Intoxicated by possibility

One notepad is all that it takes.

The oilfield is bloody cruel.

How would you feel when you are lifting boxes and moving pipes with a 30-odd year old laborer from the sub-continent, when you know you draw in more than 50 times his salary? Well, I feel pained. As the both of us toil away in the Arabian sun, taking breaks over chai and cursing the sytem; I can see the pain in his eyes. The pain of getting to see his wife and children once every 2 years for a couple of weeks; sending almost everything that he earns to his family back home and being content with a laugh or two with a few folks over a game of cards.

All that it took for me to sweep that pain off his eyes for a few seconds, was me giving him a new hard-bound pocket notepad that I’d got myself from the store. That’s all it took to make him happy again.

It most definitely wasn’t the tiny notepad. It was just the fact that he felt a sense of belonging to the place he worked for, a feeling that people cared about him and his work.

All that it takes to make your crew take pride in their work, is a little tap on the shoulder.

Slowdown

I don’t remember a thing about the last 10 days. All I remember is working more than 50 hours without sleep on an offshore rig; catching a flight to Bangalore; landing up in Mysore and getting to work on this the same day, and spend three more days with almost no sleep getting the site up and trying to get the word across; spend three more days and three more nights managing the quintessential launch hype you get on the community.

And it was last night that I realized I had messed up. I love work - make no mistake. But, I had messed up with most things that ‘actually’ matter. It is said, when you live life on the fast lane, you leave no room for life. I felt that claustrophobia.

I couldn’t sleep all night. Not because I had work. Not because I was high on caffeine levels. Not because I was watching a movie. But because I was in pain.

Pain that originated from my poor decisions, my neglect, my assumptions and my lack of understanding. I don’t remember such pain in my head in the last god-knows-how-many months. But, it was devastating last night. I feel shaken from the inside.

Let me take an extremely trivial example. Have I stopped feeling life? I always loved writing down what I feel and blog about it. I abandoned my lovely blog: By-Two Kaapi, because I became a whore of the corporate world. I said, I am going to use this Tumblr blog to write shorter posts but of the same value. For a long time, I did. I just checked - the last few months have almost nothing. Some of the best posts of mine (IMO) were tweets. Does this mean that I have stopped thinking of what I am doing, have I stopped planning, have I stopped learning from experiences, have I stopped loving the things I really love? Well, the egotistic me, says No. But the answer could have well been a Yes.

Now that was the most trivial it could get. Thoughts of far greater significance ripped across my head last night. And it got me thinking.

As a result of which, today, I lifted my foot off the gas. Completely.

To start off, I spent less than two hours online the whole day, compared to atleast 14 in the last 1 week. I got one phone call, which I promptly ended in less than a minute. But most of it, went in making mental notes to myself.

• About going easy on the “I want the best of all worlds” attitude, and shifting into a “I want the best of the best of worlds” mindset
• People matter the most. Not ideas. Not work. Not experiences. Because without people, the other three hold no significance.
• I’ve always loved what I do, but I should not forget to do what I love.
• It pays to take the evening off the net, sit on the porch as it rains, drink coffee, and spend time with the people who ‘make’ your life tick; or atleast think about them if they aren’t around.
• Just because an idea of mine is making it big, or that my life has an enviable momentum does not mean I’m perfect. It does not mean I’m happy. Ask the people who love you (or who you love), and they will point out your flaws which you forgot to patch in your rat-race.
• I’m going to spend a sizeable time over the next few months/years correcting my mistakes and my flaws, while loving and doing what I love the most.

I’m off on a holiday for 5 days to Malaysia in 24 hours. That must be fun, aye? Actually not. The mind is still bearish. The slowdown is here, baby. As economists say, well, this is the time to consolidate, pull up your socks and get better.

Life, I love you. Here I come.