And the hits just keep on coming!

"And the hits just keep on coming!!!". I am no Tom Cruise, this middle age madness is killing me. I have had one disappointing result after another on various counts. Perhaps it is just because I put myself on a pedestal and expect too much out of myself. But there will always be setbacks and repentances over decisions that have gone past us.

So should I sit down and brood over this bad event or move on. Perhaps, there is value in comparing and put a needle on where I am as against all my contemporaries but my Prof. in college when I was 18 dissuaded me to and I have never looked back. I want to do what I want to do and wont compromise on will and action.

So perhaps I will do the due get the rationale behind a decision. But I am not going to contest a dead issue. Nothing can be changed in a world of Blue suits and Chicken wills. I had a premonition that this is coming. So be it.

Let us move on. Think of better things in life. My baby accepted my frog croaks as a lullaby. Good start!!

Mail Ordered Intellect

The management education has given me an insight into what we fear most - commoditization. How important is personal branding in this era of knowledge commoditization. First of all "what the c**p am I talkin about", is a question all the readers would be thinking about. It is a story of Ben Franklin - He created an idea, we burnt fuel, we commoditized it, his idea is worth 15 cents a unit today or 5 rupees in India. The Wright brothers wanted to fly so did many legends, we made Duralumin, we optimized it, we made it lean, we made southwest and air-deccan, we commoditized it, it costs few tens of dollars or hundreds of rupees a mile.

What have we come to today. Consulting! My time costs a few dollars an hour!! Esoterically ideas needed transformation and we were paid to make things from concepts. Now we are paid to create concepts. It was a natural progression which we cannot question. However the difficulty here is I cannot think radically as Newtons and Einsteins and No consulting organization want a Hawkins or an Edison, we want ideas manufactured out of a factory. So the human mind space is commoditized.

Though its sounds like Doomsday, the remarkable flipside to this commoditization of thought is the amount of outlets of creativity we have today. When products got customized we had brands, Coke is not just Cola it is a representative philosophy of joy, as they would claim. It is a differentiator for a undifferentiated product. See the other end of spectrum, human thought is ununiform, distinct and does not suffer from the imminent transition of intelligence graphed to a product lifecycle. Thank God!!

We have got blogs, youtube and instruments that are more powerful than what we could have imagined to tap into the imagination of mankind. The joy of life is in sharing thoughts. We cannot put our minds within cubical boxes and package them to earn dollars. It is so essential to come out write, liberate and imagine. If it all turns out to be - do the gig and get paid, we are just commodities. It is therefore imperative that we dont lose enterprise to Focus and creativity to commodity. It is a difficult thing to do or happen but it is definitely a thought worth enough to stop and spend a moment for. George Orwell would not be happy that there is no doomsday. But Flower power rules pants down. Let us worship Google for a moment :-0

If you dont have a favorite song, a taste for literature, a flair for sports - but earn lots of money, you have become the brain in a Fedex Box to be delivered for billions of dollars for which you got paid like peanuts. It is time to wake up and Listen to your fave music and dont you ever become comfortably d(n)umb!

Unattached Reason - S.U.M.O

Being myself is difficult sometimes. When you get torn apart in the various dimensions of your life you tend to run away. Should I throw all that I worked for and run to where I think comfort is or Should I keep fighting. Age brings with us a weariness. I never used to understand the many non risk taking managers I had. Now I do. Perhaps I just think the rockstar lyric in me has never stopped ringing. It keeps me going.

So should I stop, find a safe haven today and abandon the road that I have taken! To be precise, I have been with the same IT organization for the last 10 years. It was my first job. Many of my friends see it as remarkable and many see it as a stupid ploy. Well I see their dreams and aspirations in their judgments. That may be one reason why their views have never intimidated me.

At a difficult point in my life with a second kid coming with its own measure of hope, there is also a certain agony that we have to go through until we get to the point where we can smile. As for my career, there are question marks - should I answer them or leave them unanswered and break into the Andersons and Deloittes of the world. Conventional wisdom drives me to seek newer fresher strokes of life. What do I do???

And then I left this question to marinate for a while and the kid has come. My mind is clearer. I cannot lose my signature over a couple of adverse strokes. It is only a couple of days back I felt like my career is taking a back seat. I maybe run down in the future ( A concern that has been ringing in my ears in the recent past) . So what do I work for!? motivation? , money? or fame?. My people (friends, foes alike) may have their own opinions and judgements. I can only say I work for none. As long as I am myself and keep doing what I do it does not matter where I work..... So it is middleground today, I dont work for anyone, I work for me and the place does not matter. For all eager readers this is a dead end and what would you expect of a talkative chatterbox :-))

So a new setup would not overwhlem me and the existing would throw the same challenge that I had the other day. But life in its own way has different solutions to the same questions at distinct instances of time. We can let our hair down and run away with our tails between the legs. I may do the same someday, but the fear of failure that haunts me today is not stopping me from wanting to become better. All I can say is, " I aint quitting fighting the tools/people/systems that will restrain my imagination or will" wherever I am. Tears mean letting out the anguish, we need to cry and Ranting a situation to someone close takes away anger. Once anguish and anger are taken out of a situation, all that is left is reason. That is what I am left with "un attached reason" and I am happy. I am ready to S.U.M.O (Shut up and Move On)

To each one his own

This is my blog after maybe 5 years. I dont know if I would be as creative I was because so much water has flown under the bridge. I ask my self which would I like to be the bridge or the river. It is a tough question to answer. Perhaps I would look around and ask someone close what he felt.
Life takes us where we want to go all the time. Do we all make the right choices I keep wondering all the time. For once the premise that all of us are unique takes time for us to sink in. Is it the "Brick in the wall" syndrome. Perhaps this is the fact of social being that worries me the most. We mould our life and imagination to the confines and comforts of yardsticks that we can beat and be happy about it.
The only complaint that I have is that in Games, Business or entertainment probably winning and losing is part of it but that cant be applied to studies, graduation, workplace and common daily life. There are no records to break here. But there is peace, bliss and happiness to conquer.I was grown in a place where competition drives down your spine constantly. I was only measured by the "A"s I made rather than the width of knowledge I had. It happens to us all. We are judged at every place by our past, against the yardsticks that are artificial for ease of decision-making.
We fall prey to this brick syndrome and sink inside the wall. Floyd is so much close to heart for they talk about this so very subtly in their works.
So should we not have benchmarks? I have always felt to me its mine and for you its yours. So comparison from person to person and person to desired levels are man made barriers for social conveniences. There is no point contesting an established fact. But if we fall prey to this snowball, then the pursuit of excellence is lost. The object of your life is lost in the efforts made to outrun someone else.
There are people who exceeded the extents of their will, they succeeded much better than most of us did. From Isaac Newton to Jack Welch, they were as unique as we all were, But they played with their wit and did not draw parallel with competition. I am not the force that can blow through the world like these men did cos I am not them. But I am unrivalled, cos I dont choose to run the rat race.

Cos there is no book, no recipe and nothing called success. You can search the world for hope, solace and associated instruments, but you can only get contented from within, by yourself!! - I know it. I am happy about it. That is why I am happy being the rebel in more ways than one.