A long weekend – something cherished by one and all, like a breath of fresh air. , it comes and goes and always leaves you wanting more. Like that flat 50% off Sale in your favourite shoe shop, no matter how long it lasts, it is just never enough. Like all good things in life must end, before this one ends, on the very auspicious occasion of Sunday, my favourite day of the week, I will make my first attempt at public self- expression.
I'm not getting into an Introduction and am skipping the 4 Ws of the 5 Ws & H and coming straight to Why? and How? (If you didn’t get that, read on…just means you are not from ‘our web’)
I used to think I am a decent writer, 'used to' being the key words here.. Now, as the name of my blog suggests, mostly I'm doing this .........Hmmm…… Hmmm (You get the jist)
Hmmm…So.. Hmm… I do not want to use this as a platform to crib about my job, I have Facebook and Gtalk for that, but you need to know what is it that has driven me to write this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving the job credit for anything, but when you are in a dead end job like the one I’m in, you need some sort of an outlet. Ironically, I’m someone who works in the business of communication. So what is it that I do that makes life so bearable? I am a PR professional as they call us. While most people in the real world think this is a very cool and, fun, glam job, people in our web know otherwise. Media might be vast and expanding its wings to every aspect of our lives but the world of media, our web as I like to call it, is almost like Bandra - everyone knows everyone.. and if someone does not know someone, you definitely know someone who knows someone who has worked with someone etc.. etc... You might think you are out of the web once you’ve quit but you are never really out of it. It’s kind of like the mob or drugs. you might never ever be totally clean!
As part of the web at 26, you would think you are young, ambitious and fully motivated. I used to, exactly like in an advertisement for a job opening ‘Wanted young professionals, with a go getter attitude and ability to multi task’. If your reaction to such ads is ‘Well, that used to be me', you should know you are going through a Quarter Life Crisis. Whoever came up with this exactly knew what he or she was talking about. This is something we all believe we are going through or went through at some point, something you discuss with the girls over a long lunch or a few drinks, fully ‘Sex and the City’ type.
While people, who have miraculously not suffered through this, might say you are fortunate to have what you do, little do they know, that we as a generation think self sufficiency is , well, just basic. We are a breed of people who believe after toiling hard for 3-4 years; absolutely nothing motivates us and unknowingly are always looking for that one push. . We are all in the wrong profession, not doing what we want to do or are meant to do, but still doing it coz we all know we are good at doing this and we HAVE to be good at what we do, elz what’s the point?.
We are forever stressed with work, either because there is just too much of it or because there is none. If there is too much, it is absolutely mundane, something even a dimwit can do. If there is too little, it’s like wasting your life away where your brain is, slowly, but surely rusting. We feel an overpowering need to ensure that life and work have a ‘meaning’ to it. The non-existence of this makes us what we are.
We might sometimes say money and success do not always matter, but none of us know what really does. We delve into soul searching and actually believe that there is something called ‘job satisfaction’, achieving this would be salvation. . Whatever our calling might be, if something like that exists that is, the profession that we have come to loathe by now is ironically our comfort zone.
Now how is a young, ‘sorted’ individual supposed to handle all of this and not let others know that he is actually not sorted but fully insane? We are pretty much perpetually cranky and someone’s mere existence can annoy us. We also bitch and crib about almost everything, sort of like Chandler. Probably, that is why we all find solace only in FRIENDS, in reel and real life. I know I belong to the Rang De Basanti generation, but my alarm clock is not enough to wake me up. As a good friend of mine says “If you do what you've always done...you'll get what you've always got”. I know we do not want this for sure, but I really do not know what it is that we really want.
If you are unaware or in denial, then yes, you know have a problem and there is a solution to it – Simple. .When you know everything there is to know and still cannot do anything about it, that is when you have a real problem. Why are we like this? They day I find the answer to that question will truly be My Independence Day.
P.S Totally inspired by FRIENDS again, I’m a firm believer in pacts. It is one of the few things that can still drive me to actually do something and that is one reasons I have rambled on to put this together.
