Post Number 68: Unsettled

Of late I have been regularly wondering if I am doing what I am meant to do with my life. Am I happy? Am I settling in mediocrity? I know what I am doing is not mediocre by any definition and just saying this reeks of privilege that stinks to high heavens. Yet, despite having all the support growing up, the possibility that I may not be fulfilling my “full potential” terrifies me.

We are told to study well and hustle for opportunities so we can stand on our own two feet and support ourselves. I have a job now, I earn enough to support myself, then why do I still feel less than I am? Is it me personally seeking something more in life or is it just the world around my childhood self, telling me that I need to keep doing more?

I wish I could say here that I’ve found the answer but sadly not. I worry that I may never find the answer. I wish I could be like all those Instagram people making their daily self affirmations and popping in new health supplement pills that sponsor them, but I am not. I suspect that they aren’t either, but you will never know watching them. 

I am going to keep it shorter than my already short articles. However, I do want to know if you have ever felt the same and what you tell yourself when you have these thoughts.

Post Number 16 : Letter to a Younger Self

Dear Chaitanya circa 2014,

It’s 22 March today and you’ve just walked out of your Computer Science board examination. You know it pretty well that you aced it. Your friends share your expression of relief at having just written their last board exam. All this while, it was hyped up to be this Herculean task that only gladiators survived through, but now that you have experienced it for yourself, you realize it was more of a test of your temperament rather than your knowledge. Congratulations, this is one of the biggest Eureka moments you will have in the upcoming years. Henceforth, most of the tests you will encounter whether of an academic or of a personal nature will test more of your attitude and disposition rather than your factual ability to decompress it and deduce a solution.

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Post Number 10 : We are all running. (But do we know why?)

I sit in front of my laptop screen on a fine Sunday evening, too lazy to study something with utmost concentration and too active to simply lie down and take a nap, hence, prone to one of my periodic bouts of overthinking. And with the backdrop of internship and placement season going on in the college campus, there is one overriding sentiment I am nursing currently. ‘Why isn’t the prospect of getting/not getting an internship not affecting me as much as it is affecting my peers?’

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Post Number 3 : The Career Catastrophe

Post Number 3 : The Career Catastrophe

majorsandcareers
“Girlfriend hai tumhari?” asked the aunty sitting in front of me, shoving the samosa in her mouth, giving me a sly grin, hoping I would say something that would give her gossip fodder for her evening chat with the rest of her clique. I sidestepped this trap by giving a well-structured “NO”. “Aage career ka kya socha hai?” she sputtered, both literally and  figuratively, as a pea popped out of her mouth. “I haven’t decided” I replied demurely, not willing to discuss my future with a random aunty and also because…..I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And as the aunty went into a monologue, explaining to me how an MBA will do me wonders, I activated my ‘Ignore-them-but-pretend-I’m-hearing’ mode just in time, inclusive of the periodic head nod and monotonic ‘Hmm..’
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