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.

Another Home...another potential move

So, currently I am in an odd living situation. I mean I like the place but then I don't really like the place. Its cheap and its convenient (a 5 mins commute in Los Angeles, literally...what more can one ask for), fairly centrally located, almost next door to the LAX and we all know that a Southwest 737 is my second home, but its messy, really messy and it stinks (It literally stinks), and it has spiders who make me all itchy, and my face was eaten by some crazy ass American mosquitoes last night who apparently don't know that u don't bite a human face...I look like a person with chicken pox), AND it comes with the Pitt bull. The house is old from the fifties and so of course it has plumbing issues. Things are falling apart in there, including...my roommate.
I know I know anyone reading this would ask then why the hell are you still living there, and it is a fair question, but finding housing in LA, not as easy as you would think. Unless off course you are willing to spend half your income. And btw craigslist, please do something about the shitload of scams on your site, I am SICK of it. Oh well, back to the apartment hunting..this was supposed to be temporary anyway....Sighhh
I just realised I sigh an awful lot on this blog...I even have post with a sigh in a title

A New Chapter

I have a problem, a huge one at that. I can only write when I am sad, depressed or bored, in other words when I am at work. So although this blog is not dead, the general lack of activity in the recent months might give that impression, which is owed to my generally volatile work situation. I seriously have missed blogging, coming up with some tongue in the cheek funny and smart post (like this blog is full of them heheh), always looking for something blog-worthy, thinking about issues and finding out how you truly feel about them, the flowing of the creative juices, which makes you feel that your dream of becoming a writer might actually come true one day. Sighhh!! I just might have to hold down a job for a significant period of time just so I can breathe in some new life into this blog, which is now almost near its extinction.
So what have I been up to and what changes have transpired in my life? Well on the surface not a whole lot has changed but then some. After a not so pleasant San Diegan expedition I made the seven hour trip back North, my virtual walk of shame :). Even though it sucked, deep down I was so relieved to be out of that shithole. But as I drove I was feeling the usual anxiety that I feel when I am headed to serve the unemployment sentence of indefinite time on bench and I geared up to bear my certain dive into depression. But upon my arrival in the Bay Area, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I had overnight turned into my old 20 something carefree self again and have acquired the same old devil may care, I-might-die-tomorrow-so-let’s- party-today attitude. And I had the best time ever. Now I didn’t exactly go bar hopping every night or starred in the Girls gone wild video and such, but I did enjoy my time off, waking up late with my three cute boyfriends around me, hanging out with my favorite girls, working out, watching movies, going through the 6 seasons of ‘How I met your mother’ and just good old chilling. With the stress free environment that I created for myself (by not stressing outJ) things worked out better than ever and I got back on project in the good old City of Angels in a matter of a month. That in my wonderful world of contracting is a perfect strike. No amount of crying, whining and stressing had accomplished this in my last three visits to the dreaded bench. Took me forever and made me unbearable for the people around me (or should I say person…you know who you are: P).
So as I drove back down south on the droning I-5, I pondered over what had transpired within the sub-conscious realms of my brain that had resulted in this revived optimistic outlook on life. And the answer is…I am not sure. It may have been just that I had reached the lowest point I can allow my spirits to reach or perhaps I was acting against my nature these past 3 and a half years and my mind just had had about enough. Or maybe I had finally figured out that the negativity that I create around myself only attracts negative energy. Or possibly I decided to finally just let it go and recognize this whole process for what it really is…a means to earn a living, and not allow it to define every other aspect of my life; like all other phases of life this too shall cease to exist.
We all have our fears, the more we fight them, the bigger they get and the more we obsess over them the larger a part of reality they become. We can never be in total control and charge of our lives, but we can control our minds, in fact that is the only thing we can ever fully conquer. Happiness, contentment and peace all come from within and can be attained if we can take control of our minds. Only then we can rationalize our ever looming demons and fears, let go of our past negatives and fill ourselves with the positivity that will built the faith that the forces of nature, the universe or God whichever we believe in will take care of our tomorrows and that will allow us to fully appreciate and live out our todays. It’s a theory, but it’s a one that can truly change our lives. I have already started the implementation :)

If I can just sigh

So the haul at San Diego was expected to be long but it has been abruptly cut short thanks to the company's ridiculously crazy structure and expectations and my sudden absence of comprehension of anything and everything related to this company and lack of motivation to even try beyond a point. All five months I have felt I have been running against a wall, trying to move it and get to the other side while the people who are supposed to help me just sit, watch and judge, not telling me anything - conceited bastards. After working 60 hours every week for three weeks they come up with things like the document does not have enough details and when I ask what more would you like to see, they say things like go in the system learn and figure out and by the time I do so my manager tells me I am taking a long time. And maybe I did, I don't know. I just feel low, I feel I failed and I don't like it. I have mentioned I hate not getting things and they are not giving me the chance. Sighhh!! Oh and the funny part is the feedback never came directly, it always came from my manager. And then I call and setup meetings and they just don't show up, no phone call, no email nothing. I am just speechless. The QA lead on my project had said long before I started experiencing all this that the technical managers are very stingy with information and act extremely self- entitled and so new people have a horrific time working with them so good luck. Now I know what he meant. I have never felt this lost at my work place, never, not even when I was teaching Shakespeare to my seventh graders or I was using a fax machine for the first time or when I was a cashier at burger king throughout my first Ramadan in the US. Sighhh My manager said I am a great person and no doubt a great analyst but somehow my skill set and the way the company works just don't match, and she wished she could keep me, and that its mostly them and not me. Oh my God, that's like my first break up all over again. Its not you, its me shit. Right!!! I just realised this is the first time I am leaving a project midway or rather being asked to leave midway...I hate it hate it hate it hate ittttt. UGHHHHHH
I am a contractor/temp/consultant/contingent labor so it is expected that I will not be staying at a company forever and sooner or later the project ends and so does my time at the company, but I will never get used to hearing "I have some not so good news, we will not be renewing your contract." I didn't like it when it happened after 6 months, didn't like it when it happened after 15 months and sure as hell didn't like it this time. Pooja thinks they do like me which is why they gave me a month's notice so I can look for a new project, otherwise contractors get just a day's notice. Been there!!
So in a month's time I will be off to another adventure...wherever life takes me next, I will be ready, reluctant but ready....as always.
Time for another SIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Oh for the ever panicking readers of my blog (as if I have tons LOL), the ones who have no idea what I do for a living, I still have a job, just no project and eventually no income till I find another project, so worry not :)