the art of working

I used to work in an office.

In most offices these days, the time you sit in the chair is automatically thought of as you being productive. You could be reading a book on your computer screen or you could be chatting with a colleague on the sly or heck, you can spend all day browsing twitter and facebook (if your office still doesn't block these two). And even if you don't have any of these habits, there are more ways to skip doing work than there are ways to do work. The majority option takes the cake here. Does it ring a bell? I am sure it does.

So, unless there is a deadline or a boss sitting on your shoulders, the chances of getting work done are, at best, minimal. And -- I love this part -- even with a boss or a deadline, there are all possible chances that you might not be giving your best to the task at hand.

Why is that so?

Because, we can only be forced to do work. If it were up to us, with our finances well settled and health in good place, we'd all just rot away because what's the motivation to do anything in such a scenario? I can imagine the whole art and craft lobby going up in arms against my last assertion. They'd say there is art and higher meaning, a wish to connect with some supernatural force, a desire to reach out to people, to do something for ourselves, to leave your name etched in the annals of history, and in totality, just be remembered.

It's all just glorified bullshit. Man wasn't born to sit in an office chair all day and reply to emails. The human animal didn't go through hundreds of years of struggle to end up where we've ended up. So, why do people continue to do all that they do.

I am going to muse on that and try to puzzle these answers.

What's been up?

I got married recently. After dating my wife for close to nine years. This took time and it was an incredibly emotional experience. While marriage is a sacred mad special time for everyone, for me it was an even different experience because all the ceremonies took place according to my wife's culture.

And it was beautiful. Not saying this because it's my wife and it was my wedding but it was incredibly different from the North Indian weddings where there is a lot of noise, everything is delayed and
massive amounts of food is wasted. Nothing like that. I got wed on time, in peace and no food was wasted.

It's been close to two months of marriage now and I think I like this quality of life more than my single, living like a hobo mode.

I'm going to miss many things from my previous life but I think that it's a worthy bargain.

That is on life side.

Professionally, I've quit my job of six years to be with wife and I'll have to start looking for a new job. Contrary to popular opinion I didn't have a job in hand when I quit because after working at a place for six years, doing the same work again n again, I think I deserve a month of free time. Or maybe I don't. I guess I'll realize the folly or benefits of this decision as time goes by.

So, from the lazy life of Chandigarh, i'll be living in the fast paced, brutal and angry city of delhi.

I'll report how it goes in delhi, even though I have no love for the city, going there only cuz the wife is there and heck, I needed a change from my job.

Health wise, I'm going to be taking more care of my body and mind. No more vehicle, walking or metro from now on.

That's about it. For now.

I'm posting pics on www.pallav.tumblr.com. You can check them out.

Writing from my phone, so excuse the typos. Hit me on twitter @69fubar to talk about this post.

Have fun.

Sent from my iPhone

How do you avoid losing at life?

We all feel like losers every time or the other. Your parents might make you feel bad, your friends might shit on your plans, your significant other might do things that might tick you off,  heck,  you might wake up grumpy and with a headache for no reason at all.

In fact,  many people keep feeling like losers for all their bloody lives and they don't even know it.

So how can *you* stop feeling like a loser if any of these circumstances befall you?

The first thing you have to do is to understand the game. Life is an incredibly long game. And we all lose in the end.

Only the *condition* in which we lose differs from each other.

And your only condition is your now and present moment. If you become hell bent and brutal on living every moment like it's an amazing gift, you can not only stop living like a loser but when the day comes that you die, you'll die happy.

You have to stop compromising your happiness.

That's all.

Every life is a series of horrible mistakes

Come on,  we all make mistakes. There is no escape from that. Right now as you read this, people are making horrible mistakes that will change the course of their life as well as the life of many others. 

That's the way the world works.  We live, we learn and there are times when we do not learn, so we pay for our mistakes.

People are often proud, which never helps. It only makes their faults and mistakes appear bigger and more difficult to correct.

Do you understand?

I've been busy in past week and my total spring output had been close to zero. That means for all the talk I do about nanowrimo, I might not be able to complete it this year. Many factors have contributed to this. Because that's the way life rolls. 

I've made myself immune to false hopes, so yeah, I guess I'll use my time for better things. Like?  I don't know.

I'll just sit here and vegitate.

How I Write

I have a laptop.

It is a Toshiba laptop. I know this because there is Toshiba written on its back in big, bold, all caps silver letters. It has a keyboard and it has a screen. I charge it with the supplied charger and it holds some three hours of charge. It is two years and some months old. It has a 320Gb hard disk. I don't know much else about this laptop.

The operating system I use is Linux Mint 13 "Maya" which is a long term release. It probably means that this edition of OS will be supported till 2017 or so. 

I've often felt the tingling need to change to another distro, but Mint works and it works well for me. So why fix something that isn't broken?

I use the Libre Office Writer and Pluma for writing. Pluma is like Gedit, but for some reason it's called Pluma in Linux Mint. I write most of my blog posts in Gmail and email them to the blog.

I backup things in Dropbox.

I have many notebooks and I write in them regularly.

I also write on my phone. It's an iPhone 3GS. There are many apps, but I use Notes app and email whatever I write to myself. I also use Day.One app to write something daily.

I write on my tablet, too. It's a Samsung Tab 2. The Android diary app Momento is good. I mostly write just after I wake up in the morning. Most diary entries are records of dreams I have the night before.

For fiction writing, I like to listen to Metal before starting writing. But when I am writing, I avoid music or listen to something soft (Sting's album The Last Ship is pretty good).

For any technical writing, I prefer silence.

And that is how I write.

(NaNoWriMo started pretty okay, wrote close to 3K words today)

Want to wish me luck? do it at @69fubar on Twitter.