The Final Exit Mode

I am in an exit mode of mind. The new office hasn’t worked for me. Truth be told, no office has ever worked for me though I have been good at my work but never enjoyed it really. And I have sat myself down and racked my head to figure out what exactly will work for me? And the decision happened almost automatically. I want to study. Always have. Always will.

Going back to academics is a tough choice to make. Especially when one is used to the idea of the cheque arriving at your account at the end of each month, especially when one sees all most of their batch mates climbing the corporate ladder in full speed and especially when one comes face to face with your own convoluted idea of self worth.

At 20 I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was passionate about my subject but somehow I got fed in with external opinions about how a professional course is the only way to be. So I followed the herd, did a painful course, sat for placements and bang – I was now a management trainee at an office with a little cubicle. I wasn’t happy when I prepared for the entrance, I wasn’t happy to figure out math problems and who is whose aunt in those god forsaken logical sections! I was miserable doing my 2 year old course and I by the time I started working, I was numbingly indifferent and mechanical about my work. I thought a lot about returning to academics, pursue literature, do what makes me happy and finally be interested in something but then the demon of false-self-worth possessed me.

I think most of us paint our self worth according to how much money we make and what’s our official designation. Even if it isn’t something we love doing, at least its something we like being called. So when I go to a party and ask someone about themselves, 90% of their conversation will be about work. Why not talk about what you like, what you read, what music makes you the person you are, etc etc? Why only talk about the fact that you are so stressed because you are worried about how much your next bonus will be? I am not saying that money isn’t important. Of course it is. But sadly, money is now the only thing that seems to derive our self worth and that’s kind of shitty.

I had also fallen in the same web. Not working in a respectable office and not having something to talk about at these get-togethers would make me feel bad about myself. My parents would reiterate that how I need to work for people to respect me. When I took a break between 2 jobs, I didn’t like telling people that I am not working. I felt small, insignificant and worthless. Though when I wasn’t working, I was freelancing, but somehow I always thought that people will think less of me. And it wasn’t even my parent’s fault that they said it or that I felt this way. I think it was some kind of illogical social conditioning that just seeps into your head after a point of time.

But it’s been 3 years of working and 3 years of hating each morning that I had to go for work. And now I am in the final exit mode. I have realized that my self-worth comes from within me and no corporate snob in a party should make me want to redefine that. My husband makes me proud, he understands my love for studying, he wants me to return to academics, he respects it and that gives me an immeasurable amount of support and confidence. So this session onwards, I am a student again. I hope to make it through to the entrance, I hope to realize true happiness and I hope to reinstate my new definition of self worth. :)

The Hate Club

Of all the people I have known, this girl I knew in college has been by far the worst yet. There are others I haven’t liked. Well, who are we kidding? There have been plenty of additions in the hate list but she is definitely the uncontended president of the hate club.

I went through this very strange phase in life. I was a very well liked person till school and under grad – peaceful, fun person who got along with everyone and never felt the need to really despise anyone. And then post grad happened and something changed. Was it me or the people? I’d like to think it was the latter. I met the most rotten, most annoying and the pettiest bunch of people that I had ever seen, all in one single room. It would make me want to throw up. I had such few friends that I could count them on the fingers of my one hand. And that few also took me a really really long time to make.

I am a very loyal friend so my basics are as in place as is the characteristic of loyalty in a dog. If I love you, I will stand by you even if you have to kill someone. I will defend you to death and only reprimand you in private. I will be the rock solid, illogical wall and ward off any shit that may happen to you. In the process however, I will expect something similar and hence be vulnerable to insurmountable hurt. So I open up these positions to only a few that I am completely sure about. But that doesn’t mean that just because I have very limited stars in my own private sky, that I will hate the rest of the world.

But for some odd reason, in my post grad, I hated people and they hated me. I thought they were idiotic and completely malicious, they thought I was obnoxious and completely unapproachable. Ah well. So anyway, I hated a lot of women and men in my class. The woman who was overly sweet and suddenly flipped sides behind my back, the man who was a devil in disguise, the woman who was so nice it seemed fake –and turned out fake of course, the man who hit on everything with boobs, the woman who was judgmental to the point of me wanting to lunge at her throat every time I saw her, the pseudo intellectual fool who suddenly switched his taste in music, the attention hungry-lycra wearing-love handles bulging dimwit, the man who suddenly thought he was Casanova, the woman who used men to do all her dirty assignment work and the list is endless. But the one who tops the list is a new discovery – a friend who I discovered, used to bitch about me behind my back. That’s the worst category yet. And in my world of loyalty, that’s unforgivable sin.

So I guess she didn’t like me. Fine. Tell me that. I prefer hearing that any day. Why pretend? I didn’t like her much either but because I had no choice, I stood her mood swings and her tantrums and her completely selfish behavior. She certainly made me believe that I was a friend, reached out to me when in trouble, used my stuff, demanded my company and blah blah. And one fine day, convenience struck, and she chose to erase me out of her life and her social network. Am I sad? Upset? Disturbed? Absolutely not. I just gave conferred on her the presidential position of my hate club. After thinking of ways to get rid of her from my life, I guess I found the perfect way really - auto departure - without feeling guilty or mean, without making some random excuse. I’m just glad she chose to leave. We call it the divine intervention of the gods of the hate club. All hail!