Change

I think its time for a change. on the other hand i hate change. some days having a split personality is a lot of fun. other days not so much.

i don't like change. almost every sunday for the past three years i've had cheese pizza from pizza hut for lunch. and before that for almost 2 years i had cheese pizza for lunch almost every other day. at least one room in my home has to have a red / maroon themed decor... has been this way for five-ish years. i've been wearing the same style make-up for goodness gracious i dont even know how long. i hate having my phone changed. i hate technology changes / upgrades.

on the other hand, i need change. i cut / dye / abuse and otherwise change my hair on a regular basis. i can't stick with one area of work / study too long before i go bonkers. The four years of under-grad were perfect for me in one way - every 3 months or so, there would be a whole new slew of things to study, new combination of people to interact with and all that. same goes for grad school - a change every 5 months or so. i stuck with my first job for little over a year and a half.

this job i've been with for over 3 years. its seriously, no kidding aside time to do away with it. ive been mentally arguing with myself for more than 6 months about this (see split personality is fun - never lonely, never lacking someone to talk to). and for the past couple of month i have mentally quit. and now i just need to follow that up with some real quitting.

scary thing is i have no idea what the hell i plan on doing with my life after i quit. plans B, C and D aside. Really im not sure what i want to do with my life. i guess thats the ever present dilemma that makes me want change.

meandering thoughts

i feel like im slowly waking up from a long long sleep. im not quite awake yet but not really asleep either. im awake enough to realise that it was a bad dream, but not awake enough to pull myself free of the clutches of sleep.

a somewhat apt metaphor although not 100% accurate. i do feel like ive been sleepwalking through life the past few years. there are brief periods of wakefulness and realisation that im not altogether here and not really participating in the human race. but then i just as quickly slip back in and that brief moment of clarity and wakefulness feels like the dream and even the memory of it is swallowed whole by the nightmare.

at this point in my dramatasization of my life, the nightmare on elmstreet comes to mind... the original one, not the crappy remake. they want to wake up but the nightmare keeps drawing them back in.

we pause this introspection to bring you squeee news... squirrel spotted eating bits of food. pauses when it hears something. runs off and hides in a corner by flattening itself to the ground... looks up to check if anything is around and he goes flat again... looks like he is doing teeny squeerel push ups. all the while continues munching.

i think these two days have been the happiest ive had in a long while. i feel like there is no weight of the world on me. there is small simple joys like seeing a cute squirrel and family who appreciates the joy with me.

and with that thought im drawn back to the realisation that this is all temporary. i have to go back to sleep now. or  maybe this is the dream and its time to wake up and  this feeling of peace will fade like all dreams do. its only the nightmares that stay.

why is everything i write about the ichky-ness of work??

Its all well and good for the corporate higher ups to talk about work-life balance but in reality its a load of crap. The higher up you go, the more you have to sacrifice of your personal life to get ahead. and hey sometimes its not even about getting ahead, its just about staying afloat and keeping pace. and for that matter its not even the higher up you go, sometimes you are right where you started from, and whats more you get deeper and deeper in the hole.

that said. i refuse to dig myself deeper into this hole. therefore i will leave work early today (which is like normal time for most people) and not do the shit loads of work being piled on. i have no desire or ambition to move ahead, or even stay apace - in fact i want to fall behind and give a clear message to that other person's boss ( i refuse to acknowledge him as my boss) that there is more work than one (or even two) people can possible manage and still stay sane.

life with animals

stormy learned to climb on top of the sofa all by himself. he was so pleased with himself. me not so much. his dad was rather amused.

calvin jumped from our terrace to the next door neighbors garage roof... a good five foot jump. he was soo pleased with himself. i was SO not pleased.

pixie wanted breakfast. she jumped ON me. while i was sleeping. she is always pleased with herself. meh. talk about rude awakening.

but on the other hand....

pixie snuggled under the quilt with me last night when i was feeling cold.

calvin purred so loudly when i picked him up this morning

stormy is a cutsey wootsey loving baby all the time (except when he eats my shoes!)

De-motivated

No no not "demotivational" (fun site that btw!)... de-motivated. Feeling rather de-motivated at work nowadays. No matter what I try to do to get some value added from a job that has gone way past its expiration date in terms of career development, (or any sort of development for that matter) i get completely shot down from all ends.

A while back I applied for a mentoring program hoping to get some advise / direction / something from a senior person at work, looking for any avenue of guidance. Well today I got an email saying that I had been accepted into the program and I should be excited or please or at the very least be somewhat interested - nope. instead my first thought was more like, whats the point and annoyance that I would have to attend some sort of orientation session.

this job is going no-where. its so past its expiration date that its begining to stink up the place - yes i went with that metaphor. here's another mega dramatic metaphor - this job crushes your soul piece by piece while chuckling away like the soul torturing demon that it is. Yes its a great place to work, yes it has great opportunities, yes the prestige, great place to work, good money, yadda yadda yadda. All those benefits and opportunities? I don't get to have them. Not a single one. No travel to any place good. No more trainings.  No opportunities to learn anything new. So the pay is good - other places pay better.

Why would i be interested in working well or putting any effort in doing work that I did the first year that i was here - learnt it, did that, over it already. it wasnt challenging or interesting the first time around but at least it was new and there was the hope of better things to come. not only are there no better things to come, there is no real value added of anything i do and no recognition. no wait, thats wrong, i do get recognition - but the recognition i get feels false and wrong because what am i getting praise for - good job making this review look good (and how do we do that? well by making sure that the table headings are nice and large, the text is colour coded and there is a graph in there somewhere.) anyone bother reading the content? i dont think so. besides what is the content - regurgitating what someone else said - hello ever heard of a parrot or a tape recorder?

anyways. back to the delight that is my work. been goofing off the past couple of days. really need to get cracking on copy pasting those tables and colour coding those rows and columns. oh and musnt forget - emailing a bunch of people and ruining their day - that is, if they even bother to open my email. (oh look its an email from her - DELETE!)


all this does wonders for my confidence btw. cant even make a bloody frakking table without getting it checked by someone and then getting comments about the colours. 

gloom and doom

three weeks away from work and it was all so clear. life made sense. there was a purpose. a reason. a goal.

five weeks back at work and nothing makes sense anymore. all clarity and sense of purpose and reason is gone in the daily exhaustion of mindless, numbing existence.

i know i had a reason and a justification for why this job was crushing my very soul (dramatic i know!) but i swear there was more than just the everyday whining of i dont like my job. it was all so clear when i had time to take a breath, to pause and actually think, to have time to actually feel. it seemed so obvious and right that nothing could erase the very clear notion of what i needed to do to improve my life.

and now the daily nothingness has so numbed my brain that all i know is that i want out. but dont even have the motivation to get that out, cant imagine the out. and all the reasons for wanting out are lost in the haze of memory. and all that remains is what is and why it should stay the way it is.

wow. i think i just depressed myself further. i hate winters. brings out all the gloom and doom in life.

the first choice

I never thought much about adoption before now. At the back of my mind I knew that culturally there are some negative thoughts about adoption but never realized how overtly and vehemently negative people are about adoption. And why am I thinking about this now? Why not?

I have been thinking about it and I mentioned it to a few people and boy did I get a negative reaction. I just don’t understand how a baby mad nation can be so against adoption. Bringing a baby into your family is about building a family, so it really shouldn’t matter how the baby comes to be a part of your family. In fact giving a home to an otherwise unwanted baby, or a child that would otherwise not get the level of care that you can provide should be a good thing, that is applauded by people. Apparently not.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the negative opinions of family and friends. But I was. Stupid me. I shouldn’t have expected educated, open minded liberal people to be… well open minded about something. There have been cases of adoption in my extended family so I thought that at least my family might have an open mind about adoption. I suppose the closer something is to home, the more real it is. And something that might be alright and even applaudable by some cousins wife’s sister is not acceptable for one’s immediate family.

Adoption is seen like pregnancy (babies are great but the process is shameful and something to be hidden and not mentioned out loud in polite company.) Adoption is seen as a necessary evil in some cases. It’s the last option, something to resort to when all else fails. Meaning if you can’t have your ‘own’ child then a poor second choice is adoption – implying that only a biological child can be your own child and that an adopted child is second best. Of course I would hope that once a child is adopted a couple would grow to love it as their ‘own’ and treat it as well as they would any biological child.

I suppose that it is the above view that makes the thought of adoption as a first choice extremely unpalatable. I mean if you can have a biological child, why would want to adopt? Even if, “God Forbid”, you are forced to adopt, you need to at least hide the adoption and pretend like its your ‘own’ baby.

I can accept that for the majority of couples, having a biological baby is a valid first choice – it is something that they truly want and strive to have. So why can’t someone believe or accept that adoption may be a valid first choice for someone.

Sure I can intellectually understand the appeal of having one’s own flesh and blood. As a friend who recently had a baby mention; looking at a tiny living being that you created, and seeing parts of you and your family being reflected in this living breathing soul is simply magical. She also said that she can’t imagine loving someone else’s child, and doesn’t understand why adoption would be the first choice for someone.

Her awe and love for her baby was inspiring and a little surprising. I am so happy for her and the joy she is finding in her baby. What I was a little more that surprised about and a little bit upset about was she almost complete closed off attitude when I mentioned adoption. In most things relating to family and life in Pakistan we have similar opinions – opinions which are often contrary to popular cultural views on things. We have super liberal view on such things whether we act on them or not is a different thing. So I was shocked that her initial opinion on adoption was negative. Through further discussion she did see my point of view and hopefully agrees with me to some extent.

I know there would be many others who would not understand my point of view. My answer to all those who say they don’t understand. You don’t have to understand – you just have to accept. Just as I accept your right to determine how you live your life; and how and when you choose to build a family. Just because I may have an opinion that is different from the mainstream doesn’t mean that it’s any less important or right.

I also know that there would be many out there who will try to change my mind. To all those who tell me that I just have to experience giving birth to a baby and I’ll realize how ‘wrong’ I am not to have my ‘own’ child – my answer to you is, maybe you should go experience adoption first and perhaps there is a child out there for you to fall in love with.

I don’t know if and when I would be ready to have a child. I may even go the biological route – I don’t know yet. But I do know that if I really want a baby, it doesn’t matter if I physically reproduce, I know that whatever baby I’m blessed to have, adopted or biological, it will be mine and I will love it. And no one can tell me otherwise.

My Five Year Plan

FYI – I am making fun of myself. Feel free to defend me against me.
I work at a big development organization. I am quitting and starting an NGO. I will have a some high flying noble purpose for this NGO such as “eradication of the causes of poverty for the poor with a focus on women and children and the old and the disaster affected and the homeless and the sad and the poor”, which will shorten into the name ECPPFWCODAHSP, and super short it to PODS. I will set up an office in the front rooms of my parents house. We will have fancy shmancy board out front declaring our esteemed name and our mission. We will then create a board of directors and have directors from every relevant field that impacts development. To start with the people on the Board of Directors will include a retired high level bureaucrat (my dad), a serving bureaucrat (my brother), a women’s representative (my mother), a doctor (my cousin), an accountant (my second cousin’s wife’s brother’s son’s wife’s 3rd cousin once removed’s uncle) and a development expert (me).

We will get together and meet once a week to determine how we want to achieve our objectives and develop a proposal to get funding. After six months of filling numerous white boards with flow charts and diagrams and GREAT ideas, we finally pick the GREATEST idea. We then spend another six months writing a GREAT proposal for funding with lots of pretty tables and colourful diagrams and graphs. To supplement this super duper idea we pick a poverty filled slum with many women and children and old people and the sad and the poor, where we can implement our PROJECT. Our criteria for picking this site is that it is just close enough to the city so that we can easily travel there but far enough that no funder will want to go there and see what we are actually doing. We take some photos of this close yet far village to add impact to our proposal. Once our PROJECT proposal is ready we decide to put it forward for funding.

I use my contacts in the development world to show our proposal to all the big (and small) development funding organizations. We get two year funding for out great project. And what is this great project you ask? This project is for the “eradication of the poverty for the poor through the development of sustainable livelihood schemes that allow the poor to be self sustaining and enable them to remove themselves from the poverty.” We will call this project EPPTBSLSAPSSERTP for short, and BAT for super short.

The first thing we do with our funding is to hire a consultant to design a logo for our project and NGO. We then get business cards and stationery printed with our project name and logo and our NGO name and logo and the funder name and logo. We then buy lots of furniture and equipment for the office and hire a secretary. We then hire consultants to develop an implementation plan for the project. We then hire consultants to implement the implementation plan. The consultants are slow to start up so then we hire a project manager to manage the consultants to implement the implementation plan. The project manager’s wife’s cousin’s third wife’s daughter’s dog dies and the program manager quits and the project comes to a complete halt. (well actually the dog was an excuse. The project manager had a fight with one of the consultants and the consultant was the daughter in law of a politician so we had to fire the project manager or the politician’s driver’s gaurd would do something nasty to us like through dog poo through our window).

We then hire another project manager and work starts. The project manager then hires a consultant to make field visits and prepare weekly progress reports complete with pictures and diagrams and graphs and even wonderful testimonials from the villagers saying things like “aap idhar kya kar rahay hain?” “aap thasweerain kyon lay rahay hain?” (this was actually said in hindko but since my hindko doesn’t really exist this is being translated to urdu). Since no one in the development world can actually read the native language they think the villagers are singing high praises of them. We start sending regular progress reports to the development world with a really fancy front page and a GREAT executive summary and fill the rest of the report with the same thing being repeated with different illustrations and flow charts and graphs. Since the most important thing in a progress report is the colour charts, they are all impressed with our wonderful progress. (We bought a colour printer especially for this purpose).

The project is now winding up and we hire a consultant to do an evaluation of the project. The evaluation comes back and says that to be sustainable and achieve real results on the ground the project life needs to be extended by one year and additional funding will be needed. We put this proposal to the funding agency in a really fancy powerpoint presentation, cos lets face it power point presentations really show that you know what you are doing. Sadly the funders decline to fund any further since their own focus has changed. So we decide to wrap up the project and utilize the remaining funding by holding dissemination workshops in the hope of enlightening others to take up this cause. We invite all the fashion aunties and the politicians and the bureaucrats and journalists and host a big lunch in Serena.

With all the money used up we decide to become a volunteer organization. We gather all the fashion aunties from the neighbourhood and put them to work (i.e. attending all sorts of functions like boutique launches, fashion shows, art exhibitions and plays to raise awareness of our cause). After a while we run out of money to pay the secretary. With no one to make the phone calls and organize the social errr work calendar of the volunteers, we decide to wind up shop.

I need to earn some money now so I decide to use my valued development experience and become a high paid consultant for a big development organization. Wait, isn’t this where I started from??

pregnancy

(no offense to anyone who has recently reproduced - i have absolutely no idea what im talking about)

It amazes me that, for a culture that is so obsessively compulsively baby mad, we are so ashamed of, and try our outmost to hide pregnancy itself. Pregnant women are hidden away as if pregnancy is a badge of shame - pregnancy is a result of s-e-x and we all know that THAT is a shameful deed, and we conveniently forget what pregnancy actually leads to a b-a-b-y. Oh wait a baby is not a shameful thing, no need to spell it out. Silly me.

Pregnancy anounces to the world that a woman has actually had s-e-x and god forbid that any self respecting married woman who has been harassed to death by society to reproduce to actually anounce that she had the s-e-x. After all if she were an honourable woman, her baby will magically appear from the stork (what's the muslim equivalent for the stork??). Since she is a shameful woman who had to have the s-e-x and therefore got p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t, she is honour bound to hide herself. If she cannot hide at home for a full nine months, then she absolutely must cover her tummy with the oh so respectable and ever protective duppatta. Wait does that actually hide anything or just emphasise it? She must be escorted everywhere by a chaperone lest she shame herself further by oh I dont know anouncing that she is p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t.

Once the magical steed (holy cat? flying mosque?) delivers the baby, we can feel free to anounce that oh by the miracle of god we have been delivered of a baby. Yes it is a miracle, but not a miracle delivered by the winged mullah, its a miracle of pregnancy. A miracle of two people joining together, of a woman carrying her baby, and the miracle of the pain of labour that eventually delivers the miracle of the baby.

I dont know if i ever want to have a baby. That is a personal choice (more on this later). But i'd like to think that if ever i do become pregnant, I'm not going to be hiding it. Given my general state of health i'll probably be puking my guts out and laying about and not wanting to get out of my bed anyways for the whole nine months. And when i do get out I shall expect to be catered to hand and foot. But still, I wont be ashamed that I had to have the s-e-x to become p-r-e-g-n-a-n-t and to have a b-a-b-y. Oops there i go again spelling the baby. Silly me.

die cockroach die

talked to a few friends recently whom i hadnt spoken to in a while. they asked me what i've been up to and how things are going. in an effort to be more positive about life and everything, i tried not to complain about anything. i found that i had nothing to say. nothing new at least. my "busy with work etc." feels over-used and more like a brush off than anything real. you know when you dont really want to talk to someone so you give them a standard party line so that they leave you alone - my "busy" line feels much like that. only its not a brush off or a party line. it really is my life. if the description of my life has begun to feel unreal and overly repititive - well then that says a lot about life.

friend> so whats up
me> not much
friend> but really whats been happening?
me> same old
friend>come on what have you been doing?
me>working
friend>but other than work, whats going on in your life?
me>cockroaches
friend>eerrrmmm cockroaches?
me> yes my kitchen is infested. i killed a roach today with a pot. and its not the first time a pot has been my preferred choice of killing instrument. banging the pot on a marble counter multiple times while shouting DIE DIE DIE YOU BASTARD was the highlight of my day.
friend> your life is sad
me> yes i know

jealousy

i never thought i was a jealous person. a common form of jealousy is feeling suspicious about your partners affection / fidelity etc. i'm not that kind of jealous. another common form of jealousy is wanting something that someone else has so much taht you wish you had it instead of them or wishing someone ill because they have what you want. i'm not that kind of jealous.

When i see certain people succeed in particular things, and see them live the life that i might have wanted to live, i feel sad. i am happy for the success of the those people. I know those people. they are my acquaintances. in a couple of instances i might even call them friends. i wish them all the best and am happy that they have achieved a measure of success in doing something they love. the fact that they have managed to do it when they are so young and have so many opportunities and they have no hesitation in going forward and grasping those opportunities makes them the best in what they do. but it makes me sad. that i didnt have those opportunities. that despite trying i couldnt do it. and that maybe now its too late.

i dont wish any of them ill. i applaud their success, even if it makes me sad. but eventually that sadness will transform into bitterness. and that bitterness will eat into me. and then i will wish them ill. and then i will be the jealous monster who will hate someone just because they achieved their dream.

dreams and reality

as i sat outside on the bench at hotspot, waiting for my lunch, i felt at peace, more than i have in a very very long time. i also felt sad. the garden was beautiful. green and shady with a breeze. flowers scattered here and there and birds chirping. its been so long since i've heard birds chirping that i don't even remember when was the last time i heard birds outdoors. (those canaries the nieghbours have in a cage don't really count). the garden was empty and i sat and looked at the greenery and listen to the birds adn the wind rustling in the leaves and thought of nothing. it was good. peaceful. it was also sad. when was the last time i had a moment to myself in silence to just be.

if i close my eyes and dream i can almost imagine that i might be an artist. just sitting in a garden and studying nature. drawing. painting. creating. i can almost imagine it. almost. but not quite. i cant really imagine that it is a possibility. i can't picture my future to be anything but what it is now. so no i can't really imagine. all i see is the reality. i sit in the office. i look outside its a gorgeous view. blue skies, pretty fluffy white clouds, the green blue hills in the not so far distance. the green green trees swaying in the breeze. its a beautiful summer day with the sun shining and the breeze blowing and i'm sitting boxed in feeling cold in the artificially cool air with tubelights lighting my existence.

long rant on marriage

married life is hard. a lot of my friends are married now. most have gotten married in the past couple of years. everyone has their ups and downs. all the ups are different. but somehow the downs are all the same. We all expected marriage to be an adjustment in life. we all expected to have problems. But did we really think it through and think about what it would really be like? did we really know what we were getting into? were we prepared? sure we thought about it. but did we actually talk about it to someone who has some insight into it. did someone who actually went through the experience sit us down and tell us what to expect? no. all of us go through similar experiences, but we are all stuck in our little bubbles thinking its just us. given that we all seem to experience the same problem to certain degree, its strange that no one warned us that this would happen.

why did our parents never sit us down and tell us... this is what marriage is really going to be like. i think that in our society parents and family is all so hell bent on getting us married that they think that if they have an honest discussion with us on what to really expect when we get married, that we'll probably run the other way. i think if we knew what to expect we would be better prepared and handle it all the better and be happier. for most big things in life one has to prove that you can actually do it before you are given a go at it. you need a drivers test and liscence to drive. you need to pass some sort of enterance exams / test to get into school college university. you need to give interviews to get a job. you get training to perform most jobs. why is it that the two most important things in life... marriage and having children.... no eligibility test required. no training period. nothing. we are thrown into it blind. figure it out on your own. and then if something goes wrong, everyone everyone's aunty jumps in to tell you what you are doing wrong.

another thing that really pissed me off about our society and their attitude towards marriage .... its all about the wedding and not about the marriage. it the wedding day and event that is such a huge deal and we focus entirely on that and forget that its just one day (or three or four). But what is one day compared to a lifetiem. We spend months and months of effort and thousands and lakhs of rupees on just one event. If we spent all that time and effort and money thinking about and preparing for real life for the ever after part, maybe we wouldnt have to face such a rude awakening. maybe if we used that time to educate and explain to the couple what marriage is really about, just maybe this generation would be better prepared to face and live the reality of marraige and survive it. and if we just use all those lakhs of rupees on investments for the couple to build their future instead of absurd numbers of glittery clothes that will be worn once and discarded, and for all the trappings of a glitzy weddign just to show off to the world who will forget the next day; you build a life for your children. and after all, isn't the wedding and marriage about your childrens life and future?

so you finally get through the months of preparations and all that planning and time and effort pays off. you are up on that stage. you get a gazillion and one pictures taken. you eat bad wedding food. yay. now you are married. you are treated like celebrities for a week or two by your family and relatives. and then real life comes crashing back in. what now. its a whole new world and you wake up one morning and have now idea where its going to go from here.

all the mundane things come crawling back. with a vengeance. because you dont jsut have to deal with yourself. there is another person on the other side of the bed. and thats where it starts.... your partner might hog the covers, they might snore, they might kick you in their sleep. you like to cuddle, they like their space. you like to sleep in pitch dark, they have nightlight. you like to fall asleep to the sound of the tv, they want complete silence. the list is endless. the upshot is.... sleeping is an adjustement.

another thing that no one ever clues you in about. sharing a bathroom. sure you may have shared a bathroom with your siblings. but that's different. you have grown up with your siblings and you are used to each others gross habits. its a whole different ballgame when you realise that this is not a movie, its not all kisses and cuddling.... its reality. and reality means caps off the toothpaste, pot lid up / down, wet floor, wet towels, the other person's hair.... whatever it is that ticks you off. there will be at least one teeny tiny little thing that will piss you off about the other person. and no matter how much you think you are reasonable adults who can overlook or compromise on these small insignificant things..... forget it. you will have a fight that will be centered on something in the bathroom.

so the mundane things are creeping in. and you think well here's to the honeymoon.... its going to be the most magical time of my life. but beware. you will fight during your honeymoon. whether its a week after you get married or months after. you will have a fight with your spouse. and that fight will be one of two things (or a combination of both - or if you are really super lucky, you'll have two seperate fights about both) one fight will be about about one person wanting to sit back and relax and just let things happen and the other person wanting to schedule and experience and explore. the other fight is one where one half of the couple is spending way too much time on the internet / phone and the other feels ignored. (lets not forget the pre-honeymoon fight where its all about where to go and how much money to spend and who is doing all the planning)

so the honeymoon is over. you are gettign used to the mundane things. time to now face the big issues. two of the biggest things in a marriage. 1. money. if you have it the problem is what you are spending it on. if you dont have it. well then the problem is what you are spending it on. 2. family. enough said. money and family are probably the two biggest issues in a new couples marriage. the first few years establishes the pattern that will probably exist for the rest of your life. the issues you have, the way you deal with these things, the relationships you have. you have to get it right in the first few years.

no one ever talks to couple about finances. for some reason finances is taboo topic. apparently all you need to know is how much the guy earns and thats it. everything else is implied. nothing is discussed or talked about and one fine day your realise that you not only married your spouse and gained a new home and clothes and furniture and what not, you also inherited their debt. joy. and of course one person will be the one who loves to spend and the other likes to save. ah the joys of shared finances.

another big thing in marriage. (well its huge if you are not married!). but once you are married the pressure is on. whether you want it or not. you gotta have children. i dont have any so i can't say from personal experience, but as i see from friends experiences once they come into your life they will take over. this can be an extremely positive thing or negative. depends on your perspective, whether you are ready for them and what you want from life. just be prepared.

i dont have any last words of wisdom. i'm learning as i go along. and i guess thats really the best you can do. learn. and try not to repeat the mistakes. and of course. don't let the downs get to you. enjoy the ups.

the answer is no

consider this: during weekdays more than 60 % of your waking hours are spent at work, getting ready for work, getting to and from work. during the weekend 50% or more of your time might be spent catching up on household chores, grocery shopping, paying bills and all those pesky things that get left undone cos you are at work all the time. factor into this the time spent just plain exhausted sitting in front of the tv too exhausted to do anything else / mentally recovering from the shit that is your job / the hours spent catching up on sleep on the weekend and what does that leave of your life? guilt that you don't give enough time to family; a life spent feeling that you are constantly trying to catch up but never quite making it. a life exhausted and frustrated. weekend drinking and partying beacause thats the only mental release you get from what your life is turning into. waking up the next morning and wondering why has your life come to this? was this really how you imagined your life to be? is this really what you want your life to be? the answer is no. but is there a way out? again the answer is no.

work-a-holic??

as i look over my blog, i see that august was the month that things started "unravelling". when the job became ugh. well its gotten worse. this job is making me a work-a-holic. hah. me. workaholic. not possible you say? i submit to the jury the following evidence:

1. i don't seem to have much work to do today.... and that worries me

2. on monday i sent my work for the day to the boss in the afternoon and he responded before i left for the day with comments and i stayed late to re-do it.

3. i took 3 days of annual leave last week... the first day of leave was spent at work

4. while on leave i still worked from home

5. a year ago a doctor advised me to take time off work and focus on my health. on tuesday i got pretty much the same advise... to not let the stress of work get to me and focus on my health. apparently i've become anaemic and stress caused extra side-effects to meds on which i previously did not have side-effects

6. my immunity has died... i've had flu / virus / infections everything under the sun these past 3-4 months and been sick enough to need anti-biotics at least 3 times this winter.

7. ALSO been so sick that apperently i've taken more sick leave than annual leave... real sick leave and not the dake don't want to go to work sick.

8. the bank has a "mandatory leave" policy. we get 26 days of annual leave of which we "have" to take at least 15 to maintain the "work-life" balance. i took only 10 of the mandatory leave days last year.... hence the three days i took off last week, of which one although spent at work was still counted towards my leave count. but that's ok. i still didnt reach the 15 day minimum so 2 days got cut out of my leave balance anyways.

9. i've started having work dreams. you know those school nightmares you get as a kid... well now i've regularly started dreaming about work and what all needs to be done.

10. i've been dragged into office intrigues and politics.

11. i'm contemplating keeping extra meds / make-up / and other sundry stuff in my desk drawer, cos lets face it... i spend more awake time at work than i do at home.

12. i used to go around office and talk to people. now i'm mostly just at my desk. working. all the time. monday felt like it was a week long. tuesday was worse.

13. i dread waking up in the morning because i have to get to work. driving to work is torture and i'm already pissed off and in a bad mood. i leave work exhausted and frustrated.

14. i forget to eat breakfast most days.

15. i'm depressed.

16. for a few minutes yesterday i actually contemplated the thought of havign a baby because that would give me a legitimate excuse to quit

ok. so the conclusion is that i'm not really a work-a-holic, i just really really hate my job. but i going towards the path in life where my life is mostly about my work.

bah children

why is it necessary to have children? our society puts so much importance on marriage and having children. are children really necessary to fulfill you as a person? is your life incomplete if you don't have children? i'm not being sarcastic... i really want to know? what is it about our society that makes it imperitive in life to have children? maybe i'll feel different in the future but right now i have no desire to have children. my mother obviously will not understand when i tell her that i may not want to have children at all. so i give her logical arguements.

My arguement to my mother for not having children right now is..... dont have enough money - and the response is... paida to karo, paisay mil jaingay. seriously?? maybe i should go and find myself the biggest most expensive house in islamabad and say that i have chosen to live here, doesnt matter if i have the money or not, paisa to mil jaingay, ghar to lo pehlay. sheesh. the next arguement.... i don't have time in my life right now for children, i'm not settled into a married life with working and all.....life is just too busy and i would not be able to satisfactorily dedicate the time needed to raise a child. my mother's response.... ohooo... to hum kis leeyay hain, tum paida to karoo, mein sambhal loon gi. seriously???? why would i want to put my body through 9 months of hell only to hand over the damn thing to someone else to raise?? why don't i just make myself a house, spend time money and effort to make a house that is mine and then i'll just hand it over to someone else to live in?? why have a child and then not raise it yourself?

another thursday

i have had zero motivation for work this week. i've also had insomnia this week....despite waking up in the morning on a regular schedule i still cant sleep at night. i havent dont any chores or cleaning up at home. its cold. life is dull and dreary. blah blah blah. even writing this is dull and boring. bah.

another tuesday

you know those dreams you have when you are in school? you know those ones... the one where you are naked in front of class or its exam day and you forgot to study for it or its late at night and you are alone in a dark school (ok so the last one has to be inspired by watching too many horror movies - as i re-visit Buffy nowadays, i see that the dark late at night hallways are a classic theme in teen horror). my classic school nightmares were usually about an exam and not knowing where the exam room was or forgetting to study or the lost in the hallways at night business. All those nightmares are classic stress, dislike and sheer boredom and annoyance with school. So what happens when your work is stressful, you don't like it too much, and are pretty much annoyed with it all. Yep thats right - classic work nightmares start popping up. Something is due and it isnt finished on time. Need something done and can't find the person. Looking for something in dark hallways. The signs of a well balanced life - you work long hours and still no relief from work - you have to dream about it too.

Thats my ramble of the week. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for being a witness to the start of the unravelling. Stay tuned for further stress, mindless rantings and general insanity!

I hate days like today at work when i have some free time (that happens so rarely) and i would really love to do some art but i cant cos im at work. it sucks. its a waste of time. and what i end up doing is browsing deviant art or some other site like that and i am JEALOUS. i hate this.

and then i wonder. what would life be like if i didnt have this job. what if i had a part time, less paying job. we would be in serious financial difficulties, and would have a very different lifestyle. we live in a very nice apartment(hefty rent due every month) , with a nice new car (car payments due every month), we have a couple of servants (pay due every month), we dont think twice about going out to eat or buying anything we want.

dayum.... i just got mithai at office.... someone just had a son! a guy my age just had a son! sheesh. its baby season... got news earlier this morning that another co-worker had a baby. 2 co-workers are pregnant... one is just on the verge of popping! working women and babies! how do they do it. and why? i understand if they need to do it, but if its by choice? working just after having a baby. yeah yeah i know... careers and gender equality and feminist soemthing crap. but if you want to be a career person... go ahead... just dont have a baby and then send it off to be raised by someone else. whats the point of having a child then? just so you can fulfill your role as a woman in life... sheesh talk about gender roles. feminist crap and all... lets face reality... you cant do both. i mean come on! if you are working 10 hours a day... what do you have left to give to your kids? (again women who have to and need to do both... my hats off to them for achieving what seems to be the impossible) but when you dont need to work - and its an option and you have a child and pass it on to some aya to raise. well thats just wrong. and if the career means so much well then just dont have the child! yeah yeah politically incorrect, feminstly incorrect opinion. but come on! who are you trying to fool here? in the end it doesnt matter who you convince that you are super mom and an exemplary feminist for achiveing that ace career and three kids... what matters in the end is what happens to those kids. are they alone at home all day? are they being raised by a stranger? do they know who you are? and when they grow up, are they going to be there for you?

bah mondays

political/social awareness (sort-of) post

maybe im cynical (ok i know im cynical!) but when someone says something like "support jinnah's pakistan"... i wonder if jinnah is looking at this Pakistan and writhing in his personal hell when this pakistan is referred to as "his" pakistan. what exactly do people mean when they want to return to or support jinnah's pakistan? was this pakistan the one where democracy reined and put a crook like zardari in charge? was it a couple of years ago when we had a military dictator in charge? or was it a decade ago before musharaff's military rule - during the corrupt regimes of benazir and nawaz sharif? or any one of those numerous times that the military took control in flagarant disregard of the ideals of democracy? or perhaps it was during those golden times when pakistan was first created and we faced the atrocities committed by our own country men in the name of religion and patriotism where women were raped and people murdered all in the name of a free and independant nation. pray do tell - which of these pakistan's would jinnah like to call his own?

its hard to be patriotic and support "pakistan" when pakistan seems to be lost and doesnt have a clue as to what its identity is. the ideal of pakistan that people seem to be supporting never really existed except maybe inthe heads of a few leaders way back when this country was created. and its quite possible that even these leaders did not buy into this "ideal" and mearly used it as a tool to garner mass support to achieve whatever they wanted to achieve for whatever reasons. (p.s. it was all for money - really!) im not trying to be funny here - the motivation for starting a movement for an "independent country" was really a movement by minority middle-class muslims to gain political control over regions where they were a majority, just to gain economic control. from there it progressed to a movement for religious freedom (cos hey the downtrodden poor fellow doesnt give a rat's ass about the already prosperous getting more money). and from independant states within the indian nation, the movement went to an "independant nation". the leaders wanted one thing, they told the followers something else, and in the end got a bloodshed, with most people losing track of what exactly they are fighting for and maybe they never knew in the first place. hmmm the pakistan of then doesnt sound that much different from the pakistan of now.

this schizophrenia of ideology and identity remains to day. i went to a protest on saturday. it was supposed to be a protest against the "talibanisation of pakistan" but im not quite sure what exactly we ended up protesting or supporting. apparently the protest devolved into a support pak army cheer-a-thon. waht exactly did that achieve. was that the message that was intended? if i had know it was going to be a pak army cheer leading squad i wouldn't have bothered wasting my saturday (sorry hubby dear - nothing personal - i was all for supporting anti-talibanisation).
im all for supporting anti-talibanisation, not on religious grounds and not because they are "anti-pakistan", but on humanitarian grounds. and for probably the very same reasons i dont really support the pakistan army or the government or the american involvemnet in our country.

im a cynic. i dont believe that pakistan should have existed in the first place. not at the cost that it was created at. but we are here now. there is no changing the past. so we really need to stop looking at the past to support us. imagine jinnah never existed. what would your idea of pakistan be then?