Make it right

“I just wanna be happier”

-Lyrics from song “Blue & Grey”, Album “BE’ by BTS

I had a 2 weeks mandatory leave from office (to be taken once a year as per company policy) which ends today. Since I value time off from my office way too much, I tried to live every moment of these 2 weeks. I travelled to Bangalore with my mom to my younger sister’s place as she works there, to spend time with her. We planned a short trip to Mysore and enjoyed it to bits. We also had a grand reunion with all of my maternal cousins and had a house party. More than the party, I just enjoyed the presence of every single member of my extended family whom I met after 2 years and loved spending time with them. When I was younger, we used to visit my maternal ancestral home in Mangalore once a year during summer vacations. Although we never had a full house with all of my cousins during most of these trips, we always had a blast whenever we met. This time too, we cherished all the old childhood memories and just loved the fact that everyone was present in the same room, at the same time after almost 2 years!

In the last 3 days of the vacation, my youngest cousin joined us at my sister’s apartment and we had fun like it was no one’s business. She shares similar personality traits with me and my sister which makes it a blissful experience whenever we spend time with each other. We talked till the middle of the night, shopped till we dropped (well my sister did, she doesn’t particularly enjoy shopping at local stores, ate a lot of JUNK food, laughed our hearts out and had a really GOOD time. I had planned to continue all my good habits such as reading books, meditation, workout, write in my journal on this vacation. I did it the first 3 days and didn’t feel the need to do any of it to be “HAPPY” the rest of the days. I genuinely enjoyed myself on this vacation and was stress free the entire time. I never skip any of these good habits back home because I REALLY need them to keep me SANE and HAPPY. These good habits are my escape from the monotony and stress of my life and that’s the reason I didn’t reach out to them to make me happy on my vacation.

I came back home after having a mind blowing vacation and still had 5 days to go for my leave to end. The next 5 days were spent lazying around, cleaning (tried cleaning my wardrobe and closet partially using the Marie Kondo method), EATING and enjoying every single second of free time that I had earned after living a year full of routine (Wake up > Office > Home > Repeat). It honestly felt amazing to not stress over waking up early, having a specific train to board, reaching office at a specific time, making a to-do list, waiting for lunch time to get out of the office and chill for sometime with my office bestie, get back to work, wait for the day to end, pray that I get a empty seat in the train, reach home starved and fatigued, have dinner while watching random videos on YouTube, finally go to sleep feeling unsettled and unproductive.

By the end of the day, the voices in my head keep questioning me about my life decisions,

• Where am I heading?
• Why can’t I do better?
• What do I really want?
• Why do I dread going to office?
• Why do I hate my career path at the moment?
• Why does office feel like a professional prison?
• Why did I feel like a free bird (like a prisoner on parole) during my vacation?
• When will I stop feeling like this?

I try to reason with my mind, find answers to these questions by self introspection without respite and eventually fall asleep. I wake up to a new day feeling optimistic but end up feeling the same way after repeating my monotonous routine.

I’m sure people reading this might find my dilemma trivial. Just find a new job, take a break, quit your job, follow your passion, think deeply about what you like, so on and so forth. I really admire people who LOVE their career. That’s what I am aiming for. Finding a career that doesn’t make you feel like running away from it during weekends and vacations is what I seek. I may seem delusional at the moment but I sincerely hope to find it soon. In the absence of this discovery, I might lead a robotic life, devoid of any emotions, passion and excitement in life and regret how I spent my time on earth by the end of it.

For all those who enjoy your work, I admire you and hope to be like you.

For the ones who feel the same way as me, hang in there. It’ll all make sense soon, just don’t stop trying. Fight hard!

A brand new work week awaits for me. Please send me all the positive energy in this Universe, I really need it tomorrow!

The importance of gratitude

#75/100

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”

-Willie Nelson

I didn’t believe in this before. I was thankful for all the help and support I received from the kind people around me. But I’ve never actively counted my blessings and practiced being grateful in my life. Whenever I read or saw videos about ways to bring joy in life, turn our life around, better our relationships at work and home, the art of practicing gratitude tops the list. I once heard a podcast on topic of finding our dream job. The first technique told to us in the podcast was to “be grateful for the job we presently have and try to enjoy it”. This sounded absurd and made absolutely no sense to me. How do I enjoy the job I absolutely despised?

It took a long time to understand the power of being truly grateful for everything in life. Imagine a situation where you hate everything in your life. You can’t find a single thing to be happy or thankful about. Try to think of a person who doesn’t even know where the next morsel of his food will come from. We are a small part of this planet. No matter how hard you find your life at the moment, there will be someone who has it harder than you. Yet, they might find a better way to deal with their hardships.

There was a time when I wrote down 3 things I was grateful for in the morning and 3 things that I liked about the day before I went to bed. This was suggested to me by a counsellor at a time when I found every part of my life painfully difficult. At first this practice felt superficial. But I didn’t even realize how happy it made me feel within a matter of days. I quit this practice right after I felt better about my life. These practices ought to be made a habit. Our subconscious mind needs to be constantly reminded of our blessings in life so that it gives us the motivational boost when it’s necessary in life.

The ultimate goal of my life few years back was to be happy with every part of my life. I considered happiness a destination back then. Had I been grateful for every thing I had in life at that time, happiness would have been a journey instead of an unachievable dream. You can always turn around every situation if you think of reasons about how it could have been much worse. To be grateful for our life and everything in life is the best manner of loving ourselves and finding joy in the mundane and basic things in life. After all, life is not as bad as we think!