Maximally Entangled Life

I am almost 24 and absolutely clueless about life. I don’t belong anywhere, I don’t have pictures labeled “Good Times” and I did not have any belonging which I miss. I have taken life as it came, good, bad and really bad. I am not overtly patriotic, political,religious,sentimental or nostalgic. I really have no clue how my life turned out to be the way it is and no clue what is going to happen next to it. I am not sure about anything except that I have to complete my Phd in 3 years. Where I am going to live, who am I going to live with or what I am going to do are pointless questions to me because there is nothing you can do about it. I guess I am just suffering from Borderline Quaterlife Crisis.

Why is it so difficult to dream when you grow older? Or on the other hand why does everything happening to you feel like a real long dream. Only thing I remember distinctly was going from first grade to second grade. After that was a superfast nightmare which is still going on and I have no control over it. Things are spinning out of control, you are in places you did not plan to go to, people you knew for so long are growing old and dieing, you feel like a stranger in your old city when you go back. This is really a time of my life when I feel like I have no control over how life is just slipping away at a super fast pace and I have lost the power to dream.

Life is feeling like an endless quest for greener pastures. Once you are there you realize there are too many cows there already and you don’t feel special anymore. All we are doing is an endless run to be special, to be different. True that one day we will look back and see what we have achieved but it will also come with an immense sense of loss from the things gone while we were struggling with our heads down. You feel you are growing older and whatever you have achieved now is still not enough and you have to keep on going. But in course you have to leave behind the people you love, in case my grandparents whom I cant meet more than once a year, you remove all emotions from your life because you don’t have the time to grieve when you are hurt. You keep suppressing all this pain and keep moving on because this is what life expects you to do. I really don’t know when this floodgate of emotions will open and I really have to face my own feelings. Now its easy to suppress all the hurt and pain and replace them with anger . Anger is easy to handle because all I choose is one innocent victim and a reason to just vent all my anger on them. This is wrong but thats all I can do to keep on functioning. Sometimes I wish life came with a manual so I knew how to handle situations.

Its a uninteresting tuesday night Im sitting on my desk with a 1000 page atomic physics text book open at my side. Im distracted, de motivated and although Im not particularly upset , I just cant make myself read the stuff although I know i desperately need to. Its just Im out of Ya Yas.

“Ya Yas” as my dictionary puts is the things we get kicks from. I don’t know how other people survive but I really need kicks to keep on going. And on the unhappier side of the week Im out of it.

Day started uninterestingly with my atom chip experiment with me stringing optical fibers from one optic table to another. I attended two talks today, one extremely relevant on atom chips by Bjorn and another on simulating quantum mechanics with electronic circuits in microwave regime. I came back home but simply cant go on with the studying because I just don’t feel good.

I cant really find an instant feel good solution right now. The Hell boy movie last week did not work and the wedding on sunday did nothing to help it. Hopefully the Dark Knight movie releasing on thursday would do it for me. I have decided to ease on other shallow sources like alcohol and flattery from girls. Trying to lead a good life is really tough. Im out of things to make me feel good. On top of that the summer writers break at hollywood has resulted in all the sitcoms  halted at episode 17 or something.

Hopefully running tommorow will give me a kick followed by dark knight on thursday will help me survive the week. This is what life is for me one movie after the other to just keep on going.

Don’t fall into the low productivity whirlpool:

Im sure you had those evenings where you had the nagging feeling that you have not achieved nothing during the day. You started with a perfect routine with all the tasks lined up but somewhere you got side tacked and it all went downhill from there. So you decide to make an effort during the evening to catch up but whatever you do, your mind cannot just concentrate because of your guilt and its soon 1 am and you have done nothing. This goes on to 2am or sometimes 3am and next day you wake up feeling like crap and not get anything done again.

To get rid of this problem,start early and get a big chunk of the work done so that you can spend the rest of the day beaming about it and feeling proud of it. Achieve something everyday at least.

Plan how you meet people:

Always keep something to look forward to. When you are meeting friends throughout the week dont keep them all on the weekends when you sometimes get all the work done. Distribute them like put one on tuesday to deal with the early week blues, one on thursday to deal with the “man wat a week” blues and on Saturday to deal with “You wont believe wat happened this week” conversations. As you keep these well distributed there is hardly any chance of you feeling lonely.

Get some exercise:

This is the best way of being happy. Experience the “runner’s high” this is when you are almost crossing 2.5 km. Come early from work twice a week and just go running. Half an hour later when ur drenched in sweat and panting your mind will be clearer and way more relaxed than ever. Running guarantees a good night sleep, a flat stomach, clear mind and a “can do” attitude. It is also a completely inexpensive way of being fit and happy at the same time. If you have more time and you want to look good, hit the gym. You ll be fit,happy, clear, energetic and cheerful all the time.

Always have something to look forward to:

This is what drives me. I always have something to look forward to. Be it a new tuition center I am trying to set up, be it a new girl I am seeing, be it the new french class I m going to or looking forward to join Muay thai, I am excited to get up everyday and enjoy life. As a result, I have learnt a bit of french, learnt salsa and learnt photography. Only way of getting out of the monotonous life is to have new things to look forward to. If they dont come naturally(because they never do), you have to force it. You have nothing to do on a saturday, go and teach a class of under privileged children.

Do not commit to a relationship unless your sure of her/him:

Most of the woes and most of the visit to shrinks take place because of relationships gone bad and people trying to mend a broken heart. I have been through that myself and it takes quite a while to recover from it. But I think people should go through that atleast once as it is a part of growing up. Going through it is an invaluable experience.

When your not sure of the girl/boy ur dating dont commit. 99% chance it wont work out. You have to have a gut feeling that it should work not think like “ok maybe i can change her” cos that never works. Till then fill up your time fleeting from one casual date to another. Its perfectly fine morally if u date several women casually and break no one’s heart. So just dont get into relationship because your lonely and she is pretty.

Enjoy your everyday activities:

Enjoy getting up, enjoy the taste of the coffee in the morning(thats why dont drink black), enjoy the cold water against ur skin when you take ur shower. Enjoy the bright day when you walk to the bus stop. Enjoy the reading material (for me usually the newspaper and the occasional economist) on the bus, enjoy staring at the pretty ladies on the bus.

Enjoy your lunch,enjoy the delicious spicy tangy food your eating, enjoy drowning the sharp bite of the chilli with a sip of fizzy coke. Enjoy an afternoon coffee after that. Enjoy goin back home in time and finishing ur work and sticking to a routine. Enjoy falling asleep reading a book or watching a sitcom.

Enjoy a cold fizzy tasty double hop beer twice a week, enjoy a delicious fatty lamb chop or delicious kebabs in a buffet. Enjoy sitting in a huge movie theater with a popcorn and diet coke and enjoying the fizz of the coke after a mouthful of popcorn. Enjoy the thrill waiting for the movie to start, when you have been waiting for it almost a year.

Be online as minimum as possible:

The internet is the cause of majority of our depression. Its the constant emails which keep on coming and facebook which depresses the hell out of most. Go out take a walk, watch tv. People have forgotten the beauty of changing channels. I know u can download everything but the concept of changing channels is so uplifting, its like walking from one lively jovial room to another(except cnn and bbc which depress the hell out of anyone). Live like the 70s, dont stay online much, read a lot, meet people, go out to eat and watch tv.