All roads lead back to here

It has been a while since i have visited this blogosphere and it was not because I didn't miss it or didn't think about writing only constantly. To be honest not writing for this long makes me feel sort of incomplete and even incompetent but the thoughts and struggles that I was going through were too overwhelming and complicated to be translated into words and posted on a public forum. This just like all other things in my life felt too laborious and a little too daunting to be dealt with so like all such things it was shelved until could no longer be ignored.
In a way lot has happened since i last posted while in others it has pretty much stayed the same. Interesting thing about life is just that isn't it? You have such few life altering events happen in ones life but their effects keep appearing over the entire lifetime and the process is generally so slow that you may actually feel stuck in one spot through it all and suddenly you wake up and look around you and everything is different. Not always a bad thing but the time u spend feeling stuck can actually make some people stir crazy and make them feel like they are losing their minds. I can safely say i am one  such person and I am starting to get a little stir crazy. I guess I'm too specific in what I am wanting to change because to be honest there has been a lot of changes in the almost two years of my absence.
For starters i ran 3 half marathons in 2012 which put me on the path of losing almost 50 lbs in 2013. I was trying to run a full but a back problem put me out of commission. Hopefully that will be done in 2014.
I took up a full time job in LA, accepting to be an Angeleno and ending my life of nomadism. I still don't have a home of my own and still don't have that strong sense of belonging but LA still feels as close to home as possible.
2013 was super exciting as I finally added miles to my travel odometer. Summer saw me travel to Spain and Italy and see the many sights and wonders that I had been dreaming of seeing all my life. I flew solo and met some interesting people and made a couple of friends who will forever remain a strong force in where my life goes here onwards. Then made a trip to Canada and yet another trip to Italy to explore the Tuscan region. Currently I am traveling to close the year out in style in Athens, Greece and start it exploring the Neapolitan southern Italy. Not too shabby one would say. I am the most appreciative and grateful for this particular blessing.
So what exactly is driving me insane, one can ask. Well it is the rest of my life which is making me a little antsy. Of course in life you have to face and live with the consequences of the choices you make, whether good or bad. Basically you have to suck it up and lie in the bed you have made whether its comfortable tempura-pedic one or one with a broken spring sticking into your spine the whole time you rest or at least try to.
First of all is my work. Granted it's not that bad and paid well enough for me to train for and run the races and travel. But it's not what one can call a dream job. It's not what I can imagine myself doing for the rest of my life. It definitely has a low satisfaction level and makes me feel kind if lost to be honest. One can argue I am being a baby and that's just how life is so i better grow up and accept it for what it is, just a job. Maybe I'm expecting g too much from it but i just want to do something  more fulfilling that impacts and makes a difference in people's lives. Call me crazy but i really can't go through life just making sure people has TV to watch during their free time. The problem is i just don't know what my real calling is and that makes me feel more lost and demotivated than anything else. Again one might say I'm just fooling myself and should accept my current fate as it is not really a concentration camp by any measure. Sighh see what I mean? I'm stuck.
The second aspect of the stucky-ness comes from my extended single status. Let me clarify I am not dying to be married or want to play house with the first fella who shows up. It's just that it makes me anxious that this extended status may turn in a permanent one. And even though I'm not willing to jump into something serious at this minute - reasons for which far too complex to get into here, I would still like to know that when I'm ready the right person will show up and my getting older and well weirder will not get in the way. I guess I'm looking for guarantee that I will not be punished for my bad choices for the rest of my life.
Anyway to close out this 2 year evaluation, life is good and has been as such consistently. I have great friends, my family is well and my health is better than ever. My anxieties are my own and have very little to do with what is my actual true life. I guess in a way my brain is making them a part of my life but it's normal to have those. Just have to accept them or fix them if possible.
I hope to get back to writing and returning back to this space may motivate me to do so. Let's see how long I can keep it up but since I'm traveling I will start by writing about the remaining 1 week of my trip. That hopefully will get me hooked again.
Free spirit is still alive :))

Reality Bites

While growing up we all have big dreams and big ideas about what our lives will be like, what we will achieve, what we will do. Sadly not all of those dreams come true, if at all. Somewhere along the way we abandon one dream after another for one reason or another, until we are nothing but regular people settled into our mundane ordinary lives and we have nothing but bills and mortgages, wondering often what life would have been like if any one of those dreams had come true. This wistfulness perhaps never lets us be fully happy or content with what we have. Maybe that's the reason why the idea of getting old and never really going after the things they most wanted makes people do crazy things during the mid-life. They seek some meaning or thrill to compensate for missing out on the desired life of adventure and excitement before they fade into the twilight years of their lives.
I often wonder is life more satisfying for people who go after their dreams and spend years pursuing their passions, doing things they believe they are destined to do in this world? Is it really rewarding to sacrifice anything and everything in trying to accomplish your childhood goals, your teenage whimsies and dealing with disappointments and rejections on a daily basis until you may or may not succeed in achieving your goals. In other words is it really better to have failed then never to have tried at all?
I don't know the answer to that. I guess just like anything else in life it depends. But I do know with me I feel completely restricted and tied down in the mundane 9-5 work week and blow out steam on the weekend lifestyle and in my moments of desperation I go back to to what had been my biggest dream as a teenager, travel all over the world and write about it or have a travel show on BBC or something. The more I think about it the more suffocated I feel. Each day that I spend tied down in front of the computer ends with me feeling like I am serving a life sentence. I am not kidding. Its bad.
I guess what makes me feel worse is that I never really tried to see if I can even make this dream come true, never tried to go after it. I guess I never really believed this was an option for me you know, growing up where I did and knowing what I knew. I just told myself that this was nothing more than a fancy, a dream that can never actually come true. And that just makes me sad :(
I guess part of it came true. I moved to the US, saw a whole new world, met so many amazing people and I am not exactly chained up against my will. No one really dictates my life to me, I come and go as I please, have friends and family and life is generally good. But it isn't the same. I still do a job that I have no passion for and is motivating only because it pays my bill. Somehow trying to stay in this land of free, I actually traded away that very thing...freedom. In the process of obtaining a permanent residence, I settled into this job, accumulated debt, developed an appetite for the material world and got further and further away from the life that I once wanted. And now that I have that status, I find myself stuck, settled uncomfortably in the comfort of status quo. I have too many responsibilities, too many miles on the human pedometer, too much brain and not enough heart. I have to think about buying a home, supporting my old parents, save to make sure the future is secured. No courage..just regrets and fear. The only thing that the logic deems important is security, stability and money. Money!! that's just it.
And so I stay in this life so mundane and regular with its uninspiring job and mountain of bills and worries that I purposefully make it as chaotic as possible by making reckless decisions, marrying to seemingly romantic yet ridiculous ideas, and my very favorite procrastinating until there is no room to do so, just so I can feel excited and alive. I am after all a drama whore. (Yes, I just graduated myself from a drama queen to a drama whore).
But this is no life, no passion, no real ambition just wistful wondering about what life would have been like if I had gone after my dream. Fought for it to make it happen. I am pretty sure life would not be so...pointless. At least I would feel like I took a chance. Sigh! A part of me just wants to become even more regular by obtaining a conventional family life just so it can maybe have a deeper meaning. Yeah like that wouldn't make me feel more tied down and settled.
I tell myself I am being ungrateful that I have a good life and I have accomplished a lot that I had hoped to achieve but somehow it makes me even more restless and suffocated as that would mean I am settling. I am not okay with this. Somethings gotta give.
I think I am having an early mid-life crisis. Don't be surprised if my next post is from some remote town in the middle of the Australian Outback.

Change

Life as I knew it has been altered somewhat with the departure of Guru Ji from my world last year. He was such a constant presence in my life for such a long time that it seems odd not having him there, yet at the same time its almost like he was never there. There is just this emptiness, an odd, dark sad spot in the middle of my soul. Sometimes the spot dims aganst all else that throws light in my life, while at others it becomes the single biggest shadow cast over my entire being that darkens everything around me to the point where I cannot see or feel anything in the present nor can find hope for the future. He was a friend, and for a while a little more than just a friend and for the better part of the time that he was in my life a source of comfort, wisdom and hope. But now for whatever reasons he is gone and I am left trying to make sense of all the whys and hows while ignoring the should haves and could haves.
I don't take too well to loved ones leaving my life and Guru Ji is no exception. Loved ones for me are a part of my soul, they define who I am, where I belong and I treasure them above all else. Through Good times and bad, no matter what...I cherish them. But sometimes that doesn't seem to be enough. Love and care or whatever you offer is just not enough. Something changes, maybe people change, circumstances change. Or maybe it is just the hearts that change. I don't know because I have never given up. Through the worst patches of any relationship with friends or family or anyone, I always felt things will change, rough patches will smooth, just as long as we keep the hope and there is love and care. Pretty gullible and naive I suppose, but that's how I still feel ironically. I guess the cynicism that comes with the death of a friendship hasn't taken root deep enough to cause permanent damage and I guess I am grateful for that...somewhat.
I am seemingly normal, life as well appears normal and the world? Pretty much the same. I hear people tell me the usual things people say when loss hits you ...its only for the best, everything happens for a reason, its better this way, count your blessings, be strong. I think they are all good and valid points. It really is better this way, I really should be strong and grateful and everything really does happen for a reason. I start believing them and then I hear myself agreeing with them. Soon I am laughing and talking normally, all happy and full of life. At least until the next time the dark sad spot takes life.
So yeah...life is altered, definitely altered...

Trying to get back

So much happened last year so many life altering events, that somewhere along the way I lost my capability to write. I kept opening the blog to write something and logged off without hitting the Publish button. So many incomplete posts are sitting in my drafts queue awaiting culmination.

Now that things are becoming somewhat constant, my brain needs an avenue to vent out and rant again. I guess normally it should be the opposite case but then when did my brain work like that of a normal human being's.

See I am in more of a zoombie like state when I am dealing with crap. The most normal reaction during this time is a momentary extmepore sobbing, most likely in my car, followed by a few random yells of "WHY ME??" and flipping of the finger at a few passing vehicles (I am not proud of this).

Once all crap has been ummm well...had, I need to assess and absorb all that has passed (eww I just realised the wordplay here). During this stage the brain is so preoccupied 'assessing', it can barely do much else. It's been hard having a conversation with people without talking about the crap, I can barely keep track of work, it has become impossible to park my car, I keep forgetting stuff (OK that is not really any different than regular times, I should really look into that but I digress). All I want to do is sit in front of the TV and flip through channels and let my subconcsious mind Process and Assess.

But now I am done with this mindless excercise. Its has been exhausting without producing much of a result. I can sense people are tired of hearing me whine, the work is not getting done and I still cant remember things (really that sounds like a bigger issue). So now I have decided its time to engage the brain in something more productive and since I dont have the intellectual capability to develop a car that runs on water, I had to settle for blowing new life into this relic of a blog. And even though I will still be using this space to whine and rant but at least my friends will have the choice to close the browser or surf away if it is too much to handle without hurting my feelings.

To new Beginnings!!!

Alive, if not kicking!

Finally the need to write is beginning to stir up again. It has been awfully long time since I felt the compulsion to sign into this blog and type something up. Here and there I began a few posts, but they remain incomplete, waiting to meet a conclusion of sorts, but nothing has happened so far.
Perhaps it was writer's block or the fact that I am one of the most mentally restive people I know, (so much so that I have self-diagnosed myself with Adult ADD) or maybe my mental processor had so much information to assimilate that instead it decided to just go into hibernation. It’s not like I didn’t have blog-worthy stuff happen to me or come into my observation, just none of it made me want to sign into the blog and type about it.

Anyway I am here and a few things happened since I last made the rounds of the web –sphere. Made a Trip to Washington DC and a second trip to one of my favorite cities in America - Miami (since that’s the closest place to Karachi), worked at least a 100 12+hours days at DIRECTV (which is where I am consulting at the moment), aggregated yet another year of life to my age, watched M tie the knot, missed yet another wedding, saw couple of dear friends take a step towards parenthood, oh and the big one was getting past the ALIEN status and becoming a Permanent resident of these United States. There is a whole lot to talk about and discuss, but it is really late in the night or I should say really early in the morning and I am literally falling asleep as I type. The only reason I am forcing myself to finish this particular post is so that I won’t have yet another sad looking incomplete post sitting in my account, waiting to reach a climax.

So I am off now but hopefully I will be a little more consistent and would be able to breathe some life into this nearly dead blog. I need to come up with some better ideas.

I do or i don'ts?

When do you know a relationship is over? When do you know that you have given it your all and staying any longer would just damage you and your partner as a person and now it’s time to just move on? How do you know when to give up?

I was brought up in a culture where people married for life and under no circumstances a thought of moving on ever occurred to either partner, even if they knew it was pointless and even if they had evidently given up. They stayed together, no matter what. They had families to think about and children and society. Besides in a world defined by self-sacrifice, who ever thought about his or her own self? That was simply unacceptable; in fact it was downright selfish. And even if someone realized the adverseness and futility of their situation, they would not dare walk out for fear of becoming a social outcast and be doomed to a life of loneliness, rejection and virtual isolation. People judged and were judged for the very intimate and personal actions and decisions they made. I have seen and known hordes of people, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, who have nothing in common with their spouses and are not even friends let alone lovers but are sentenced to a life of unwanted, undesired companionship.

On the contrary I now live in a world where people marry for love and love alone. Of course there are few who marry for money but I shall exclude them from this discussion since that can be deemed to be more of a business transaction and not necessarily a marriage. So people here in the west marry for love and love alone, not for society or parents or any of the other reasons, or at least that’s what they claim. Regardless of the reasons behind the union, the option of breaking up is always open. It is acceptable, even normal since 40 – 50% of the unions end in spouses parting their ways; they are not under scrutiny for their actions as much as their eastern counterparts. So in the absence of this societal pressure, it is much easier to be honest and objective about the future of a relationship. There is no do or die involved nothing to keep the couple intact after the departure of love, passion and intimacy. Life is too short right? So why waste it to salvage a deadbeat or even only a trying situation and instead just move on.

To me these are the two extremes and like any other situation between two extremes lays the middle path, which perhaps is probably the most logical and feasible. Are we too quick to judge and give up on something or are we really just trying to drag a dead horse across the finish line? How do we decide which is which and how do we decide it’s time to give up or its time to dig in your heels and fight for the remnants of the original beautiful and promising companionship?
To me the answer lies in finding out, what do I want from myself at this stage in my life? What are my priorities? How is life different from when we had started this journey? How has she/he changed? How have I? Do we still match up or can work to match up? Do we want the same things? How much have we damaged each other? Can we get past the hurt? Are we still a team? Are we even friends? And then asking some of the more obvious questions like can I actually stand this person without him/her creeping me out or without me feeling the need to correct this person or change him/her or can I actually ignore the obvious flaws and can look past them to see what I saw Day 1 or Day 15? What not to see is does this person still electrifies my world, gives me butterflies in the tummy or send tingles down my spine as to me those will always go away. It doesn’t matter if you are married or not, you have kids or not, been with each other 5 months or 5 years, it is never too late to start all over again; if it really does suck, you can actually open the door and walk out. But let’s be honest, if you are really looking for a long-term relationship all these questions will eventually become relevant, almost always and almost always you will have similar issues and problems, so giving up in haste, will that actually make your life better or will it mean that you will go through life wondering and regretting and repeatedly loosing what can be a lifelong companionship? Ask these questions, seek the answers, the solutions, be honest, estimate the damage, expect less, and accept more. And if after all this analysis it still sucks and you just don’t want to deal with this anymore, then you know, it’s time to declare bankruptcy and moving on to the supposedly greener pastures.

Serenity NOW

I suck at life when I am the perfectionist, control freak with high OCD tendencies and sky high gargantuan expectations. I obsess incessantly, I judge and stress and make a mess of things that are actually going well in my life. On the other hand when I am my sane self, truly taking things as they are and only focusing on what I can change, then the positive waves I radiate create a serene milieu for me to grow in and get blessed with all that is good, in the right amount and at the right time.
This reminds me of the famous Serenity Prayer that probably should become the mantra of my life, the positive affirmation that I should recite to myself in the bathroom mirror every morning as I shine my pearly white.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is,
not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.