Something Worked In April
To try to figure out what worked…
In the month of April I did three things I hadn’t done before:
- I participated in #thealiporepostpoetrymonth challenge. I wrote 30 poems on prompts provided by The Alipore Post in 30 days. I hadn’t done anything of that sort of commitment level before.
- I started working on a tech idea that I didn’t give up on in the first week.
- I earned pocket money helping people debug and write code on Code Mentor.
It has been very easy for me to give up. I’ve given up on people, goals, aspirations, dreams, and the works. As I stood brushing in the noon today, scratching my head because I haven’t bathed in a couple of days, I wondered why I had been able to pull it off.
- I was unemployed, I didn’t have much to do.
- I was forced to not see as many movies as I’d normally would, because I’d have fidgety sleep. My eyes hurt if I didn’t turn them away from screens every once in a while.
- I was fed up of being mediocre.
As I am nearing to have a job offer, I find that I have begun to slack off again. But this time, I know that it is temporary. Here’s why:
Running Towards Something Instead Of Away
I’ve switched 2 jobs before this one. Both of those times I’d left running away from something instead of towards something. In April I found that if I am persistent I’m capable of earning my own living without a job. That felt like running towards something. So now, right from the start of this new job, I know what I have to do:
- Perform exceptionally. Which means I wouldn’t have time to watch movies – something in which I have wasted the most time in life.
- Right from the get go, keep enhancing my skills by making side projects and constantly learning by making and breaking.
The first will ensure that when I leave this company it couldn’t be because of having to run away from something, be it be gruelling work, uninspiring work, learning stagnation. When one comes from a nature of wanting to contribute, keeping all of the above aside, there are high chances one can make opportunities out of thin air to combat all of the above.
The second one because I want to work for either of the following companies: Netflix, Reddit, ProtonMail, Humu, Coursera, in a year’s time. If I don’t dream big, what am I even doing right? Why? Because:
- I want to move towards something
- That something is a better company providing better salary and better learning opportunities and prospects, smarter colleagues in the short run. In the long run, the better compensation along with good investment will enable me to quit my job in the future, to maybe teach programming full time, write fiction – which I haven’t done in almost over a year, consult on the side, make subscription products which help earn passively.
The Mechanics Of Wasting Time
What happens when I waste time? It’s obvious isn’t it? I don’t feel like wasting time while doing it. But when I jump onto doing essentially tasks, brushing for example, I feel restless. I try to bring my kindle and read something, knowing I’ve wasted time and try to compensate it. And this stretches to the whole day. When that anxiousness of having wasted a lot of time speeds up, it takes over again. The cycle starts repeating – I just leave everything that I’m doing and start watching stuff again.
Believe it or not, I’ve found that, to combat this one needs basic amount of discipline. For me it is
- Sleeping and getting up early, despite the fact that I’m able to focus best at night. It’s because when I wake up the next day, sleeping late at night, my body has sloppy energy, because of which mind is lackadaisical and trigger after trigger I keep giving up.
- Bathing everyday with cold water. I know that it’s scientifically proven that mild lukewarm to cold water baths help energise the body. I experience this firsthand yet I don’t do it – bath everyday I mean.
- Exercising and doing yoga daily, even if it is for 20 mins.
- Meditating without fail.
If these seemingly ‘meta’ things are sorted, the rest of the things follow suit somehow. It’s like these things provide a smooth pathway for other things to come and run smoothly.
Takeaway
With covid on the rise like the moneys and family from Rise of the Planet of the Apes – a very bad analogy – but you get the point, I have to constantly keep reminding myself that I do not know when I’ll expire. So I have to keep doing things like it’s the last day on earth and not wait for more testing days, where I’ll struggle and finally have to see it with a jolt. May my ways be free from procrastination, lack of persistence and laziness.
Journey My Brain 