My best laid plans & moments of insanity

While i sit and write this, I look back things that have happened over the decade and how much was as per my plans when I started. The answer is surprisingly less, though I am not doing bad myself, I am trying to understand what made the difference.

In the first day in college my chairman asked me what do you want to do in life, my answer was "To start my own company"(I didn't know the word for that was 'entrepreneur'). It was during the golden days of no internet, surprisingly my first email was created during my 3rd year of college and we use to carry a pocket diary which has all the home phone numbers. Anyway, during my master's my prof asked the same question, the immediate answer was "Entrepreneur" in 5 years. It has been 8 years since i made that statement and I am still trying to change jobs. So exactly what happened, I lost myself in work and lost sight of my end objective, but does that means that am I doing bad? No, I am doing pretty good.

So examining my success it comes down to acts that I have done during my moments of insanity. First instance:

• Doing some crap stuff on the computer, in walks the senior manager, "How is testing going on, any new defects?". Hurriedly opened the database tool and app windows and saw some errors "Sir, i am checking the loading functionality it is not working so will let you know?", just to salvage the moment. He storms out and calls the developers to check it and voila a major defect which i stumbled upon. 

Second instance:

• Travelling in a train from Chennai to Bangalore, my boss calls and says our customer wants to come down here and do a new project, whom should I put as the lead. I volunteered to write the proposal and while doing so, realized I am sitting idle why don't I work on the new stuff. It turned to be the turning point for my entire career, both personally and professionally. 

So these random acts, defined or changed my professional career and the same thing on the personal aspect. I have done a lot of things while I am insane, due to which i have met the best peoples or my life. The plan was never to let go of them, but in the end, I lost all those best people due to acts that i did during my moments of insanity. Now whatever i do to rectify, things never change. 

People say success is due to acts of insanity, for me, I have failed as a personal due to moments of insanity. 

Life after 6 years

After a hectic day of looking at emails and cooking at home, I stumbled upon my old blog and realized that I am looking at it after 6 years and the last time I wrote a blog was May 2010.

Life has changed a lot in these 6 years, a lot of good things, bad things, realizations, hurt and what not, it has been a full package. But what made me to stop blogging or rather what made me to start writing again is what is going on in my mind. I think i started to write when i wanted to reinvent myself as a person and i believe right now i am trying to do the same thing. I also realized that this is one place where I can write what is in my mind and not worry about anything because it is not well followed ;).

I have been trying to get a good metaphor to summarize these 6 years and I am still struggling to find one. Interesting conversation that I saw somewhere quite summarizes everything:

Friend A: This is the last conversations that I want to have with you because you misused the freedom that I gave to you

Friend B: Sorry, Am I hearing it right, I misused the freedom. All I did was to try to reach out to you and I did what we used to do earlier

Friend A: Don't your understand, you are not giving me any space. You are, all over me

Friend B: (Confused on what needs to be said) So what do you want me to do.

Friend A: I want things like earlier, like old times.

Friend B: (Realization dawns, eureka, it means days when we were not friends) God bless you

This conversation which I heard made me realize, Never change yourself for anyone, because, at the end of the day they are not going to be with you when you loose yourself.

It is very painful when you have to gather the shattered pieces of your life and make a living out of it. But, when this happens often it turns to be fun and you relish the challenge. So after 6 years I am back to square one and reinventing myself and hopefully for the worst ;).