Of Anomalies

There's a lot to say, and the best part is none of them have any sort of relation to each other. But I want to talk about all of them in one single post, hence this title.

On the work front, things are running smoothly. And that's what scares me. A smooth running job is something that an Indian Government servant would wish for. If things are running smoothly means I'm not learning. There always is scope for improvisation. And if I'm not seeing that something is wrong in me, which I'll need to figure out.

Besides that, I've been doing some freelancing lately. Not major projects and big money types; but simple ones with basic design templates required. But what saddens me, is that I was awake for 2 nights continuously to finish the project (because it was an urgent project with minimal turn-around time) and I loved every single moment of the 2 nights I spent making the simplistic template. The age old battle of doing what you love versus trying to love what you do came to the foreground. I had buried this topic with myself, swore never to talk about it. Because I know there are not many people who have the balls to follow what they truly love doing. And right now, frankly I don't , one, because I need the money, two because I need some concrete definable experience that the 'corporate world' would accept, and lastly, because financial stability in life is perhaps the single most crucial attribute any society would expect out of a bumbling person straight out of college.

And then there are these MBA jargon related discussions. This is what happens when you stick around with a bunch of MBA degree holders. Your life discussions always revolve around nerdy things like lean supply chains and marketing research. A roommate working for an FMCG major talks as if there's no life beyond the Microsoft excel sheet filled with numbers (lots and lots of numbers), the other roommate working for a software solutions firm talks about nothing beyond Supply Chains and RFID tags. And listening to all of it, brings back memories of what I'd learned in an MBA. It is today I realize that I haven't really, genuinely given enough time to think over what I've learned in my MBA. One year is too short a time to reflect upon things. Supply Chains, Value Chains, Costing mechanisms, all these are the stuff that the hot shot consultants are well versed with. I did learn what these concepts are, but never got a chance to implement them.

So in short, something that I love doing, I can't do that for a living since its too unstable as a job prospect (plus when you have a 1 million rupee loan up your head you really can't think clearly). Something that I am doing currently is all hunky dory, but I honestly don't know where I am headed with it. And something that I have learned during the course of my MBA is slowly withering away and I've begun to start forgetting the concepts that were taught to me.

In hindsight, it's a little depressing scene. Sure, one can always say that as long as the job is going well why one should worry? And that's not a wrong question. But I'm not just made to do a single kind of a job all my life. I want to do everything. I want to make products, sell them too, see how they can be better stored, shipped, priced, promoted, marketed, branded, designed, serviced… everything.

In short I don't want to be a bloke. And looking at the way I'm progressing (or regressing), it seems I've already started on the process of becoming one.