Friday, June 23, 2006

Leaving my job - a glimpse of Nirvana

I think there are two kinds of pleasures in life - the orgasmic pleasure and the nirvanic pleasure. Orgasmic pleasure emanates out of actively engaging with the material things in life while nirvanic pleasure emanates out of the other extreme - rising above the material things in life. (Though you may argue that both of those result in an eventual release which leads to pleasure). Now I am not sure if one is better than the other - but it can be safely said that orgasmic pleasure is easy to come by (though taken literally - not so easily for us engineers), while nirvanic pleasure is not. So how can one experience nirvanic pleasure? - the answer is right here - leave your job. No, seriously.

Today was my last day at work. Until yesterday I felt nothing - I thought it would be just another day at work. But I was wrong - yesterday night it started as I was backing up data from my laptop and removing personal items from my laptop bag - I actually started feeling nostalgic! guess even though I did not particularly liked my job - there were some things which I did (c'mon not the laptop guys).

The next day I had a last document to work on which I wanted to do well before leaving. The first thing I noticed was how I was doing that piece of work a lot more efficiently than I usually do. The second thing I noticed was how everytime someone talked about deadlines, deliverables and so on so forth - I automatically broke out into a Budhha smile - I was feeling lighter, euphoric - I was on the top of Maslow's pyramid all of a sudden, had broken away from the karmic circle. There was a team meeting on a client document - and I was full of ideas (i.e during the time I was not dozing/smugly smiling at my other team members). It felt great.

And as soon as I walked out of the office there was a bounce in my step I haven't seen in a while (I think the last time was when I was probably 10 and bought a springy variant of action shoes). I called up tons of people and shouted "Me is a free man !". I guess that was my glimse of nirvanic pleasure. So go ahead guys - leave your jobs. Let there be light(ness).

Saturday, June 17, 2006

This one isnt really a post because it's a circular reference

I am writing again. About 10 months after getting my engineering degree, a week before leaving my first job, a month and two days after my first venture starting and more importantly more than an year since I made my last post. I have 15 drafts sitting in my Blogger account on random arcane musings on philosophical and practical stuff (some of which I have spoken about to my friends getting a "gyaan dena band kar" comment) - just a collection of thoughts waiting to be articulated which I refuse to do (or can't do because I will keep thinking what I have written is not 'right enough').
What does that say about me?
I tell myself I need time - which I am going to get when I leave my job, (I think I use to tell myself that in my final year at college as well) - but will I really ever have time? Considering I have already listed tons of things I will do when I have time. We will see how it goes. On that badly articulated, insufficiently pondered upon thought - I leave my readers (Why am I being pretentious - I think the reader count is currently one - myself - and perhaps a few blog spammers).