Busy Blues

Another rant by moondust.

How often have you heard the word “I’m busy” said to you? Off late, that is all I seem to be hearing! I myself not being an exception!

Friends. All my friends now are buried under a huge pile of work, either at office or at college with their assignments. Last year, the word “busy” made me cringe and tune out of the conversations. How much work can a person have? If people want to, they can always make time for things they want to do. Well, I guess it is true that you will never understand one’s problems to the full extent until you yourself are faced with the issue. Case in point- ME. Nowadays (i.e. after starting to work), the mere fact of coming home at 8 P.M. makes me a lethargic time-waster when I’m at home. When the weekends do turn up, I am in the bliss of having to do nothing, and in need of an ever extended break that stretches for the whole weekend, without doing anything that is remotely beneficial to my current situation. The thought of having my whole week sucked into a black hole that spits me out every Friday evening, makes me an idle potato. I wonder, are we structured to behave this way? Or is it a challenge posed to us by the universe and its ‘superpowers’ that is another race to prove our worth, our existence?

This just may be me ranting as I have never had this many things to do and to keep up with at any point in my life before work. College years, the most useless years of my life, has spoilt me to no end. On the positive side, there is always a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment that is there now that was never there while doing engineering. I would say, that is reason enough to let go of my past lazy days but the thought that there NEVER will be any in the future is quite scary. No more of those study holidays, when all I used to do was lounge around without reading the umpteen number of chapters that I had to.

Coming back to my point about making time for things you should do, it is definitely not an inviting option. My weekends have become the time during which I try and re-live my lazy days. This I have come to realise is definitely not healthy! The hangover I get on Monday, from all the lounging around I do is part of it. There is also the part about my eluding all the work I should be doing, which does nothing to make my life easier to live. It would be great if we were all part-droid, we could switch off that part when we want to be more human and we could make full use of our robotic self when we approach our procrastination threshold ;) That should be all The-Big-bang-theory-watching that is inspiring me to emulate Sheldon (a character from the above mentioned TV series).

Recently, a constant annoyance to me has been elusive recommenders.

“I’m sorry ma... I have been very busy these days”

“Could you call me back on ---day?”

This is what inspired me to write this blog. How busy can a person get that they do not have a moment to hit reply, to my email and type a single line?! Well, I guess thinking on those lines would make me a hypocrite. THAT is another flaw of humans. As I have noticed, most of my flaws are centred on the fact that I’m human, get me some Artificial Intelligence I say!!

A psychological perspective on life!

posted by moondust

This post and my previous post on our education system are blogs I posted on the cognizant blog server. I thought it made sense for me to post some of them here, and more to come :)

I got the idea to post on this topic from an essay writing contest at a friend's college.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 10th is World Mental Health day. In lieu of this, I thought it would be apt to post my take on the issue. Mental health affects one’s attitude, one’s relationship with one’s family, friends and superiors; our whole outlook towards life is an indication of our mental health.


I can say with some certainty that a cynic has definitely gone through quite a few upsetting incidents in his/her life to have such a negative outlook on life. An optimist could either have been shielded from all the downsides in life or he/she had the capability look past the lows of life and had enough faith in the future being good to him/her. A sadist is twisted enough to wish relish others’ ill will. Looking past all the definitions, our mental state affects EVERYTHING that we do. I feel that being mentally healthy is the first step towards reaching your goal. From the simplest thing such as procrastination that hinders one’s progress to sensitive issues such as ego that affects our relationships with our superiors/sub-ordinates who would play key roles in advancement our career s, our mental health matters to a great extent!

What kind of incidents scar people so much that their whole perception of life changes? Most of these incidents occur during our childhood. Small things such as bullying in school can result in the bully becoming a sadist and the person being bullied becoming a cynic or an introvert. Things that happen at a young age scar you for life! The attitude of kids’ parents towards the kids, towards each other, towards the kids’ grandparents, towards the parents’ sub-ordinates ET. Al reflects on the kids’ actions when they grow up.

Aside from all these, many movies such as The Truman show, Inception, Shutter Island and books like, tell me your dreams (Sidney Sheldon), have explored the psychological aspects of people etc. Psychology of a person is a wonderful puzzle. But getting into it may skew your whole thought process. People who play mind games are well versed at manipulating others by clearly comprehending their thought process. We should be wary of that sort.

Ultimately, what we need in life is happiness. I strongly feel that if we channel positive thoughts, good things would certainly happen to us. So to be successful, believing in oneself would be the first step :)