Today is last day and now last few hours of this year. Along with this year, I hope many things end and new good things start with the new year from me. Only few days back, I realized that by now I should have finished my doctorate but instead I am as away from it as I was five-six years back. With the changes that I had to make in my work, I have gone away from mastery I should have achieved and recognized for in my research area. With the new year, I am hoping I will be once again back to my area of interest and do the meaningful work that I want to do. Over last two years, although I have strayed away from my area of interest it was not all waste; at least the first 14-15 months were not. I am more like a person who has lost his memory, I hope something brings it back and I can start with the new vigor.

A very happy new year to all!!!

and A very happy new year to myself!!! Let it be the year where I can start taking decisions and taking back the control of my life.

Sometimes, I feel how nice it would have been if I had some kind of personal secretary to take care of all the day-to-day things, like buying things, arranging transport, etc. Although we think so much which brand, what features etc. for most of the day-to-day things, it hardly matters. Most of the average things can hardly be differentiated. But, if I have to make choice, I will think too much. If somebody else is doing it, I will happily just use the things. So much of mental pressure will be gone. I will happily spend time reading, doing work or whatever that I want to do.
I have noticed that the way things work for middle-aged adult in India is so much married people oriented that it is really difficult for a single guy (and I guess must also be difficult for a single girl). Sometimes, just to avoid all that difficulties I feel like I should have been married. 

I had yet another long break in my writing. Sometimes when I feel lost, I just read the things I have written before. Today, I came across a response that I had written on one of the acquaintance's post. Having become lazy, I thought I will just copy it here rather than write something new...

Here it goes:

I think somewhere in our externally forced learning, the internal voice within ourselves is suppressed. We are taught that there is one correct answer, there is one correct way of doing things; which, of course is an outright lie. Parents approve one correct way of behaviour; teachers agree to only one correct answer, that is their answer; at work, there is only one correct way of doing work, that approved by boss; society gives one correct way of progressing career (more money, bigger house, bigger car, etc.); we are told there is only one correct religion (well, we are taught to be tolerant, which is not same as accepting each religion might be right for the circumstances in which it came up) and as if this is not enough; nowadays there is also one correct way of managing your health (well different people will propose different things but everyone will insist that theirs is a better way), and even one correct way of communicating. Our basic style of learning in our childhood which is shaped by our teachers and parents, pretty much decides how much we understand ourselves. The ‘one correct way’ is enforced in all our dimensions of our life. The loss of our internal voice makes us dependent on external measures to know our self-worth thus reinforcing the vicious loop. We no longer know when to stop eating, we stop based on some arbitrary measure we have established for ourselves; we don’t know how much should we learn, we are habituated to depend on external measures like exam scores, performance appraisals, etc.; we can’t be certain of hanging out with a person until our friends have approving looks. Unfortunately not just we measure ourselves but also enforce those measures over other on whom we have the influence. We judge people based on what we have established as our one correct way and anyone who dares to be different,we discourage that person. But when the very same personn for some reason gains recognition we celebrate the same ‘dare to be different’ of that person.
I think we start getting disconnected when we can no longer listen to this internal voice within ourselves. We can no longer be just one person, we try to adhere to different parts of our life based on the norms established in the circles of that part of life. In our office, we try to be like our colleagues, in social circles we try to be like our friends and families, etc. We are only one person, the mental, physical, spiritual, and social dimensions must not make us different people. I have come across many people especially in corporate world who think something else, say something else, and do something completely different. I wonder how do they live with themselves, but they apparently do, they do live quite well with themselves at least on the surface. We become aware of our spiritual dimension when we can have questions about ourselves that we cannot answer, we have questions about the world around us that we know nobody around us knows. But this one correct way fools us there also, we are no longer content with the question remaining answered or just exploring them without jumping on the conclusion; we want somebody to answer those questions for us and once we find somebody who answers, we rationalize our choice by saying well that person is like this and this how can he be wrong, or billions of people believe this so how can it be wrong, or it is wisdom of thousands of years so how can it be wrong. We force ourselves to accept or reject things as a whole rather than learning and keeping what is good with us.
In a way, we human being have always had leaders and followers model and some accepted norms for living life. But, earlier the circles were small and made up of same people. With increasing globalization and connectivity, we are moving towards more and more accepted uniformity for larger and larger population, leaving more and more people disconnected. And we also have different circle of people for each part of our life; people at work, people with whom we hang out, our relatives, our family, our online friends, etc.

It is strange how we sometimes even get used to things that we particularly don't like doing. I changed the kind of work I do about more than a year back, initially because this new work had some elements that I like doing. But unfortunately, over time those elements were declared out of scope and I left with work that I don't particularly enjoy. Then, last 5-6 months went extremely busy with this work. Lot of meetings, interactions with people, rush-work and so on. And, suddenly things changed about a month ago and those meetings, interactions, rush-wrok stopped. Now, although I don't really liked being so busy at all, I feel as if something wrong. I don't feel right that nobody is sending me mails saying can you get this done by EOD or meetings and so on. I no longer have this report and that presentation to prepare. I can really only laugh at myself, how I always hated being busy and now I feel someting missing since I am not so busy.
Hopefully, these changes will lead me back to the kind of work I love doing. Well, I do have lot of work to do which I consider as my personal committment and things that I want to do rather than somebody asking me to do. Lets see when I actually start doing those things.

Many times I remain lost in my thoughts and sometimes when I am lost something enters into mind and remains there. Due to such habit one funny thing happened to me today. I was standing in line (oh yes! in my organization where every senior person talks of improving productivity, we have to spend minimum 20-45 minutes a day in lines)in office canteen for taking coupons for snacks. I wanted to have spring roll (today's special) and tea. While I was standing, the girl in front of me asked for  fruit juice and then changes it to fruit plate or some such thing but the word juice remained in my mind and when it was my turn to take coupons I inadvertently asked for spring roll and juice. Only after I got back much less money than I expected I realized what I have done. I laughed at myself and decided to continue with juice rather than getting it changed from the counter. We don't know where our mind keeps floating and sometimes we do things very unconsciously. Unfortunately, in today's world we spend our days in similar unconscious way calling it routine and only retrospectively realize that days, months, years have just passed, we have not been able to do many things that we wanted to do.

Nowadays the world expects everyone to be an all-rounder. We have seen kids suffering due to their parents' insistence of being all rounder but even adults are not immune from these expectations. It is not just corporate world but even in social situations or in many kinds of relationships you are expected to be an all-rounder. You have to be the one who does all the work, also be funny, interact nicely with people, so on and so forth. While some of us are gifted with such all-round abilities, most of us are not and trying to align with these expectation of all round abilities we make our lives miserable. Sometimes you are an allrounder but not the kind that people around you want you to be. Most of us are fishes participating in swimming, tree climbing, running on ground, etc. all kinds of races. And we keep feeling guilty for not doing well in all races except swimming. Not many people even realize that they are participating in all kinds of races but they are lucky. Ignorance is bliss. The people who suffer are the one who realize that they are participating in so many races but cannot accept they are just fish and should not even participate in other races. Everyone has different priorities in life and one should at least remain true to their priorities in life. Priorities might change but that is fine as long as you are aware of it. I think every year people should be given compulsory holiday for 10-15 days without access to entertainment (chiefly the idiot box, movies, video games) and communication devices to force them to think what they are doing life and reflect are they really doing what they want to do. Most of us don't know what we want to do but again that is fine as long as you are aware that you don't know and you are prepared to do something about it when you realize what it is or experiment to find out what it is.