Finding Yourself By Shutting Up!

I'm someone who worries about small things and big things. Things which range from offending people to losing my cell phone. The idea of being able to "empty your mind of all thoughts" appeals to me on more than one levels. The idea is to keep quite and feel everything that goes on around you and try to shut up for a change. I've been trying it for a day in my real life and I'm learning a lot of things. Here's a quick list of things you learn on the very first day of your starting to shut up.

#1 The Act of Acceptance Of Your Mistakes.

When you say that you're going to be really calm in the mind and the heart you cannot be angry at folks for hurting you. It's like working out. You cannot say that I'm going to be working out and then continue to eat junk food. When you take the workout lifestyle you take up healthy and wholesome food as a part of the lifestyle. Forgiving is a part of the "empty your mind" life style. When you tell yourself that you're going to be totally calm and happy you cannot be carrying the heavy load of anger against everyone in your head. You cannot also be blowing up everything that happened to you out proportion. You have to take the hit, accept that everything that happened to you was really your problem and move on. Being calm is all about acceptance of your own mistakes and not blaming others for them. It's about shredding weight and freeing your mind and lets face it, the maximum space occupied in your head now a days is that of fear and anger. The act of accepting your own mistakes and making yourself responsible for them is the first step.

#2 The Act Of Forgiveness.

Without sounding too deep, here's the simple deal: The moment you accept that everything that happened was no one's fault  you've released others from your brain making your brain much calmer and quieter. Next comes the act of forgiveness and the only person left to forgive now, is yourself, because there is no one else to forgive! Right? This of course is easier said than done because most people (me included) have a habit of beating themselves up and the act of forgiving yourself is probably the hardest in being calm in your heart and mind.

If I'm talking like someone who knows the stuff that he's talking about all I can say is I'm really sorry. I don't mean to remotely suggest that I know what I am talking about here. Come on guys (and gals) lets face it! I'm not the spiritual kind after all.  I'm just a random nobody blogging his heart out hoping that some of the crap I poop out of this website ends up being read by someone else and ends up resonating with someone else. But here's the reality of things: It's hardly been one full day when I started shutting up and things are looking good for now.

Here's another funny thing: Nobody has noticed the change except the people who are really close to me. And that's a humbling experience because it tells you how unimportant and insignificant your thoughts and ideas are in this world. It also tells you how fucking insignificant you are. Once you get used to it the idea is not as bad as it sounds. At the very least it's reality so get used to it.

You get heard when you are yelling and screaming at the top of your voice but then the second you stop that metaphorical yelling and look around you realize that there aren't many people around to listen to what you had to say. In fact, there aren't many people around to notice that the metaphorical yelling just stopped; which makes you wonder what you were achieving by yelling in the first place.

I see people around me. Lots of them. People getting their jobs done. People talking to other people and people having conversations. People indulging and embarking on journey's which they truly believe are taking them somewhere. I'm not saying that I am going to renounce life. No way! Dream on stalker!  But once in a while, it's OK to step back and look at it as an outsider and marvel at the whole way of life that you have been living all alone. It's so fucking chaotic and stupid at times that you feel like laughing and weeping at the same time.

One thing that I've told myself for the time being is that I am going to try and stop punishing myself for everything. I'm going to take day offs and have fun. I'm going to take it easy. I'm going to try and stop feeling guilty about not churning out a finite set of functionality or code every other day. I'm going to stop running round and round in circles like an angry dog and I am going to take it slow. Of course there is a difference between taking it slow and giving up.

It's not happening. I'm not being able to explain my thoughts really well I guess, but it is an amazing feeling to have. I huge part of yesterday was scary. I was getting this bouts and urges to reach out to someone and start a conversation with every passing opportunity but I decided to shut up and watch. Be a listener for a while, without talking, without imposing myself on other, without offering my ideas when none were asked, without trying too hard, without being desperate, without judging. I'll be lying if I said I am not scared but I also feel really good and light and clear headed.

I don't know where this is going to go and if this is going to be a major change in my personality or if this is just a passing thing and I'll turn into the stupid little funny chatterbox that I otherwise was, but for now I'm shit scared for being quiet for sometime which is why I want to do it so badly. So there. You have it. Yoda is shutting up for a few days. But not online. Not on this blog. Not on my chat ID. Not on twitter. These are morphing into ways of using my fingers to talk to myself and I am starting to find myself returning more and more to this ID. Not when I am depressed but even when I need to think or talk or solve problems or have general conversations with some of my new online friends.

The pleasure of living a life without constantly worrying about what the other person is thinking about you. The pleasure of living a life without constantly and desperately trying to get confirmations for your existence. The pleasure of living a life without constantly punishing yourself for every day you wasted not doing anything. The pleasure of living a life where you are just you and where it's OK to make mistakes and it's OK to be quiet and it's OK to just be and.... not be continuously afraid.

It's terribly lonely in here.  And to someone like me the quietness in my head is what freedom is to a convict. It's scary to say the least. That doesn't mean the convict has to keep punishing himself for a mistake he committed years ago. That doesn't mean he should never accept freedom. It just means that he needs to get over his stupid fears. I think I've had enough punishment and I've paid my dues and it's okay to forgive myself now and move on. I think it's OK to be quiet and clam and happy and helping in anyway I can be.

That was a terribly long dose of gibberish wasn't it? Maybe it was too deep for your stalker! Or maybe it was just to shallow. Who the hell knows. Who the hell cares. My fingers had a bad itch and I wrote here on this this blog post. At the end of the day, if you really think about it, it's my blog and I have the right to write here, don't I? Don't I? Eh? If you don't think so, go get your own life or your own blog! STALKER!

Please Don't Open Your Mouth When It's Not Needed.

I feel the urge to write again and here I am slamming my hands at keyboard all over again. I've been reading a lot lately and I've been seeing a lot of amazing inspirational movies.

One thing that I am starting to realize in particular is that I tend to open my mouth in the all wrong places and in all the wrong times. My desire to have conversations with people and to change them, which is in turn triggered by the part of my brain which wants to eventually wants to change the world, often lands me in deep shit.

I have this fear that if I don't constantly communicate with people I might find myself lonely and alone one fine morning. I wasn't designed to be lonely and alone and that thought is fucking scary. So I tend to reach out to random people in real life and try to start conversations with them which works really well when I am happy and lively but seems totally stupid and vulnerable to me I am angry or frustrated.  That's when end up offending people.

I've been reading about some of these things. Trying to learn from how others might have solved this problem and I've been watching a few movies. I've also been making a few online friends slowly and steadily and I am nowhere close to the number of people I said I would get to know but I have a few people online with whom I can at-least have decent normal conversations when I have the urge to talk. Enough to bounce into at-lease one or two people every night and have an intellectual conversation when the rest of the real world is fast asleep.

I am starting to like these online conversations a lot. They allow me to vent out my fears and my frustrations and talk to people  who do not know me at all on one level and who know me at slightly more personal level than the people who know me in real life on other levels, particularly when it comes to my fears and vulnerabilities.

When you are talking to people anonymously or blogging anonymously one thing you need to be particularly careful about is that anonymity does not give you a license to be rude or wild or evil or stupid. It just gives you some more room to be yourself without being judged instantly. That is what I have been using anonymity for and I am starting to realize that it is a really powerful tool because it is helping me relax and open up to people.

Yes I go under the handle Yoda which is slightly funny and slightly odd (actually, I would like you to think it's cute or sexy or something like that, but come on! you knows it's not. I knows it's not. We knows it's not.) That does not mean that the people who chat or interact with me online do not know me. On the other hand I would argue that in some aspects of life these people actually know me more than the people I talk to or interact with on a day to day basis.

I talk to them much more openly and I am much more relaxed about my vulnerabilities and my fears as a person because I am not scared of being judged. I am just as careful about maintaining my own common sense and my own integrity when I am talking with this ID as I am when I talk as a real person because I know that sooner or later I might end up disclosing the real person behind this ID at-least to the few people who are helping me rediscover who I am.

I'm trying to think what to write next which is a bad sign because this blog is a place where I just sit there, stare at the monitor and write my heart out. I don't want the internal editor in me controlling what every aspect of what goes here. I want this writing to be a reflection of my mind as I write.

I don't want to worry about the what-if-analysis of every sentence that comes out of my fucking mouth out here. This blog and the people I talk to online allow me to shut up in my real life and not go around without offending real people. What is really interesting is that I am also not offending a lot of people on Yahoo and more often than not when I am done having online conversations I actually feel better. You know, the way you feel after having a long intellectual conversation with someone you know in real life.

I would really like to talk about the people I've been talking to online. Maybe even link to their blogs and stuff but I am not sure if they would appreciate that so I'm just going to leave that part out of this post. I have no idea what I wanted to say through this post or what the structure of this post was but I guess the point I was trying to make was that, I have a very bad vulnerability which is the "need" to talk a lot in my real life. And that my online life, this blog and the people I talk to in yahoo have been helping me overcome that vulnerability.

If you are one of the people I talk to online, I have to Thank You for being there. Thank you for those long conversations. Thank you for your support. Thank you for all those advices that help me contemplate and reach to my own decisions and thoughts about life. Thank you for letting me overcome my vulnerabilities and my fears. Thank you for being there when I just feel like doing some random chatting because if you weren't around I would have done the random chatting with people in my real life and I would have probably ended up hurting them. Thanks for playing a part in helping me make peace with myself.

That, and of course all the stalking that you do. I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY like being stalked. Heeh!Heeh! STALKER!

Embrace Your Artistic Neuron.

By now, you are probably used to my depressed shit filled self. So much so that I don't need to moan and bitch like a baby on the blog. I said I would never turn to this blog when I am depressed and yet invariably I tend to turn to this blog ONLY when I am depressed. I don't know if that is such a bad thing.  My dilemma today is self loathing and uncertainty.  About every single fucking thing in my life. It scares the shit out of me.

When I was tiny, weeping as a just born, little did I know that I was blessed and cursed with a mind that would love weirdness and would see the world differently. Now a days, I seriously don't know if it's a big blessing or a big curse. I have no reason to doubt it. Just like my friends, the artistic neuron in my mind has never betrayed me. I have no reasons to doubt it. But sometimes, when your thoughts, when your efforts and your world of passionate love for your work becomes awfully quite and fucking lonely, these feelings creep in your head and fuck with it.

I was recently asked if I want to talk about it. I said no. I have no idea why the Heck I said that, but I did. Actually, I was trying to find humor in this situation. Which is why I wanted to be quite. I think I figured it out.

I mean think about it. Its pretty darn fucking funny. Seriously, it is funny.

So here is how it works in your profession. You probably work somewhere and get paid for whatever it is that you do. Then you come home, eat, shit and depending on a whole of other factors do a whole lot of weird and down right funny things and then you sleep, only to get up next day and get to work so that you can eat, shit and do a whole lot of weird things the next day. Life is good. Fucking Good.

Except of course, there is this one little neuron in your head that whispers and calls you with a strange voice and just says, "Psst! Are you happy? I mean REALLY happy? REALLY REALLY HAPPY?". And then before you know you are fucked. This neuron is a gorgeous part of your mind. It fucked with people's head and made their life miserable which is why they ended up building stuff like planes and light bulbs and buildings and computers. Its the artist within you. Dying to ship. Dying to build something. Dying to share it with other monkeys around you. Dying to be proved right. Dying for acceptance.

Again, this is all nice and dandy, but the problem with this neuron is that the moment you start listening to it, you have taken the fucking RED pill and now Morpheus is just showing you how deep the rabbit hole is. You are going to spend hours making your mind and body hurt as you work on something that you absolutely love working on. You are going to deliver, only to find out that world does not give a fuck about what you just built. And then you are going to think about quitting. And then this neuron is going to whisper, "Pssst!" 

And you know you are not supposed to be listening. But you will. And you will try to tweak what you just built. You are going to read marketing books on how to get this idea through. Books on how to make it tip. How to make it cross the chasm. You are going to be fucked all over again. And if you thought this was the end of it, you are so fucking wrong.

You are going to do this for a few months and then you are going to learn that while you were busy talking to this one little neuron in your head the world was moving around the sun and completing one circle in about 365 days and a rotation in about 24 hours and the other monkeys around you, who were able to "Shhh!" to this weird neuron got on with their lives just fine. These monkeys think you are a jerk. You think, they are jerks. But at the end of it all both of you are just monkeys.

You are going to make it. Or you are going to fucking die trying. Either ways, I've got no sympathy for you.  Because you deserve none. In the part of the world where I live cars squat stray dogs on the road every once in a while and I feel really sorry for them, because they know nothing about the mess they are going to land up with. You do. You know absolutely fucking well, what you are getting into when you listen to that artistic neuron in your head. You take a chance. You do it because you want love and acceptance. And you want LOTS of it. Just a little bit does not do it for you. So you go out there and you take a fucking chance.

And then on bad days, you whine and moan and bitch and crib and write posts like this one. But that's not going to change anything. Your artistic neuron is what defines you. It's what got you so fucking far. It's your biggest blessing. Embrace it. And let it fuck with your head. Oh and by the way, stop worrying about the confirmation part as much as you do. We are probably the only creatures on this planet who worry so much about external confirmation, when other creatures are just ok in being there.

So stalker! If you were a little depressed, I may have depressed you even more. But who cares! Your artistic neuron is going to take over soon and it will continue to make your life fucking miserable.

You are blessed with it. Embrace it. Hug it.  Love it. And do what it tells you to do.

Enough bitching. Now I am going to continue working.

The Road Not Taken.

I'm seriously mad. I was mad on a couple of friends but then after a long conversation with one of the friends I realized this week that the fault had been mine all along. I wasn't mad at them. I was just mad at a few choices I made when I was young. I think I am paying a heavy price for those choices. But then I am also reaping the rewards of those choices. I cannot be blaming anyone else other than myself for those choices. I cannot be crying like a baby when it's time to pay the price for my choices.

The problem with moving too fast is that when you often turn around you realize that you have come too far and that you left a few opportunities of having fun along the way. Not because you did not like having fun. No, you actually fucking loved it. But then you were supposed to move fast. At least that is what you had told yourself. Now the problem with moving really fast is that when you are walking fast you often tell yourself that you are going to come back later and finish a few unfinished items. Unfortunately, it is almost always a one way street. And by the time you realize that, you have come too far to turn back.

When I started writing here I told myself that I was not going to write here when I was angry, sorry, depressed or was going through any other negative feeling. So I did not write here about this feeling of mine till I had the long conversation yesterday where I, to a large extent allowed myself to forgive myself for the choices I made in the past. I didn't have an option. Given the same circumstances and the same options I would have made the same choices again. I tried my fucking best. That is all I could have done. I fucked up in a couple of places, but then heck with it! Who doesn't.

There are way too many dreams that I have been having lately. Most of them I don't even have the balls to talk to about on this blog. The only thing that is keeping me letting me retain any amount of sanity what so ever in this time is the fact that I have a couple of REALLY AWESOME friends who are standing tall and confidently by me in these difficult times. Without them I would have done something stupid. That and knowing deep down in the darkest corners of my heart that I tried my fucking best.

I have no idea about what I am talking any more. I am tired. Feeling a little sick. Tired and my body hurts. So I am just going to shut up and try to sleep.

Strange Contradictions And Next Steps.

It's been a long time since I wrote here so I thought I'd come here and burp out just a little something. You know, for the sake of keeping in the habit of writing and for the sake of reflection and good old soul searching.  It's been about two months since I started working on this thing. The thing that I said I was going to be working on. And It is alive.

I don't know what having a baby feels like. I've never had a baby. They say that the feeling so so fucking awesome it changes you for ever. I don't know about that. But what I can tell you is that the feeling that I have now a days, every time I see this little application in action. It seems to make me feel happy. Maybe not as happy as having a baby. Maybe not even close. Maybe I shouldn't be comparing having a baby with building an application. After all, its not an apples to apples comparison.  But then, the joy of having being a part of something that you see morph itself into existence is so fucking awesome, it changes you.

When I first read Jonathan Livingstone The Seagull (an amazing book by Richard Bach), the part where Jonathan the seagull, wonders how others gulls can be so oblivious to the pleasures of practicing flight, seemed just inspirational. Now I am starting to look at people on the roads, people watching television, people dancing in parties, people wasting time having conversations, people wasting time being afraid and  I wonder how they can be so oblivious to the joy of building things. I think I so fucking understand what Jonathan must have felt like. You don't have to be specially talented to have that feeling. Even stupid dolts like me can have that feeling. So, as I was saying, it feels wearied to see people wasting time over things which are just cheap substitutes of true pleasure of escape routes for their fear laden brains.

I know its not fair. Specially given that a couple of months ago, I found watching  porn so much more easier than building something I was actually shit scared of doing anything productive with my weekends and free time. I know its not fair to look at the world and expect everyone in it to change just because a part of my life changed, but then watching people wasting time being lost or being scared is weird. I can't help it if that is how I feel. I am realizing that I have no control over some of these feelings and thoughts any more. Neither do I have control over what I do next. However, here is something that might be worth trying.

Long story short, I am not going to try to focus on changing the world. I am not going to focus on helping others. I've done enough of it. The next couple of months are going to be spent on quietly tweaking every little corner and tightening every little screw of this program so that finally when we open it up to the world it ends up liking it.

So, that's about it. I think this post may have turned out to become way too philosophical than what I expected it to be. But heck, I am here to write my heart out. It's supposed to be free style writing  for me so I don't think I need to worry about you guys to death. And if you were in fact bored to death, I am sorry. I can't help it. All I can say is, STOP STALKING AND GET A LIFE.

(A wide nasty stupid funny Grin).

Television and Why You Need To Watch Less Of That Shit.

Ok, it looks like I just discovered my second enemy stopping me from working on my new side project. Its not the biggest enemy but its close. TELEVISION.

There is always something interesting on Television and that is a REAL PROBLEM. Its not like what is on television is usually an as inspiring as a movie like the Pirates of Silicon Valley or anywhere close to being as entertaining as regular porn movies. Nah! Its just utterly old fashioned stupid way of wasting your time and getting absolutely nothing back in return. Not even entertainment.  If this project is going to succeed Television has to stop. Completely.

Of course, I can't stop the rest of the world from watching television because I just woke up one day and saw the light. I cannot be expecting every human being in my life to change just because I woke up today and felt like changing. But things have to change for me. How much television do I watch on any given day? Not even an hour I guess. Why is television such a big threat then? Because it eats into my weekends and keeps me from working on this project during the weekends.

I don't have a plan on how I am going to stop watching television on the weekend. I am not even saying that I am going to stop watching television completely. All I am saying is, I know it is an enemy and I need to be very careful of it.

How hard is quitting something? I have quit a lot of things in my life. Quit as in, stopped trying to get something. Stopped craving for whatever it is that I was trying to quit and just quit it. Stopped even thinking about it. Quitting something is easy once you get used to the idea of quitting things you do not really need. Television, falls in that category of things.

You know all those guys who make a big deal about quitting their habits, I don't think they want to quit because if  you REALLY want to  and you have the support of your "bestest" of friends, quitting becomes really easy. I hope I can say that about the television. All I am trying to do is quit watching television during the weekends. Actually, I am not even trying to do that. I am just trying to keep an active tab how how much Television I watch during the weekend and if that crosses minutes and turns into something more than an hour, apply a circuit breaker and snap out of it. How hard can that be?

Television as of now seems to be the one thing that is standing between me and the completion of this project. Television has to stop. Decided. Locked. Done.

So, the fear of starting... television... what's next?

Starting Anything Is Really Hard.

Anyone watched pretty woman? You know the part where there is this conversation between Julia Roberts and Richard Gere where the talk reaches a point where this is said: "You and I are such similar creatures, Vivian. We both screw people for money". After about 10 years of working for organizations, "growing" and changing stuff, when you turn around to look at the value you created, and you see nothing, you feel like... well, I don't know what I feel like anymore, but one thing is for sure. Some of this has to change.

I am not talking about quitting here. I don't have the balls to do that. It's not the quitting that is difficult. It's actually doing something after you quit that is really difficult. It's the classic Hamlet, To Be Or Not To Be scenario. Its the To Do or Not To Do Scenario.  Besides, I love my job and I am going to continue with it. But then, something else has to happen. An entirely different type of a problem that I solve. Something where I can take decisions without taking permission from a committee of people. Something where I can test my own limits and hopefully break them just a little bit every day. Something that can eventually let me connect to the hundred people I said I would connect to when I started out this blog.

I've started working on this thing for a few days now and I can tell you that it's difficult. Building software in the night when you are working for your organization twelve hours a day, is fucking HARD. At times my head is going round and round in circles. At times, you just want to sit there watching the stupid television show  or browsing through a stupid porn video website. The hardest part about working during the nights where you have worked your ass the entire day, is not the work itself. It's opening your IDE and starting.

Once I start, things usually get better. Within hours I forget the issues, the pain, the confusion, the stupidity and the professionalism that surrounds me. I am slowly getting used to the idea of opening my IDE and starting. If I can only keep doing that for a few more days, I might have something that I can gift to two of the "bestest" of my friends.

I think I am slowly starting to understand why most people cannot start their own products or their own companies. Its because they like moping and crying. That, and they are scared of starting. I feel that fear almost every fucking night now when I force myself to open my IDE and write code. The idea is that if we keep repeating something, we get used to it and we don't feel scared of it anymore. That's EXCACTLY what I am hoping will happen with this "working during the night" thing.

I am slowly getting the hang of it. I am going to continue writing my experiences of building this product here. Not the product itself, but what goes through my head. My thoughts, my inspirations, my confusions, my progress and above all, my fears because this is what I am trying to overcome here.

Stay tuned nice people (and you too, stalkers!). I hope you learn something from these experiences, successes and setbacks as I write them down for my own sake and yours. If you have something to say, well, say it DAMIT because things are awfully quite in here.

If you don't have anything to say but you liked this post, shut up, keep reading and keep stalking this blog like a lurker that you are!

(Stupid Grin again.)