Tag: life

Financial Stability or Passion? Can I Have Both?

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For most of us, our careers are based on what we might be good at and financial stability. We choose them when we are really young and just keep working away until we get to a point where it’s comfortable. We work, we work, we work, and all of a sudden, we’ve been doing this job for over 30 years. We achieved what we wanted. Financial stability. So my question is where do our passions fall into all of this?

I don’t know about you but mine are side projects.  I make time outside of my regular work to do things I enjoy like writing in this blog. I couldn’t do them full-time though. What if I can’t achieve financial stability? What if the whole thing is a struggle? There is a quote that says “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” I’ve constantly been on the search for that my whole life. I don’t know if I’ll ever find it. 

I really admire those people who manage to turn their passion into a full-time business without letting it feel like a business. My other big fear with turning a passion into full-time work is that what if I start resenting it? What if the business aspect kills it for me? 

Passion. It’s part of what makes life worth living and helps you enjoy every day. It brings people together to achieve common goals. So how does a person take that step towards something that they are passionate about that won’t guarantee financial stability? The people that can do this are amazing. They don’t seem to have any fear. They make it work. And they have enough drive and ambition that leads them to success. 

Why is it so hard for some of us to take that step? We burn out so we can have both financial stability and passion instead of really finding something we want to do and figuring out how to achieve financial stability through that. We get to a point where we don’t want to do anything because we’ve worked so hard at everything. There has to be a balance. There has to be a way to achieve both at once. 

The question is how do we make it happen? 

Today’s Music: Is It Actually Music?

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So my post today has nothing to do with culture or any serious life defining moments. It’s really just a rant about music.

I have an issue with today’s music. It could be that I’m old or that the music I used to listen to growing up had so strong an influence on me that I just am biased against the current stuff out on the radio today.

So here’s the thing. If I had know this would be the time of autotune, I would have tried harder to be a singer growing up. Let’s be honest. I can’t sing. I can’t carry a note past my basic voice level. There’s no way that in the era of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, and Monica that I would have even survived. But today might have been a different story.

I’m sad for the generation that didn’t grow up with listening to great bands like Metallica or defining rappers like Tupac Shakur. They didn’t get to actually be able to hear people play music or create beats that have never been done before. The only people I can stand from this new era is Adele. Every other person that I like (Jay-Z, Dr.Dre, etc) is from the time I grew up.

I don’t know how many of you remember the time when underground rap was such a huge influence as well. It might still be going on and I might completely just be out of the loop but I remember the great stuff coming through the 80s and just disappearing by the end of the first decade of the 2000s.

Is it me or do all the radio stations play the same type of music now? I could swear that Power 106 used to be hip hop, 92.3 the Beat used to be R&B, Kiis 102.7 used to be r&b plus top 40, and KROQ used to be rock. I’m not sure anymore. I think that a lot of music has blended so much today that I’m not ever quite sure which station I’m listening to (when I’m actually listening to the radio). So much for variety.

I can’t stand listening to the radio anymore. I stick to my classics (I can’t believe that I’m old enough to call Whitney Houston a classic) and my Hindi music (which the number of good songs are also starting to slide). Again, I know I might be completely biased and maybe there is a ton of great music out there that’s just not in the mainstream and therefore, not reaching me. I’m just saying that I rarely hear something that makes me play it on repeat anymore. Please don’t tell me that Drake is going to change the face of music.

This post is dedicated to the children of the 80s who grew up listening to some of the greats in the music industry.

Life is Not a Popularity Contest

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I know it is going to totally sound like I’m that bitter woman who had horrible teenage years where I had no friends. This is actually not true. I had friends. I still do see those people every so often. Some are still really good friends. Some, I’ve fallen away from. Some have ended badly. It happens. We grow up and things change.

Maybe it’s because I’m competitive and it’s possibly all in my head, but does it seem like we still compete to know the most people or have the most people at our events? Who likes us and who is just kind of there? I just want to know that if push came to shove, who would be on my side and who would ditch me? But really why do I feel that way?

There are people that will like us and there are people that won’t. It’s funny how much extra energy we spend on those that will never like us for whatever reasons they have (even if we think they are flawed reasons). Why not appreciate those who love us for who we are? And why isn’t it easy to accept that there’s no competition?

I have some friends that are the nicest people in the world. So nice that almost anyone we know likes them. I know I’m not that person. I just don’t have it in me to be that patient or that nice all the time. I have moments where I lose my temper and moments where I disappear and don’t want to be around anyone. I figure those that know me will accept me for who I am and allow me to explain those times. Those who don’t understand me won’t and the friendship will fall away.

Then, we end up spending time wondering about those who have fallen away. If they even remember if we exist.

Eventually, we have to come to terms with the fact that it’s a big world with a lot of people. And the more energy spent on those who we are internally competing with takes away from those who we have a real relationship with. In the end, that energy is definitely better spent being around people we love and doing things we love. I don’t know if it’s a survival instinct to compete with those that we feel threatened by but we need to learn to move past it and accept that whatever it is, it is. In my opinion, it’s more important to have one reliable good friend than 20 acquaintances.

I just hope I can get my instincts to agree.

I’m Here…What Next?

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Once you’ve accomplished most of the things that you used to dream about growing up, then what? It’s funny. I don’t think we learn to really dream past the marriage phase of life. Once we start our career and get married, the only thing really left is having kids, right?

Maybe I’m having a mid-life crisis in my 30s. I haven’t grown much in my career but I haven’t taken the steps to really grow since my last degree. I have a great marriage and I definitely pursue my hobbies. For someone who needs to keep growing, I’m not quite sure what the next step is. On top of it, when did I get to a point where all my dreams have already been realized? When did we stop dreaming so that we have nothing left to achieve? How do you reactivate this part of you?

I believe that I’m supposed to just enjoy life to the fullest at this point and know that things are good and appreciate every minute of it. It’s hard because I’m the type to want to constantly work towards something. The minute things become settled, I get restless. How do you deal with this restlessness?

Occasionally, I do worry about the future but in reality, we are where we are and that’s exactly where we are supposed to be. That’s probably the best advice I’ve ever received in my life. So finding the next step will come. Opportunities show up when they are supposed to.

So why is it so hard to wait for them then? Is it bad that I want to know what’s going to happen now? Patience is a virtue but waiting really just sucks sometimes. The irony is that when I get to the point that I’m supposed to get to, I’ll know why it didn’t come any sooner. I just get impatient right now.

Am I the only person who has trouble enjoying the present?

My Perfect Facebook Life

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How many of you go onto Facebook day after day and see everyone’s perfect life on there? Everyone is always happy and smiling and traveling and graduating and getting married and having kids. Can I just say that this drives me absolutely insane?

It doesn’t bother me that everyone is happy. It bothers me that it might not be completely the truth.  It’s some sort of weird vicious cycle. Why would people put their misery on a public forum? At the same time, come on, people’s lives aren’t that perfect. We all go through crap. If you look at my Facebook page, would you have ever imagined that I’ve probably been through some sort of hell over the last month? Maybe a little bit since I occasionally do throw out less than ideal posts. But not often.

Has anyone else had to take Facebook breaks? Am I the only person who works a regular 8 hours job with a crappy commute? I couldn’t stand seeing that no one else worked and just traveled to all of these exotic places all the time. Those people who do work had the best jobs that sent them on the most interesting travels as well. Yeah, you can say I get tired of it every so often. Maybe some of it is jealousy that my life doesn’t seem to look like that. I look at profiles and then I look at my profile and I try to figure out if my life looks as great as theirs.

So how do we reconcile this? I wouldn’t mind seeing some honesty. If something is wrong in this world, shout it. If you feel that something needs to change, voice that. I understand that we can’t say everything, that there needs to be some privacy, especially since a lot of us do use Facebook as a marketing tool and don’t want to announce everything to the outside world. At the same time, if we can share our personal wedding and baby pictures, why can’t we share a few honest thoughts every so often? I really would like to see a person, not an image.

Who wants to play the victim?

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I want you to be really honest with yourself. How many times have you played the victim on something just to get attention or empathy? 

I think most of us do from time to time, especially when we don’t feel like we get the acknowledgment for our efforts. We shout out the things we do. We play up how bad we feel about something. On any given day, these are things that we might not say or do but today, something made us feel like no one was paying attention to the effort we put into life, our jobs, our relationships. 

Playing the victim isn’t something that has to be extreme. It could be as simple as saying “I had so much to do today”. Translation: “My life is busier than yours so please appreciate that I made the time to see/talk/listen to you.” I know that this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, saying that you had a lot to do today is really just that. You had a lot to do today. But sometimes, maybe it’s not the case. Maybe it’s really a way to seek some acknowledgement for your effort in whatever it is you’re doing. 

Think about it this way as well. There is one day where you get to go do something you’ve always wanted to do and you’re really excited. There is another day where you have to fulfill some obligation that isn’t the top of your priority list. What are the chances the same exact cold will make you feel worse the day you have to do something you don’t want to do whereas you’ll survive fine the day you get to do something fun?

Another way I’ve watched people play the victim (or done it myself) is where they silently martyr through something they don’t want to do so they can resent someone for having to do it and then later, throw it back at them. That sounds healthy, doesn’t it? Especially when you add in years of being friends or living together. I see this a lot in marriages in our Indian culture. Why be unhappy when we can find a way to make ourselves happy? Maybe we should one day explore that idea of it’s easier to be unhappy than to be happy. But we’ll save that for another day.  

And then comes the day where playing the victim doesn’t sound like much fun. There are 2 ways to get attention: play the victim or just be interesting while living your own life. That’s when I decide that I’d rather find a way to be happy in my own life and not worry about attention at all. There have been a few months recently where playing the victim was all I could do. Then, recently, I decided that this way wasn’t going to work for me. I am now working on ways to enjoy myself regardless of everyone else. 

This doesn’t mean I don’t fall back into a pattern that I’ve seen so much throughout my life. I do. But awareness is the first step to solving a problem. And one of the goals of life is to be happy throughout the journey as well as at the destination. So I will take that first step. 

The Guilt Factor – Off of the Beaten Path

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Does this life sound familiar to anyone else? We go to school, graduate with our bachelor’s, work, go get our master’s degree, work, get married somewhere between the bachelor’s and the master’s, work, have kids right after our second graduation, work, and work until this repeats with our children.

Wait, what happens when you don’t follow this formula? Probably guilt. I feel guilty that I’m not doing what I was programmed to do. This is the correct formula to make everyone proud and to be able to show your face in society, right?

Well, crap. I didn’t follow the formula and now I feel like I’ve let everyone down. I feel the guilt. In all fairness, the guilt tends to follow you every time you do something that isn’t allegedly morally correct, not just when you step off of the beaten path. I don’t know if this is oldest child syndrome or not but I’m willing to bet it’s not just me who feels guilty every time I do something that I know might not be the best choice. I feel guilty even putting myself first before my family.

It’s unrealistic to feel this guilt. When you do something for you, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, it shouldn’t be a bad thing. Taking time off to take care of yourself is a good thing. Finding out what makes you happy and working towards that is a good thing.

Happiness. It’s a fairly unknown concept in our culture. So much of our society is based on duty and responsibility. We forget that life is so fleeting that you might as well enjoy it while you’re here. It’s a concept that is slowly start to emerge as the new generation grows up and realizes that they don’t want to live the same formula anymore. It’s interesting to watch people chase their dreams and follow their hearts.

The guilt needs to go. It’s taken me a while to learn how to dump the guilt. I still feel it since it is programmed in me but give me an hour or so and I’ll get over it. I’ll know that if I trust myself and know that I’m doing the right thing, then I have nothing to feel guilty about. Hell, even if it’s not necessarily the ideal thing to do, at least I made my own choice and will live with that decision.

How else are you supposed to live your life to the fullest?