Frog in a hot vicious circle

I think I am having an early onset of mid life crisis. Because I think the first trigger has arrived - to be aware of your mortality, that your time left in the world is finite and you will not be able to do all the things you dreamt of that you need to prioritise and be realistic (I cringe while writing this word here, I hate it, what exactly is meant by it), the dawning of the understanding that your youth is fading away and there is less and less time to do the things that you want and how you are behind on things you assumed you would have by now.

But my bigger problem is something else. It is that I am not striving for fulfilment or happiness but more like distraction and temporary amusement. So I drink beer and eat pizza one day, next day I drink Scotch and seekh kabab, the next time I want to go out to a pub because I'm bored of the first two. And when I get bored of all these three I start planning for a holiday. Then I come back and start this cycle over.

So I am gaining weight, wasting my time and losing my money on these things which give me no long term happiness. One such distraction costs me around 1000 bucks, with my current salary I can buy two such distractions per day, of course I need to pay rent, service my car, travel to office and do some other long term investments, but still I can afford these distractions at least twice a week. You can label this habit as living in the moment, enjoying the present, having fun in the now rather that saving for the future which is uncertain and some other shit like that. But I know the truth that it is what I called it is  - a distraction because I can feel the hollowness and the guilt & despair it leads. Which makes me crave for more fun, more instant gratification. So it goes on and on the vicious circle.

But this was still better if the circle did not keep on getting bigger and bigger every time it repeated. If I keep wasting my time like this I realise I will have no future. I will have extra 10 kgs of weight which I will not be able to get rid of, would have spent on my money on fast food and I will see 5 years later that my friends had bought houses and TVs from that money; and to top it all my career will slow down even further effectively making me poorer in the future due to the inflation. I am afraid I will slowly boil in this hot water of life like the proverbial frog without realising it at what point did it happen

I want to let it all out, to hear me say it or rather read me typing it because these days I can barely hold a thought in my head, all I'm looking for are distractions and more distractions. These days I have started taking my phone with me when I go to shit, which I never did all these years, maybe I cannot be with my thoughts alone even for 10 minutes. I had tried to meditate one day and plan to do more but that is to clear my head of thoughts rather than clear the thoughts in my head, actually to have clarity in my thoughts and face these issues that I am facing. I have started slacking off in my work, I was never a hard worker and probably never will be but I was never this bad, I go to office late, around 12, work for 2 - 3 hours, surf the net and check social networking sites for the rest of the time and come back home thinking about food. What will I eat at home, what dessert can I buy while come and what snack can I buy at the small canteen that has opened in office recently. I guess food is the only thing I look forward to these days. I have a Spain trip coming up sometime in the next 40 days but I am so scared of thinking about it or planning about it because if for any reason it doesn't happen I will be crushed.

I plan to work out more from the next month, give up on the junk food, start working hard at work, plan for my next appraisal cycle which will be due in October, meditate every day for 15 minutes but I have been thinking of doing all this for quite some time now, but I keep waiting for some big event to happen to push me into doing it. Some long weekend (I had twice in the last month), culmination of some life event (I have been having none), some great inspiration from somewhere, perhaps some book or movie that I will reread and my third eye will open. Along with all this I am also afraid and insecure that what if my life is going to stay like this, maybe I will never amount to anything, never even do at par with my friends let alone beat them, maybe I will live and die in anonymity and mediocrity. The past says other wise, I have risen to challenges in the past and have done equally well as my friends so I should be able to do it again. But maybe the hard work that I cannot or would not do is the final key, only it can unlock further doors.

But I need to do these things in the future, not in any order and to find the strength of doing it.

• Get a new job after coming from Spain with a hike 30%
• Lose weight, get back to 70 Kgs

So I can accomplish these things before I am 35

• Buy a house
• Buy a new Toyota Fortuner or an equivalent vehicle
• Get a package of 25 Lakhs

And also these minor goals which also matter apart from the materialistic ones.

• Learn rock climbing, climb something worthy for a beginner.
• Go to Maldives and be able to pay for things that we want to do, though I think I will be still be worrying about money because it is a bloody expensive and you cannot compete will all the world's rich people

Maybe this blog will help. I have already thought about the problem now at least. Even my wife sees that I have problems and wants me to go on a vacation alone to sort out my issues,  a thought not very original as I had mentioned this to her a couple of times that  I wanted to do it.

Phew. I need help and I think I can only look within for it, Hell, who knows maybe my psyche will get fed up of this wallowing in self pity and bounce back on it's own; but till then I wish myself luck. And I remember that there is no luck in this world except what we make.

Incident 216598 - URGENT : Doomsday in Metropolis!

My name is Chintan Patel and I am not the fastest man alive, or the strongest, or a have a green ring which makes the defacto guardian of this space sector. But what I am is the co-owner of Patel Associates and PM (Project Manager) of Superman.

The origin story –

Let me start with the backdrop or as it is more commonly known as in comic book mythos as the origin story

The year is 2020, labour laws in US have become very tough with only 5 hours per day working, overtime rates are astronomical, everyone including superheroes have a right to union, and all workers have to be insured. And given Superman’s nature of work he is un-insurable. So as a result the superhero business, you know saving the world and shit, has been outsourced to guess what – India.

Now Superman works for an Indian company, my company – Patel Associates with the US government working as a client. And by working I mean actually do the superhero work, not his cover as Clark Kent in the Daily Planet, which was a pathetic cover by the way. This is definitely going in his annual appraisal as feedback from me. I plan to make him a Sardar with the name of Supreet Maan from Amrikka, complete with a turban and beard as his cover. This will be so much better than the current thing he does where he parts his hair differently, wears glasses and thinks no one will recognize him.

The process –

Before you go any further you should know that everything in a BPO or any service company for that matter works by a process and pre-negotiated terms. Any crisis has to be raised as a ticket. Let us see some examples

General Zod is in Metropolis – Has to be a P3 ticket, the damage is localized, no widespread disorder expected, people to be killed are in the 1 – 10,000 range.

Lex bhaai Luthor is causing a war in Qurac – It will be a P2 ticket. Damage is global, planet wide disorder expected but other parts of universe can continue their business as usual. Death toll between – 10,001 and 100,000,000.

Anti Monitor is causing crisis on infinite earths – This constitutes a P1 ticket. Anti matter cannon is about to bring an end to all multiverse. Damage is multi-universal and death toll is 7 x 10⁹ to 10¹⁰⁰.

The story –

 

But enough about Superman, while everyone agrees life is difficult for him what the general population doesn’t know is that life can be even more difficult for this PM and working with these inscrutable clients.

So it so happened that a monster shot into space from Calaton crash landed on earth went into a rampage in the American Midwest, punched his way through Booster bhaai Gold and a few other first level superheroes and finally reached Metropolis. At this stage a P2 ticket was raised by US Government but according to process I had to downgrade it to a P3 as the wildlife killed by Doomsday did not count in the death toll.

Superman responded within 3 hours which is within SLA. He had to finish cleaning his fortress of solitude first as part of the annual KPA.

There was a massive battle and half of Metropolis was levelled (as Doomsday was punched underground for some time and exploded a lot of gas lines). They hit each other so hard that the shockwaves from their punches shattered the windows of nearby buildings. In the end of the monster was killed and Superman was killed as well.

  

Of course Superman was sent to the fortress of solitude in a stasis chamber to absorb yellow rays and stuff and finally recovered but even after my team member being nearly killed the client has been a pain in the ass. I think people are thankless for saving their lives if they have outsourced that. See the stinker they sent, I nearly pulled my remaining hair out –

“Dear Mr. Patel,

Thank you for solving the problem – 216598 in Metropolis, please pass on our thanks to your team member as well.

But there are some serious concerns raised by our stakeholders and we need your response on the below questions:

1.  We need root cause analysis of this incident, why was this monster loose in the city?
2. Why is the occurrence of natural and supernatural calamity so high in Metropolis? Every other day either some alien or giant robot or mad scientist keeps creating havoc in the city.
3. How can we avoid such issues in the future? We need a roadmap to lower the rate of these things happening.
4. Total time taken to defeat was 4 hours 13 minutes.
5. There is an escalation from the Mayor of Metropolis, they say that there no communication sent from Superman to the city’s civilians that when this issue will be resolved and what was our action plan.
6.  How are we going to handle the damage caused this battle?

Please submit a RCA document for this issue highlighting our learnings from this incident.

Also we have proposed the below formula for defeating of super villains, this is effective immediately.

Weight of supervillain	Maximum type permitted to defeat
0 – 250 pounds	1 hour
251 – 500 pounds	2 hours
501 – 5000 pounds	4 hours

Best Regards,

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense

United States of America”

I tried to give them reasonable explanation but I think they have adamantium skulls that nothing seems to get through, see the reply they sent. At this point I’m not surprised if even Superman jumped into a supernova after shooting himself with a kryptonite bullet while wearing a 15¹⁰ SPF sunscreen.

“

Dear Mr. Patel,

Please find my comments in red

I understand your point we can have a call to discuss these issues further. Also I do not think that classifying supervillains by weight is the most optimum way, this will classify Lex Luthor in the 1 hour category which is his biggest nemesis and the most formidable opponent.

Then we need to create another scale with classifying each villain into a type I to IV category. All classification should be assigned within 5 minutes of fighting the villain.

 1. The monster was supposedly killed by the people in Calatan and jettisoned into space as it was too unholy to keep it on their planet.

We need to proactively screen all space debris which is coming towards Earth to see if there are super strong evil monsters on them. Please submit an action plan for this.

2. We do not know what is the reason for this. Same situation is in Gotham and Central City as well. Lot of people keep experimenting on themselves with Particle accelerators, white dwarf star matter and gamma rays which almost always go bad and cause them to develop some super power and an evil attitude.

We need to be informed about any such potential new experiments minimum one month in advance with a rating of 1 – 5 scale on the threat level.

3. The appearance of intergalactic ancient monster on Earth is totally random and cannot be predicted.

Ok. Please provide all the monster appeared on USA soil in the last 50 years. Please classify them as human or alien.

 4. Originally known as "The Ultimate", Doomsday was born in prehistoric times on Krypton, long before the humanoid Kryptonian race gained dominance over the planet about 250,000 years ago. He has the gift of utilizing the power of whoever killed him and being reborn with it the next time. He is ranked 46^th in the IGN’s list of best villains.

 Because of the above complexity it took Superman a long time to kill him.

We understand but this was a very urgent issue, violent wrestling competitions were being held in the city that day which were affected by this incident. The organizers are being sued by the people who bought the tickets but couldn’t reach the venue. Please expedite these issues from next time.

 5. Superman was busy fighting the monster the moment he laid his eyes on him and kept on fighting for hours. There was no time to communicate anything and with the general disorder present we also believe the all public announcement systems and broadcast signal were down.

Communication to the stakeholders is very important. Please include this in the best practices to be followed. After 5 minutes of confrontation and accurately understanding the category type of the villain Superman should then convey everyone in the list attached to this email, that the supervillain is being taken care of and what is the approximate  time for the calamity to be over.

6.Covering of collateral damage is not under the process of Superman effort. If the city they can raise a separate incident under ‘The Flash – Quick Rebuilding’ section which will be additionally charged

The city has refused to raise a new ticket and wants the damage rebuilt under the same incident. As the monster as well the actions of superman are not any of their fault they are not willing to foot the bill for the damage caused. Please manage internally and have the city rebuilt ASAP

Best Regards,

Hillary Clinton

Secretary of Defense

United States of America

“

Sigh! I wish to go to the anti-matter universe where perhaps the vendors will make the life of client difficult and send them stinkers instead. Tya koi problem nahi  thai.

Second image taken from The Art of Dan Scott (DANSCOTTART.COM)