An article I was reading on Cricinfo a few minutes back had this line:
Taylor sat quietly beside his captain, no doubt trying to soak up the moment.
Thinking about it, I realize it’s been a long time since I’ve had such a moment. A moment which had a sense of achievement, where I just sat, quiet, trying to soak up the moment. It’s not that I haven’t felt this way before; it is just that this kind of thing hasn’t happened for a long time. And looking forward, there doesn’t seem to be much scope for this kind of a thing.
It seems like life has been reduced to short occasional moments of intellectual wankery, and nothing surronding them. Life seems to have become, to an extent, mechanical. It doesn’t seem like there is anything on the horizon which will give a sense of achievement. It seems like whatever good I will do will be slow and incremental; like an innings by Shivnarine Chanderpaul; rather than like a hostile spell of pace bowling by Jerome Taylor.
I’m only twenty six, and occasionally I have trouble convincing myself that I’m ONLY twenty six, and that twenty six isn’t that old, after all. When this brought up in conversations, most people like to comment that it is time for me to get married. I’m not sure if the tenure matching on that is right. Apart from perhaps one “achievement moment” when I finally end up successfully pataofying someone, I don’t see how that will solve the problem that I have described here.
Thinking about it yet again, I wonder if this “achievement model” is faulty and unsustainable, and if I should reorient myself to work towards incremental benefits. Kodhi (ok before I forget, I should credit him for the discussion that led to this post) said “Tendulkar of 98 is not the same as Tendulkar of 08”. It was a poignant comparison.
Maybe a time comes for everyone – when this time occurs is not a matter of importance, and varies across people – when ticking off achievements is not the priority, and priority is to just go on and do one’s duty (which, in Tendulkar’s case, is to play excellent cricket, and win matches for India). It is not exactly an encouraging thought, but is probably true. What do you think?
Shame on you!
Don’t give up hope yet da! There is a lot that you can do. Why can’t you spend some time thinking about what you can achieve in the next 3-4 years and start working on that.
I would strongly suggest that whatever you decide upon, it be something completely outside of work and something that benefits others in some way…
need to do something concrete outside of work. only problem is i don’t want to create more work. i don’t want what i think is my hobby to become “work” in which case it ceases to be enjoyable
Can fully understand. I guess it is because this kind of “tick off”-able achievement is more common when we are writing exams. Once we stop doing that, any achievement in real world starts seeming slow and incremental and just not worth it. Just doesn’t give you the high of cracking a tough paper and beating the crap out of everyone else.
You might want to try algorithm contests on topcoder.com. You may have to brush up on your CLR a bit, but for sheer intellectual stimulation, competing with the best in the world and experiencing the exam kind of high, I can’t think of anything else.
problem with algos is that part of my work is writing algos, so if i take that up as a hobby it’ll remind me of work and render itself ineffective.
but again I don’t think that will give the sense of achievement that will make you just sit down, motionless, soaking it all in.