There is a fundamental question that is to be asked for any salaried employee - What is it that gets you out of bed every morning, ready to face the slings and arrrows of daily fortune ? For the last two years, I had a good answer for this question. I want to do things, I wanted to make a difference, in fact I wanted to validate my existance by leaving at least a blot, if not golden letters, on the pages. I never worked for the money, but for this thrill that at the end of it all - something was created, something was born out of all your blood, sweat and tears. Something that would be useful, be appreciated and of course, in course of time arrive at your masterpeice of work, where excellence is a step below perfection.
Some people might consider attaching a label to my irrepressible self - self-motivated. I did things because I can and often because I was the only one around who could. I flitted from task to task and technology to technology like a butterfly on a marathon, sipping my fill and flying on till I felt hungry again. I always felt hungry for more - the more I'd already had, the more I'd want when it was done.
In the last few months, life has not been so rewarding. I went through a couple of depressions in the dark days of winter, but I pulled myself out of it quickly enough to prepare for that much awaited trip to New Zealand. But on returning, the emptiness striked back. A sort of intellectual rot, which sets in because there is nothing for the mind to do but take itself apart and see how it works. Except, it missed a trick on how to put it all back together. Intellectual boredom begins to eat into your mind, body and soul - I crave stimuli, something new, something I can solve, something I can fix. Imagine self-motivation working itself away, finding around it dunes that it gets tired of climbing because it knows there is no way out - sooner or later it has to give up ( by the way, read The Woman in the Dunes, if you get a chance).
All this precipitates as a sort of apathy to the rest of the world which protects you from yourself by diverting you in amusing (also to yourself) directions. The sort of stupid hehe, this is funny way of looking at the world and going along with rather than grabbing your destiny where the hair is short and pulling back onto the quite bent and narrow path to success. Right now I am quite content to show up at work, do whatever's on the table and go home. Exactly the attitude I had come to despise in the average worker whose ultimate and final goal is the paycheck of the month and possibly a slightly bigger one next review.
I have nothing to complain about, yet I do not feel happy. Now, is that what they call experience ?
Pinky, are you pondering what I am pondering ?
--In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
It is not always an easy sacrifice.