For now, confusion prevails over aspirations ...

It's been a while since I wrote on this blog. Since my last blog, even though lot of things happened in my life, it feels like nothing is happening and it's moving at a snails pace. I guess the reason is simple, I don't have job.

For most of the people, life is composed of simple things like going to school for almost 15 to 20 years and then finding a good job, then getting married and have children and then facing mid-life crisis, etc. For me first part continued more than 20 years, unfortunately. I'm not sure whether it was unfortunate though. May be it was fortunate too if I start looking at it from different angle. Anyway, going back to the job issue, I haven't completed my degree yet and still I got out of university in search of job. It's been almost a year since I came to Los Angeles in search of job and nothing happened. In a way it makes you dull and it's hard to come out of this shell. Some times I feel everything gets dragged like anything. Then I tell my self this is part of life just to feel better. Sucks, right? I know it does.

With my friend Kishan's help, last October I attended a supercomputing conference in Portland, OR in search of job and hoping that meeting people would help me out in this regard. In a way I did meet lot of people in this area. Some one from a university promised me that he would help me out. In fact he kept his promise and sent me an email with job postings in his university. Since these jobs are in the university it's taking long time. Now I'm patiently waiting on this opportunity. In a way it's good for me too since it's going to take at least another two months for me to get my employment authorization.

Overall this is the reason I don't know what to do right now. Everyday I go to mail box with lots of hope :). Sounds funny. Right? I go to mail box hoping that I'd have some good news. Most of the time it'd be empty. Even though I get disappointed for a while, I feel great again with in no time. The reason is there is always tomorrow.

Finally, I took a great decision not to play the league this summer. I still remember that when I was in 12th grade, I used to watch a movie pretty much everyday. I lived in hostels right from my childhood. Until 10th grade always there were teachers supervising us in the hostels. It was kind of jail even though it helped me a lot in every way. Freedom wise I always wanted to get out of that school. Right after 10th grade I got that opportunity to get out. I went to the next big city to my village and joined a college for my higher studies. Since I was living on my own and had no supervision, I went wild in every way I guess. I used to go to movies pretty much everyday. You might feel I'm crazy if I told you this. I used to watch same movies repeatedly for weeks before I thought it was time for some other movie. I was always fascinated with movies. More over this freedom issue was there. Overall everything made me go crazy in a way.

Still I did very well in the school. Being a school hater, most of the time I was absent in the school. Good thing for me was even though I hated school, I always loved to know things from books which made me study all my courses. More over it did good to my knowledge since studying on one's own helps immensely well. More over I always had this competitiveness. I always think of my self as exceptional when it comes to anything and everything. It might sound I'm boasting or overconfident. Definitely not. I just don't give up on anything until I get it and this kind of attitude helped me like anything in my life until now. It's the same attitude when it comes to doing well in the school by getting good grades. Some times I feel as long as I have knowledge in it it's fine.

So all the time I ended up studying on my own and I used to study just before exams all the night. I used to do night outs and go to the exam with out breakfast and no sleep at all. If you eat before going to exam, that's it you are done. I mean you'd feel damn sleepy and you can't do well in the exam for sure. It was my theory and it worked for me all the time. Even though it worked for exams, it didn't work that well when it came to engineering entrance. I never cared about it when I took it first time while I was in college. As usual, I didn't get that good grade since I was busy all the time in playing cricket. Even though I knew I'd get bad rank I got very disappointed when I saw my rank. I immediately promised my self not to play cricket and watch movies until I finish my next engineering entrance. In fact I kept my promise to my self in not watching movies. I feel proud of my self when ever it comes to my mind that I didn't watch movies for whole one year considering my love for movies. But I failed miserably in keeping my other promise which hurt my goal really bad. I couldn't stop playing cricket and in fact I started playing more and more. In the end I didn't get exceptional rank but just good rank.

Then I joined engineering college and in those four years time I understood one thing for sure. Even though I always knew that getting good rank is not an indication of how good and talented you are, some where it made me feel different. But during those four years of engineering, I understood for sure some of the students who got exceptionally good ranks are not that great. In fact most of them are just bookish. In a way it has to do with our educational system.

I still remember some of my friends thought I was not that good compared to them until something proved to them opposite. At the end I got very good respect from everyone, even the ones who always thought they were too good for everyone. The funny thing is these students always had a way to look down on other students in something. I guess they never were exposed to out side world. Or may be too spoilt.

Anyway, going back to what I wanted to say, I'm hoping my decision to not to play cricket would bring some luck :) this time too. I know it's kind of stupidity to believe in something like this. It's just a belief even though I know for sure that only working hard would bring us luck and there by results.

By the way, I wanted to write something else too. Lot of guys who thought they were too good for everyone ended up doing those same jobs everyone does. I don't know whether they feel it now. May be not. Everyone has to feel special with themselves. That's the nature of life I guess. But if everyone is true to themselves, most of use are same when it comes to these things. Very few people make them special in other's eyes too by choosing to do something special in their lives.

What makes those very few people special. If I'm not wrong, the guts to do something different from most of us do. For example everyone of us wants to go for jobs and there by having security in leading life. But very few people deviate from it and take risk in doing something else. I mean in achieving some thing great. It doesn't have to be like getting known through out world. It's just enough if you are known for your talent at least in your community. How many of us chase our dreams of becoming something we have always wanted to be. Very few I guess. Right? The reason is fear in our minds. We fear to take risks.

Most of us have dreams. But before we try it out, we starting thing what would happen if it failed. The funny thing is you'd know the result only when you try. Still no one tries out of fear. It's just we want to go in very ordinary and safe route that has been already followed my millions of people.

This is where I guess mid-life crisis comes into picture. Since by that time we know that we can't realize our goal of becoming someone in life, life becomes boring and frustrating. During this time only people start doing so called bad or weird things in life.

My friend and I talk about it very often and we want to do something. I'm still not sure how we are going to do it. I don't know about Kishan. He has his own dreams. When it comes to me, I feel I'm a very confused guy right now. Some where I feel I'll do something for sure out of frustration, definitely good though. If I look back in my life until now, I have always got what I wanted. I have enough guts to follow my dreams and if needed I can go to any extent.

It's hard to imagine next five years of life. I still imagine my self doing something better than what I consider ordinary. Right now my mind is filled with lot of ideas. But the problem is nothing is clear and like I said before I'm very confused about everything. Good thing is even though nothing is going well or nothing great happened for long time, I still feel great in every way and I think this mind set would be good enough to take risks to realize goals, even though nothing is clear right now.

Anyway, for now it feels better to put these confused mindset here. Let's see how things are going to be by the next time I write.

cheers
Sreedhar.