Just a fortnight into the new year and 2013 has already brought me more sorrows than some of my lowest years have managed over their entire lifespans.
And I thought last year was a bitch!
Trust me, my life has never been worse. But in spite of all that shit hitting the fan, I can still spot a silver lining.
'cause like they say, when you are at the very bottom, the only way to go is up, right?
The other day, I had a sudden realization that life is very much like a fine porcelain vase.
It is beautiful for one with an eye of appreciation for beauty. The hapless nihilist thinks it's overrated as he lies in the gutter and downs yet another bottle. The fidgety one fails to enjoy it as his time is spent worrying about its frailty.
Then it hit me that I am all these people.
Each morning when you wake up, you do not know whether you are gonna last the day.
But still you get out of that bed and go on living. That is faith.
Either that, or it could be a permanent sense of insensitivity that has set in over the years of your pathetic meaningless existence.
Every morning I spend a few minutes staring at the ceiling after I wake (don't we all?).
I tell myself that should Death stop me at my doorstep and flash me a book filled with dues and red lines and what not, I will just tell him, "Not Today" and go on living my supposedly happy life.
Isn't that a lie we all tell ourselves?
Would I really be able to mouth those words when the time came? Would I rather be content to taste the scythe and embrace my grave 'cause living in this world has become increasingly difficult? I wouldn't know for sure.
Many times in my life, I have wished that the world would just come to an end. Like the ending of that movie Dr. Strangelove. all of us being nuked to death while Vera Lynn sings us goodbye.
And many a time I have found myself drifting towards Nihilism, a tempting way of life indeed. But one that I now realize is nothing more than a refuge for people who are scared to get out there and face the world, or go down fighting.
So what if my life sucks?
Chances are, if by the time the sun goes down I'm still standing, I will have learnt something new.
It's just that some people get to learn these lessons the easy way, and some, the hard way. Welcome to reality.
If anything, 2013 will be a year for responsibilities. I'm through with taking tacky new year resolutions that I never keep. Time to grow a pair and start living life for real.
I have been bitching nonstop for thirty minutes now. and more depressing is the fact that none of it even makes sense.
and I'm pretty sure I will hate myself later for writing this post.
So I'm gonna cut short this rant and go yell at my dog for some time.
(as if that makes sense)
Happy new year, by the way.
Chiming in after a long time. and I tell ya, it not on a happy note either.
If this post was a chord, it would be friggin D minor. If it were a song, you would hear Radiohead's Creep playin. If it were a film, it would be the last 15 minutes or so of Requiem for a Dream.
I could go on like this all day, but that wouldn't cheer me up either.
I guess I must have hit what people call a Quarter-life Crisis.
A week back, I turned 24, and I was left thinking, Oh my God, almost a quarter of my life has passed before my eyes, and I still haven't achieved anything. I'm still a scared-shitless kid tryina put his life together.
Life stagnates.
I face myself in the mirror; I see a fucking failure.
I open up my facebook homepage. It asks me, "What's on your mind?". Regret. Lots of it.
Heck, I logged in to stare at funny memes all day and cheer myself up. Focus on something else for a while and ignore the pain. I should have thought this through.
I remember a friend back from school who once told me, "What wouldn't I give for your life"!
Really dude? Well you should see me now.! it's even better!
What have I done with my life?
It's been two years after college. I worked for about a year a crappy day job.
Sure it was valuable experience to beef up my CV. I learned the tricks of the trade.
I made a few good friends. We had fun. We had booze. We tripped by the sundown to The Beatles and The Pixies. It was fun while it lasted.
I also met and had to work with people who had the morals of body lice. I now know better than to expect appreciation when you meet targets and deadlines. I now know how things work in the corporate world.
But in the wake of all this, has anything really changed, inside? not much.
Job satisfaction? none.
Feeling unfulfilled and frustrated? check.
Bordering on extremes such as atheism and even Nihilism? check, check.
That's the thing when you're stuck doing a job that you don't love. It's all makebelieving.
You put yourself to the torture everyday, telling yourself that things will get better eventually. Only, it won't.
It's like having to ingest a downer and then snorting on ecstacy to climb your way back up. every fucking day of your life.
It might run things well for a while, but in the end, you are just left an emotional wreck.
So, I learned the truth the hard way. If you don't love what you do for a job, there's no point in clinging to it. Don't listen to others, listen to your heart. Peer inside and you'll know what you really want.
Or as Robert Downey Jr. put it, "Listen, smile, agree. and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway"
Sure we've all heard these words. Half of the world's quotations seem to be aimed at this very philosophy. But what is hard is finding the nerve to put it into action.
I have never felt happier quitting a job, and I probably never will :)
So now I'm free, and clueless about what to do next. How I wish life came with instructions!
I don't know what future holds for me. But I'm giving myself two years to piece it all back together. Two years to get my ducks in a row.
June 2014. If there is a world here on that date (and the Mayans were just Trolling us).
The first step : Relocate.
Yup, gotta get outta this joint and start afresh, for a better life. Let's see how this works out.
..and thank you Ayn Rand, for 'The Fountainhead'. If I hadn't happened to read it, I'd probably be rotting away in a grave right now!
Feeling a lot better already. God, I missed blogging!
Steppin into the Wayback Machine.
Labels: blogging, measled potatoes, personal, real personal Sunday, July 3
So I was dropping by my dusty blogger dashboard the other day, and I went back and read some of the old posts, just for the heck of it.
And I gotta tell ya, it's an amazing feeling, walking down the memory lane.
The same feeling you get looking at a sepia-toned photograph from your childhood.. or going through text messages saved on your phone from 5 years back.. or just hearing the Windows 95 startup sound.
you feel a 100 years old. *sigh*
I also noticed I have completed a measly total of 100 posts, spanning more than 3 years, which should be considered an accomplishment, given my laziness.
and a quick peek at statcounter told me that my blog has been visited by unsuspecting victims 38367 times. double whammy! :)
So at this point I decided to do a little retrospection. step into the wayback machine and see how my blogging has progressed. Yes it has had its phases, highs, and lows.
and it will only be fair if I start with the first phase:
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I. Crappy with a capital C
"Oh look, everyone's got a blog these days! What? it's free? wait, you can make money too?? dude I'm SO in..!"
So I jumped into the blogging bandwagon on the 1st of March, 2008.
I gotta come clean here, blogging was more of a money-making opportunity to me then than anything else. I was in it for the dough.
So, naturally, the posts consisted mostly of 'cool' stuff I found on the internet, a Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, or just some random drivel.
Goals at this stage: fill blog with junk, get pagerank, sneak in adsense, do sponsored posts, watch my wallet getting thicker.
I wouldnt mention any posts from this phase for the simple reason that they were all crap. However this one might make you crack up, especially since it was unoriginal and copied from somewhere on the internet:
A hilarious way to learn metal genres
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II. Not Alone.
The bucks hadn't started flowing in as I thought, In fact, I was yet to see a single dime. All I earned was a couple of visits a week maybe. no comments. nothing. nada.
I also came to hate blogging as I saw it more as a chore.
But then I discovered other bloggers out there. Luckily for me, I started blogging early on, when blogging wasn't this big. So there were many struggling bloggers beside me, trying to get their blogs out there.
Began to see blogging in a new light. Needless to say, the posts started becoming more original and personal. Blogging became fun.
and yeah, thank god for BlogCatalog :)
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III. Measled.
That did it. The transition from a vocation, to an avocation. I was totally, hopelessly addicted.
My lifestyle now consisted of surfing other people's blogs late into the night (or should I say, morning??), pots and pots of coffee, and bags under the eyes.
and surprisingly, I started seeing some money. So here's the ultimate tip for ya, whatever you do, you gotta put your heart into it, and the greens will automatically follow :)
Some of my personal favorites from this time
Becoming a Blogger
25 ways to kill time on the internet
Aliens through the ages
An alien encounter
..and the introductory post that was actually the 50th :
Here comes the measles!
better late than never :)
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and how can I forget them new year posts, wild and whacky posts written in the wake of sobriety after a particularly wild popping of bottles on the new year's eve.
2009 - 2010 - 2011
and it was during the new year of 2010 that I took the only new year resolution that I've kept: keeping this site completely ad-free. though I get tempted to cheat from time to time ;)
Life bites.
Now I know how people who write diaries must feel. It's nice to have some place you can write your heart out when life for you isn't going that great. It helps heal the wound. well, mostly.
Whether it be losing someone to death, breaking up with a good friend, or just the occassional blues, blogging is a relief.
Intoxicated
The countless posts made under influence, most of them that got deleted the very next morning at the first pangs of sobriety.
Here's a tip for you, do not blog when you are drunk, or desperately unhappy, or both.
and here's an example of how effed up a post can get, when the person typing it is too hammered to form words with the 200+ keys he sees on his keyboard.
Sealed with a kiss
and the one post that will always remain my number 1, looking back at the most beautiful phase of my life so far.
college = \m/
So, that's it, I feel like I've just sat through a movie.
and I thought it was pretty good. you might be tempted to throw tomatoes. it's your call really.
All I know is, I'm gonna keep this shit up for many more years.
..cause I friggin love it :)
