Uncertainties and Inconsistencies

Crossroads everywhere. Career, music, life.

It’s been yet another break. Months have passed and I have been stuck in my shell. Been working on things, as usual, but nothing to showcase.

I am a content creator. I was. Maybe I’m trying to be once again. Content creators are expected to be consistent in content generation and publishing.

At the top of every week, I make a list of things to focus on. I write “Write” and “Blog” like clockwork.

It’s been tough to admit defeat at the end of every week. Like many, I don’t like admitting defeat.

I learned some coding but it has already become just another thing for which I can beat myself up.

Also I finally had COVID. Mild to moderate symptoms. It has been a different experience, and I probably contracted it at a packed gig.

I had one of the most incredible experiences playing at that gig. I have been taking vocal lessons and I have been singing better than ever. Yet I have never felt closer to giving up on music.

Remember my decision to not be active on social media? The thing that musicians and content creators need to be good at to be successful. I continue to not be sensible.

Read a bunch of books. Watched a bunch of shows. I guess that’s what is occupying more of my time.

One TV show reference worth mentioning. Best Quality Vacuum. And I guess I want to pick up and say

“I need a dust filter for a Hoover Max extract pressure pro model 60. Can you help me with that?”

Trigger hippie

For the first time in many months, I'm feeling the pinch of the blues. A feeling of worthlessness is drowning me in and my life suddenly seems pointless. What was the trigger? Well, I'm not quite sure yet. Everything was alright until yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, a routine "off day" on which I chose to work for some extra money via my paycheck at the end of the month, when I had a conversation with my colleague about what I was doing with my life.

She asked me why would I work on an off day instead of relaxing or doing something else. The only answer that I had is that I was desperate for money. I suddenly realized that I am being so desperate to save money that I have censored out pleasure from my life again. I wait for unacceptable periods of time at the bus stops to save some measly rupees. I walk about 2 km up and down (on my way to work and back) to save 2 rupees (for each walk). I divide my lunch into two so that I can eat one portion as dinner. I have stopped watching movies because of the expenses. I have curtailed my party-going and eating out/drinking instincts to save up.

What do I need the money for? I don't quite know. Maybe for the future. The most ironic thing is that I think I'm going to need the money to be in a position to father a kid or two. That's what I have always wanted - to be in a live-in relationship and to be a loving father. But this goal seems to be so far beyond my reach now that there seems to be no point in saving all this money. But I can't help but traumatize myself because that is part of my normal process of coming to terms with the reality.

The rate at which I'm earning right now (in my editing career as well as with music) is definitely not enough for my plans for the unforseeable future. Even if I don't achieve my goals of becoming a parent, with this stream of income, I wouldn't probably have enough to fall back on once I retire. This makes me want to seriously reconsider practicing surgery for a living. But that would mean giving up on music almost altogether, and that is something that I don't want.

I have been brooding over these thoughts and a solution seems to be far from the offing. The one thing that I am glad about is the multitude of well-meaning friends that I have who worry about me and care for how I am. I love them for that. But at the end of it all, I'm here alone having to take care of myself alone. I hope this downspiral does not lead me to another phase of clinical depression where I start contemplating suicide. Honestly, I don't think this is going to happen. But I'll keep you posted on this.

A kind landlord

Continuing on with yesterday’s post...

Yesterday evening, my landlord, a wonderful Keralaite man, who has become a good friend of me now, called me. He wanted to know if I wanted to extend my contract. I had decided by then that I had to. Once I agreed, he asked me if I would be willing to consider a hike in the rent.

I had to think twice – I shouldn’t offend this friend of mine, and I had to try and avoid an avoidable raise in my expenses. I told him my situation. I was honest with him. And guess what, he agreed to my proposition of letting me stay another year without increasing the rent.

I’m very thankful to this wonderful man who is playing a major part in my life by offering me his apartment at a relatively cheap rent. I hope people like me who are struggling financially find such kind landlords!

Apartments, careers, and more

It’s that time of the year – time to renew the lease to my apartment. Last year this time, I had decided that I had to move out from my studio apartment to something better. Of course, I wasn’t earning anything near what I needed to do that. The most ironic thing is that I still am not.

Yes, my editing job and music put together don’t give me enough to justify a decision to rent out something more comfortable. I want to make one thing clear - I am not whining about my career choices. Well, not yet. Although I am scared of the prospect of getting back to surgery one day – I have regular nightmares about the same - I am still not ruling it out.

So, I think I’ll stay back in my apartment one more year. Maybe, next year this time, I would be earning enough to make me confident of moving into a bigger, more comfortable apartment. And maybe, I’ll have someone – a lover – to share it with. As someone told me the other day, the main reason why society is built on partnerships is because two incomes make life much easier.

The Rock's back

This weekend, I spent most of my time watching sport and sports entertainment of television. My excuse was that I was recovering from a brutal week which reminded me of my days during internship and residency. I still remember a 108-hour shift that I had taken during my internship - I was so tired that I fell asleep by the side of patient of snake poisoning! My present non-medical life lacks stories of such superhuman effort. :-(

The highlight of the weekend, hence, was the coming back to WWE of the one and only Rock (Dwayne Johnson). It seemed that WWE was running out of ideas to come up with interesting stories and personalities. All the 'faces' were too juvenile (John Cena and Rey Mysterio for example) and all the 'heels' were incredibly annoying (The Miz and Cody Rhodes).

Vince McMahon, I think, did a careful analysis of the present scene. There were no 'faces' who were brash, arrogant, charismatic like to good old days featuring Stone Cold Steve Austin and the DX. He must have looked back at the roster to see if anything could bring him back the audience which love blatant cockiness that such superstars bring to the table. He must have found the Rock, the one guy which combines all of those missing elements and adds an amazing mic-presence and sense of humor to them.

I'm not going into a cliché here, but Rock did arrive and conquer the WWE universe in all but a 15-minute presence in the ring where he narrated everything that was going wrong with the WWE and how he's going to change them come Wrestlemania XXVII. This has reignited my interest in watching professional wrestling again - if the stories/plots aren't good enough, at least you can hear one of most flamboyant superstars make fun of everything under the sun!

On behalf of all fans of professional wrestling, welcome back Rock! We missed you!

A busy Friday

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'Goosebumps' moment

Music makes me happy. Very happy. That is the main reason why I’m on a sabbatical from surgery, pursuing a career in music which seems rather optimistic and utopian. There are occasions during which I get pleasantly reminded of the reason behind this sudden diversion in the career path. Live performances to a packed audience, a studio/recording session where everything seems to ‘click,’ a brilliant songwriting moment etc.

Rather more uncommon, however, is the goosebumps experience during a jam session with a band when you get everything right – when you can’t quite believe that the music that you are hearing is being performed by a bunch of people that includes yourself. When that happens, it’s like an orgasm with a loved one (I’m not talking about sex with a random person, mind you).

Yesterday, one such moment happened. It was with my new band Bad Influence. We were auditioning my friend Mik for the drummer’s slot. Mik and I are friends through our freelancing work with the band Pralay. On our menu was the song ‘Sober’ by Tool. It is a relatively difficult song for a drummer, which our previous drummer wasn’t quite able to ‘play.’ Mik arrived, played, and conquered! It sounded simply amazing!

When I left the jam room, I had a big fat smile on my face. Dear world, this is why I’m doing what I’m doing. :-)

My future

I had a longish e-mail coversation with May today. We were catching up after a long time - it took a while to reach a state of comfort where we could both open up and be comfortable.

At that point, she asked me - 'So, what's your plan'? I pretended to ignore the question, and replied to her about how editing and music are serving me good, if not well. In her reply, she poked it in further. Deep inside. 'No, I was talking about Orthopedics'. In addition, she'd asked for forgivance for being nagging.

I knew it all along. My future, to her, and to most of my old friends, just means Orthopedics. Nothing more. Most of them are not to be blamed of course - that's how we (including me) were brought up - in a society where education and career was given more priority before life, happiness, and satisfaction.

Some of my newer friends - some of them with the pure intention of hurting me, I suppose (well, then they aren't really friends, aye?) - have also asked me and have made fun of my non-advancement in my medical career. Some have even suggested that I was never good enough, and that is the reason that I chose to chicken out, and that's why I can never get back in it again.

What's my view-point? I know for a certainty that I'm good enough. It's just that I find music and academic editing, in this cocktail that I'm being served at this point in my life, serve me well. They keep me happy and satisfied, and give me enough time and freedom to enjoy life.

Really, that is the reason why I'm hesitant to jump back. It's not that I'm worried about me being good enough - but, I'm not sure if I'll again find the balance in my life if I did. Don't you (all) understand? Or do you still want to nag me?

The Floating Doll

The smile. Innocence puppetified?

The eyes. Shallowness immortalized?
The dimples. Too dramatized?
Thin arms. Too thin and rarefied?

The scene, all the dirt is justified
The act. Can it be classified?
The drain. All guts clarified?
The pain. Not one's satisfied!

And now, its allegorified
Is she me, demagnified?
Am I her, dissatisfied?
This life. Am I too qualified?

I'm afloat, perhaps unjustified
For reasons well publicized
Due to pills well advertised
I hope it's all justified.

QOL

I always wonder an acceptable quality of life (QOL) is? Is it intimately related to lifestyle and comfort? Are both the same?

In the last two years of my life as a struggling bachelor/artist, I have passed through the 'virtual' worst possible scenarios. Hunger, poverty, infestations, debt, depression, separation, and a helluva lot more. All through this period, I have seen and sampled many a level of 'living' - almost all of them being socially superior to mine. Most of these instances made me feel insecure, and apart from occasional fugues of mania and appreciable amounts of alcohol in blood, nothing has helped me much from feeling miserable.

Then came the real shit - depression. And even further down the lane came therapy.

Now my perspective has changed. The long and short, the broad and narrow, the deep and superficial, have all ceased to be a ghastly blur. I have started to think rationally and perhaps have started planning - maybe not to the extent that would be considered prudent at my age. I have goals to aim at and landmarks to achieve.

For example - renting a decent one BHK (one bedroom, hall, kitchen apartment - for you non-Indians), occasional partying, a few movies, a relaxed time during weekends, progress in music and editing, holistic improvement, avoidance of wasting time, occasional indulgence, a complete (albeit cheap) wardrobe, vacation, solitude, quietness, enjoying art... The list could go on and on.

Two questions remain:

1. Is this what quality of life means to all of you? I pose this question to my readers.

2. What has changed?

Is it my graduation? Is it the thrilling experience at my job (it's been about a year since I started working)? Reaching the over-hyped landmark of 30 years of age? Therapy for depression? The gradual but progressive weaning from being an eternal optimist/die-hard romantic? Completion of a circle of life? The bitterness of fate? The irony of existence? Love?

A new job, a new beginning

I’m starting a new job tomorrow. It is a very weird feeling to be saying that word ‘job’ itself as I am used to the phrase ‘working in a hospital’ ever since I became an adult. A vast majority of my friends and well-wishers think that it’s a bad move that I’m making – giving away my medical career and jumping into something new. I can relate with all of them. How I wish I could carry on what I did. If only it could also allow me some time and space to work at my music!

I am starting work as an Academic Editor in the Medicine and Biosciences department of a Knowledge Processing Outsourcing (KPO) organization. I’m looking forward to starting to work there. Why? Mainly because it will let me do what I love doing – being at the keyboard and working on text documents, editing them and making them readable and attractive. Apart from that aspect, this job would give me the financial stability that I have been looking forward to.

To all my friends who don’t want to see me put to waste my 13 years of medical training, all I have to say is this. I understand the risk that I’m taking. But my aim in life is to achieve what I want and to be happy. And I think you have to make a few sacrifices for achieving that. This is a humongous sacrifice and I might regret it in the future. That’s when I’m going to need all of you – my friends. Please stand by me.

Let’s analyze my future

After my recent attainment of the masters degree in surgery, I felt a part of me getting invigorated to search for options to continue my medical career. For the first week or so, when I met and talked with people, I put forth the idea of looking for jobs in hospitals. People like my sister, my uncle and my parents took that as the definitive sign of me ‘coming back on track’, I felt.

My own research, which consisted of consulting my colleagues, seniors and professors had convinced me that there was no hope of finding a hospital job that would give me liberty to rehearse and perform music the way I wanted to. The recession had wreaked havoc on the economy and the job market and finding a nice job, at least as per the opinion from many people outside the medical field, was very difficult.

Mr. Bach, because of his brash, outspoken nature, is the only person who ridicules my attempt to build a career in music with a significant enough force to put me in doubt. Even though I’m not comfortable with people being so in-your-face, he has somehow helped me realize that I need to make a deadline after which I would have to return whole-heartedly to surgery. Before he left for the States, he made me agree to setting the end of this year (or my birthday) this reassessment.

If I don’t make any significant progress/success with my band(s) by then, I would have to go back to working as a surgeon in a hospital irrespective of whether that would make me unable to play at gigs. This way, I just lose a year. That is a reasonable period of ‘sabbatical’ after which I should technically be left unscathed. I must thank Mr. Bach for making me do this. Thank you Mr. Bach!

Anxious times

Hiding behind the Carrie/Samantha impersona, lies my other-side - the bread-winner, the surgeon, the struggling musician. This side, quite obviously, would be anything but glamorous. But that's probably the reason why it should be highlighted even further on this otherwise frivolous blog. Some of you might even remember I had plans to branch this blog into two streams some time back - one for each of these alter-egos. A few of you suggested that I stick up everything out here - the good, the bad; the glamorous and the ugly. Here I'm enacting those suggestions.

My exam results aren't out yet. They were expected a week back and have been unceremoniously postponed until we-don't-know-when. Actually, the results really don't change anything that I'll undertake in the future. Either way, I will have to start working somewhere and earn. It's just that a positive result will give me a big shot in the arm and boost up my self-esteem and help to rest a part of my life at least for a considerable duration.

Amongst the numerous job offers that I had applied for which combine my writing/editing skills and my medical background, a very few have gone to the interview stages. One of them is even at a stage when I need to say 'yes' and join. Because there are formalities to be completed in the college after the exam results come out, and because a new job doesn't really offer 'leaves' to newbies, I can't join anything unless my exam results are out and these things done and over with.

I'm hoping to convert this phase of uncertainty to try and find more jobs that might be 'better' in what they offer. One of them is to work for a magazine like Rolling Stone which will combine my writing as well as my music background. I'm working with a TOI journalist friend of mine to put together a portfolio which might kindle interest in the editors of such magazines. It's a little tough because I have to work within word-restrictions (which is something unheard of in blog circles).

On top of all this, the tryst with our record label is not reached a phase where the fog is cleared. We are still in the negotiation phase and although there seems to be hope around the corner, it hasn't manifested itself in any phsyical form. It has to work somehow - rather, I have to make it work somehow! Remember, music is what was set higher on the priority scale under love and my medical career. I have already lost more ground in both that I could ever hope to recover. It might sound like desperation - it might very well be actually. But the best thing is not accept it and work at achieving what you set out for. As always, 'denial' is sometimes the best way to face the reality.