As If I Care..!

It stuck me..just out of the blue...we are all about memories and hope. Memories - we hang on to them...we re-live them...we try to create new ones. All in the hope that it will leave behind something about us, about the time we spent, about the people we met. Hopes. Hopes are so overrated sometimes. Yes, we need them..but hopes operate in such a limiting fashion. You hope for what you think is good for you...outside the realm of your thoughts and that tiny idea of a world between your ears, one doesnt know what is possible. As you grow older, one often tries to hold on to the familiar even more. People you knew, food you ate, places you visited, songs you listened to, photos of the yore...each of them seem to grow more and more precious when seen through the sepia lenses of your memory. But every moment spent living the past is stealing something incredible from the present. Yes, we may be the net result of who we know, love, hate, despise, dont care about or look upto. W...

The feeling of a fresh dew... the lightness you experience when you’ve just hugged your loved ones.. music plays such a big part in my life. Listening to songs I grew up on takes me to a different world altogether. Must thank my parents for gifting me the joy of music.

Said one character to another in a Netflix series "so, why dont you finish that book?" "I'm afraid," she said, "what if its not good enough?" "Fuck the fear. One day when you will be happily crossing the road, humming your favorite song and get rammed into by a truck, you would've died holding yourself back for a fear no one really cared about." Why do we hold ourselves back? I kinda know why I was so miserable over the past few days. I'm tired of being afraid and measuring myself for things I have little control over. I lost focus of what I was to actually do and let all the gossip mongering get to me. Vir Das says a nice thing in one of his comedy series..."you cant control how people react, but you can control how good you make your work."

So what is it about worrying about wrong things? More about reactions than the purpose?

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius states in  Meditations ,  “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly." The above quote made my day. I find myself constantly struggling to understand why some people are so vicious and petty . Why did she say that? Why did he do it?  Some of the inquisitiveness arises from my own interest in understand people's behaviour, but boy! can it be taxing! I will break this post into 2 sections. One - Why I think they do it. Two - Why does it bother me. Why I think they do it When someone is being a prick, it's usually because they want the attention. Attention seeking behv arises from insecurities of being not good enough or not being considered important enough or fearing loss of control or plainly, knowing that one sucks. Such folks will constantly poke you. They are narcissists who can survive only if you acknowledge their existence...

The last couple of days have been such a roller coaster emotional ride. Not in a sob sob/ grin grin manner, but I feel some sort of realisation..a dawn..turning a heavy duty page over sorta feeling. Negative people seem to take disproportionate time of your day, compared to the positive ones. While the definition of positive and negative essentially is people who you find agreeable or not, but one seems more obsessed with converting the negatives ones over instead of consolidating the positive ones. It's akin to conquering more terrain while leaving the already conquered in a 'maintenance-only' mode. Why is it so important for everyone to agree with you? That's the first of the warning signs of narcissism.  Husband pointed out that I'm not very good at 'giving it back' to the nasty ones and tend to internalise it. That my relationship with such folks has a very very long tail before it finally tapers off into oblivion. There will always be this finite ...

I called hubby at work and spoke to him in a very formal, business tone over an upcoming appointment with our builder. He responded in an equally professional manner. I found it too hot!! Script for next time ;) © Z.

I'm smiling today for no particular reason. I was in midst of mundane corporate activity called "forecasting". Something we do to give ourselves an illusion of control. And subsequent work. Eg. Forecast something, break it down to measurable stuff, monitor against planned, report against variance with action plan. Send lots of colorful dashboards for the above while highlighting people and random activities in bold. See? Work would've been a funny place if people didn't take it so personally. But you cant blame them..it pays their bills and holidays (or depending on the pay - holiday plans). I was actually smiling because I have begun to see how pointless it is. It usually boils down to making your work seem important in the larger scheme of things and then complicating it with work-life balance, job satisfaction, progression, compensation, value addition, castration.. not really ;). 11 years of working and I realise only 2 things matter. To me. 1. Pay  2.V...

The flights were ok. The kiddo didn’t trouble much. God bless her. A notable thing happened at the Singapore airport. We had some time before the boarding started for onward journey to Oz. I kept seeing those “Prayer Rooms” signboards and told Hubby I wanted to offer a prayer before we proceeded. He said ok. So I went towards to the prayer room. There was nobody there. It felt cut out from the rest of the airport…so I went back and called him to be near about the room…which he agreed. I went back in and started praying. As I proceeded through the prayer, I started getting so nervous and shaky…I kept forgetting my chants. I kept getting them wrong and starting from beginning and getting them wrong again…some guy was praying loudly in the adjacent room and it was either a distraction or I just wanted to stop praying and listen to him…either ways, the clock was ticking and the boarding had begun. Those few mins in the prayer room, I wasn’t in my own senses…I was been swayed by s...

I didn’t know there was a template for a blog post in MS word. In the last 2 years, an idea which was dormant in my idea for about 2 decades or so started germinating. It was mostly watered by the birth of my daughter (that sounded weird) It was about migrating to Australia. There was something about this place which allured me. It was away, self-sufficient, least bothered, aloof, didn’t give a damn and it was both ugly and pretty. It was me in a lot of ways. I started the immigration process by visiting those visa consultants (a special mention of a friend, TJ, a discussion with whom helped me narrow it down) and then over the period of the next 4-5 months struggled through the documentation process. Husband complied wherever possible, but was mostly a sleeping partner in the whole process (that’s very unlikely of him, though. As I discover much later that he played along as he wasn’t much keen on migration, but did so on my behest).  Nevertheless, half of 2014 and a...

Time to stop 02-12-2014 18:22 It flies by you Like they rightly said You are still thinking about Things to be done and bared A moment comes When the will to dream dies Coz the dream can't only on thoughts survive It can't be a record that plays Over and over again So long that it stops sounding The way it sounded back then You look into your rack For new unplayed ones And see none For all were played to be enjoyed But died in the hope of being heard How long shall such A sojourn go on When shall you do the dream That simply needs to be done

Being innocent and being foolish are two different things. © Z.

Its been a while...life has been tough...the duel continues... © Z.

I want to separate out the word personal from branding. I think a personal brand is the moment when you start to lie. Focus first on the personal and you beat up all the competition instantly. Just being honest, being yourself, doing the work, applying the daily practice for just a few months, and your personal self will come to life more than it ever has before. You'll be honest with the people around you and that automatically beats all the competition because they’re too slick, too dishonest, too focused on their brands. You’re not focused on that anymore. When you come up with honest, sincere ideas for people, and you give rather than expecting to take, then you suddenly have separated yourself out from 99 percent of the competition. You win. And it’s that easy to do it.  

Don’t leave it to others to take care of your image. If you are working..you should work on your image too.   Stakeholder Management is the  most important skill to survive in Corporates   Keep your channels live and active…don’t let your boss be your only window to the world     Few critical lessons learnt from my first job. Time to move on. Hallelujah.

Come to think of it...I didnt rem'ber what I last blogged or how my blog looked like!! Well..just be back post changing the template.. :) © Z.

I HAD to post this. What’s with old school romanticism man?   “Those were the days…those were the women..those were the times…that was love…blah blah blah”.   If 50 yr olds are making that point, I get it. If a 30 yr old does it..he’s just trying to be popular with the old boys! C’mon…whatever this generation is…its because the one previous to it honed it that way…if you don’t like it..blame yourself!   “Ladies in those days had their own grace”. Yeh. Right. Let me try that grace when I’m pulling up the Sourcing manager.   “Ladies in those days had their own nakhras.” Yeh. Right. Will my boss be ok if I did those ‘nakhras’ in office…Ouch! :D   What they want to say is…ladies in those had nothing better to do than act to their whims & fancies…complain about the pickle taking longer than usual..smile when he looked at her ‘i...

The word does travel around..and the world is round..so it will come back to you sooner or later. That is not the point. The point is..you just cant trust folks..there are so many hidden linkages in the corp world that you feel as if you are literally in a maze..what leads to whom and from where can be quite flummoxing.   So the ideal way would be to not make noises…or make ones of the right kinds. Whatever.  

Far far away, lived a nomad…amidst high gray mountains and the scorching desert land. He would tread the hills, staring at the clear blue sky above. The majestic Sun would shine down on him and question his wanderings. The nomad was searching for something…he didn’t exactly know what.   He would look at scenery around him and wonder…wonder about how the nature got to be there and what would happen to it tomorrow. His mind was just as his own physical state…clueless and without a destination.   Very rarely, his thoughts would cross the high mountains and wonder what lies behind them. What did those rocks hold in their cradle? But increasingly, he started believing that his world was within these hills….and what happened beyond them was neither in his control nor his concern.   Night would fall, and he’d continue staring at the stars. He wanted answers from everything around him. Wanted them to justify their existence to him. But wh...

Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can’t be taken on its own merits.   - Dan Barker   I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.   - Douglas Adams   If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.   - Dorothy Parker   The world is governed more by appearances than realities, so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it.   - Daniel Webster   “ Leadership is all about being granted permission by others to lead their thinking. It is a bestowed moral authority that gives the right to organize and direct the efforts of others. But moral authority does not come from simply managing people effectively or communicating better or being able to motivate. It comes from many sources, including being authentic and genuine, having integrity, and showing a real and...