, evening sets in leave work by 6, decide to go cross country to see a movie i have not seen yet.

Reach only by 8, with marathon calls happening in between. Enter mad house, down wine and get ready for the movie. Repeat Inception, which made more sense the second time around. Skip Gym, Eat Junk. Bad Combination.

Resolve to leave the house come what may at 7 am. Play with the dog till 1 am. Restlessly stir at 5.50 am. Fight with dog to avoid a non existent nose. Laugh at dog, sleeping on his back tucked in the tiny crevice between pillow and bed.

Leave bed at 6. 12 am to get dog breakfast. Leave at 7.45 am to get paper. Resolve to leave in 15 minutes. Domestic house wife spirit takes over, make breakfast instead. Leave from house only at 9 am.

Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive.
Reach work at 10.33 am.
Boss dumps work and leaves for luncheon

I plan a Kerala trip, with back and forth conversations.
Tell Dad about man
Make a Friday concert plan
Order lunch
revert to emails
and now begin work

Wonder sometimes what i do with my time.
may today be simpler

tadadm

I am loving the sllllllllloooooooooow pace of my life these days. am almost like a house wife in how i am spending my time and i know that is an appalling thing to say but i am liking it.. lord someone spank me..

for instance yesterday was about working, cooking lunch, a short nap.... a quick dash to the RTO and then some more work and then dinner sitting on a bike in a dress with heated conversation about the role that parents played in choosing education.

on one side of the fence was british man, a result of the very uppity london education and knighted parents, who was sent to boarding school... think of Dead Poet Society kind of a school where conformity, seniority and unfirmority were valued above individuality, curiousity and rationality.

on the other hand was person from Europe, with the free thinkers parents who even believed in experimenting with home school and hence crafting solutions which were in tune with the nature of the child.

2 diff sets of parents, 2 diff educations, 2 diff kids and the same result. The essential free thinking nature of both the kids survived to date, despite, inspite or aided by the education system. Both had had to have conversations with their parents, expressing their unhappiness and the misery that they faced as teenagers for not fitting in and expressed a wish about how maybe a diff approach may have worked

Neither doubted that the parents did what they thought was the best, or that there was any iota of not wanting the best for their children... yet both wanted to do things differently for their own kids

Poor parents, am convinced that no matter whatever a parent may do, however conventional or liberated they may there is always something they could have done that should have been different, better or more sensitive.
Parenting is a blackjack table that you cant leave and the losses and the gains compete in equal force keeping you riveted till you die

To my parents. I know you did the best, may or maynot have worked but the heart was in the right place.. and that is all that matters now..

spinning around

Yesterday was one of the days that u hate, just when you have set yourself in 5th gear and are cruising along, up comes a breaker that you never saw. The gear box goes kaput and the next destination that you imagined a wishful dream land away...

Went through the usual rounds of oh no not again, why me, this sucks, now what, where am i headed and why etc etc etc, the circle of internal dialogue's coupled with chewing some peoples head endlessly resulted in some clarity and some wisdom.

It made me do one thing new, open my eyes to being a corporate person again, not be that closed that shuttered about this choice. There are 2 ways to live life

A.  You make your dreams and conditions and do all that it takes to make them, work. You plan, strategize, make 5 year goals and work towards making them come true. Its a good way, not the worst way at all, but then everything gets all boxed down and set. Maybe that is the reason i never really, liked the corporate life for the structure it gets though i can see the value of it

B. the other way is the one of going with the flow, the one where you have a plan a hazy idea of the reason u are doing what u are doing, that it is the stepping stone to the next move, but u are open to looking at step 2 and step 3 as well, where basically though there is a basic structure there is a free flow to discovering the new

Am stuck between the two. Think the time has come to make the move to not be that fluid or to give fluidity structure. Tried to make a comprehensive plan for 5 years from now, but ended up tying myself in knots.

Prefer the jugglers trick of the two.. all this spinning around in circles over and over again. Make a call, stop free lancing, get a proper job, make a nest egg, doing anything and then move up the ladder, but you want to be abroad, hmmm so lets see how to get that to happen, but then you cant leave for 2/3 years, but then i want to be a mother in that time.. the world of what if's were back to haunt me.. and so in calmness i remembered my favourite Sunscreen Song

When nothing makes sense, you must be doing something right

The lyrics to Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen, by Mary Schmich:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Simply Complex

I hate all customer care centers. They manage to make my Blood Pressure rise in nano seconds and i find myself yelling for the manager each time. Think they train the managers to have smooth, "talk to me, I am Santa" kind of voices, because I am automatically politer when they come online. And No its not a gender thing. 

DEFINITELY Not the best start to the day. May the debit card be recovered, dispatched, couriered and received in one piece. Shall be a miracle if that happens. ;-) Of the fact that i am no longer working at that office is a minor matter

Saw New York New York yesterday night, not a patch on Paris, je t'aime,  but managed to capture the intimate moments of several relationships. Love, lust, longing, long term, strangers, painters muse, parents, first dates as teenagers, relationships in all its forms got covered.

Weirdly, since Dec'09 I got to see the underbelly and the fluff of relationships up close. 

On one hand 2 people decided to marry within hours of meeting each other, and are overjoyed with the decision. They are in love and having made a commitment, the acceptance levels are sky high.

Two close friends, after half a decade of "discovering the other, are finding it tough to have a conversation, without drawing out the samurai swords. The issue may be several but at the core, is a reluctance to accept that the other person has changed. 

A close pal got married, to an old sweetheart. She dotes on him and shall always treat him like the "man of the house" ......... he settled for contentment over adventure, saw long term potential over the short term thrill. Seems to be ok for now.. rest we dont know.

An elder man, a younger women. She looking for anchorage, he looking for someone to be there for, a year and more of time spent, and fights galore.. Another acquaintance, totally happy and in love with a girl, but cant seem to be attracted, someone else has washed her hands of an abusive husband, while another confident very "with it"  women, breaks down while dealing with the baggage of her bf having a child with someone else. 

These are real people. real relationships. Makes me think that Balaji telefilms are not that off the mark after all with their seemingly over the top dhamakdar serials. 

In all these relationships what stands out, is the absence of real conversations. There is so many layers of mistrust, mis communication, both parties dont want to hurt each other, yet the same exact event is interpreted to make a different story for each.

One couple went for a vacation. The man returned to state he had the time of his life, best vacation ever, the women, same trip, same moments, called the trip a NIGHTMARE. dying a slow executioners death is what she said, how does this even happen. 

Someone remarked recently. You know, the one thing that noone prepared me for is that people change. Over time, the entire set up of a relationship changes, yet the fairytale romances, the stories fed to you in movies dont show that.. Mills and Boons, the karan Johar insist of grey characters, but what happens when there is no villan, just the inner self wanting different things?

No real point to this post. Those who are not in a relationship, want to be in one. Miss the intimacy the sharing of it. Those who are in one, manage to develop a complex vocabulary to shun out each other, creating drama of simple things like turning on the TV.

We cant do without it, dont know what to do with it.

Think puppies are way easier to handle ;-)