It is a few days and a year since we moved to Singapore. I was reflecting on this episode of my life and I felt I missed a few points. While I don’t know if want to rant on them and feel further let down, I do want to collect my thoughts some place and revisit later.
I came to Singapore because I fell in love with the place when I first came in. Rohini says that happens to the place you first relocate to; She still loves Chicago better even if she agrees Singapore may be better than Chicago in some aspects. I can’t dispute because I haven’t been to the west at all.
Anyway, it was not just love for the place. We did some study about what we were signing up for. And Singapore really suited our aspirations. And to top it all, it is perhaps the safest town to bring up a kid! That, even if not a requirement right away, is one of the reasons we decided to move. For me, over and above all this, Singapore is a very inspiring story. I felt I could borrow this inspiration into my life. One year on, I don’t feel inspired. I won’t blame the country for that 🙂
Inspiration is a personal thing. It can rarely be imparted. Or at least that is what I have learned in the last one year. In spite of all the inspiration around me, why am I still not inspired? I can’t answer that at all.
The job is good. The pay is good too. We stay in a nice place – both the house and the locality. Social life sucks but the blame squarely falls on us. We rarely hang out in the places that matter. That is a problem I have carried along with me from Chennai. We had a pathetic social life in Chennai – was never a part of any group. But we have enough going on in day-to-day life, that everything else felt like a luxury. It still feels that way today. That is one point to work on: slim down our day to day life – it is very pre-occupying. Beef up on the social front – outside of facebook and twitter, that is.
If you see dreams and wishes slipping away through your fingers, then it is imperative to check your grip. That is the sort of check I am trying to run in my life now. I somehow have come to believe am letting a lot of things slip by. That said, one thing I definitely need to do is to revise my daily schedule. It is so deplorable that I can’t even write it down in these pages. So the next thing is revise and create a schedule that supports making dreams happen. And basically change the energy levels around ourselves.
And in the last couple of years, there is absolutely nothing that I have accomplished that I can talk about. Not in technology, not in any other space. I need to change that. I spent a lot of time learning a lot of programming languages, environments etc. And yet I don’t have even a web app that can vouch for my acquired skill set. Sad and it definitely needs to change. I need to create a niche for myself outside of work – at least one thing at a time.
Lastly, I want to set some deadlines for myself. I have been an engineer for too long. And by the stupid decisions I have made in the past to support my dreams, I have forced myself into this. I don’t particularly hate my position, but I haven’t – even accidentally- showcased any other skill set outside technology. If I don’t manage to be on my own past the deadline, I should at least grow in a job. The last thing I want is to retire from the industry as just another engineer. I’ll create a soft deadline first and see if I manage to pull my act together. If I don’t, then I’ll create a hard deadline beyond which I just need to revise my career path. I am already late and I can’t keep waddling for long.
One year from now, I should be more autonomous in my career. I either am on my own, or am a consulting free lancer or I am an intra-preneur. I guess I can settle for the third as well, if I am not cut for the first two! If I am still writing this post one year from now – all that reading Seth Godin is such a waste of time!