What is my plan to free myself from the rat race?

20 05 2012

I think that question must be on a lot of your minds. How am I going to free myself from the 9-5 chains that have bound us all? How am I going to move on, move up and move forward? How will I break free and travel for the rest of my life?

The real answer is that I do not have an answer. 

Hilarious, right? I know that sounds iffy and a little bit crazy. My plan really is just to do it. Like Nike says all the time, I am not going to think about it, I am not going to analyze it, I am not going to dissect it. I am just going to pick a date, and I am just going to do it.

I am going to leave. I am going to save up enough money to travel for a year and I am going to ensure I have enough money to pay off my student loan interest while I am gone. I am going to sell the car. I am going find a good renter for my condo, and I am going. I am off to the winds, to the heavens and to the light.

I am going to walk around like a bum for a year, wearing clothes that are dirty, that are dusty, that have tears in them. I am going to carry all my belongings on my shoulders, in a little backpack, that will sustain me for a year. I will eat at little street-side stalls. I am going to spend at least 20 of the 24 hours in a day outdoors, under the clouds and the sun. I am going to spend maybe 1-3 hours a week on a computer and that is all, nothing compared to the 50 hours a week that I spend right now. I am going to meet random people and become instant friends with them, sharing all my dreams, and aspirations with them. I am going to see different cultures and see how people from other countries live, work, and interact with each other, learning from them and giving back to them. I am going to support the local economies of all of these places little by little, by giving a dollar here and a dollar there.

Finally, I am going to be living life the way human beings are meant to live, moving from place to place, not stuck at a desk, and just dancing my life away with good food in my belly and good company in my stead.

The plan. Ah, yes, the plan. The plan shall come. Once you make the decision, a strong decision. A decision that is so deep inside of you, that it is you, the plan shall come to you. It shall come to you in the form of friends and strangers helping you out, money that just appears to drop into your lap, and opportunities that just appear out of nowhere.

The universe will help you along. Whatever God you believe in, will help you out. Once you decide, every force in the universe will conspire to help you out.

You do not need to worry. I do not need to worry. The plan is coming, in fact, I already see it peeking through the curtains at me.

Let me know what you think of my ramblings below. :)

 


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Categories : Life, random, Travel, Universe, work

Mission statement for my life

30 04 2012

Image

I had a lot of I don’ts when I was talking about my mission statements. I don’t want to be governed by someone else. I don’t want to depend on a company for my paycheque.

I need some I dos. Like, I want to be free. I want to travel more. I want to dance more. I want to have more yoga in my life. Self exploration. Self knowledge. Independent. Self sufficient. I want to be able to take care of myself.

Mission statement: I want to be free to do what I want with my day.

Values – freedom, learning, creativity, accomplishment, love


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Categories : Life

Feeling the blues

29 05 2011

I am feeling blue. Extremely sad. The weather outside is thunder and lightning. And it is the same inside of me. I am feeling hopeless today, hopeless about the future, and I am never like that. I am the most optimistic person on the planet. But I feel sad today. Sad with the way things are going. I am not happy at the moment. I am not controlling the sadness, I am letting the tears flow. I do not want to pretend to be happy. I want to feel what I am feeling.

I have noticed that I am so much more sensitive to my body and its moods, the more yoga I do. I don’t know what it is about yoga. But I feel every emotion so much more sharply than I did before. I am more in tune with myself, my hormones, my moods. And of course, feeling all the emotions works well when I am up, but when I am down, it just means I am really down. I am blue in the bluest sense of the word. I can’t help it. I cannot get myself going when I am in one of those sad moods. I don’t feel like going to yoga, or eating or reading, three of my favorite things in the world. IF I saw stop doing any of these three, you know I am dead. Dead inside or going to that state very soon. It is something at the core of me. I need to do the three, eat, read, and yoga.

Of course, being rejected by every man alive after they get to know me after three dates doesn’t help the situation. I feel blue because I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to be with me. I am a cool person. I am intelligent, beautiful and in great yoga shape. I can hold a conversation, I am independent, I do not need to be taken care of and I am classy. Why doesn’t anyone want to be with me? I drive men away. I do not know what I do but I drive them away somehow. And that makes me sad.

And of course being at home is great, but the travel bug is inside of me, it doesn’t refuse to let go. I want to go traveling as soon as possible. I am working hard at saving, but still the time when I can go is still so far.

Writing it down in this journal style format helps a lot. I feel a thousand times better after I tell the universe, I am blue. Its therapeutic, and I feel like I am being heard. Thank you for listening to me be blue. Hope you are feeling better on this rainy night.

 


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Categories : Life, Relationship, Travel, Yoga

Applying for jobs

4 05 2011

I have been applying for jobs in the Marketing field for about a year now. Since last May, I have consistently sent out my resume to thousands of companies, hoping to hear back from them. And I have been lucky enough to hear back from at least a dozen of them. I have even been lucky enough to reach the final three contestants on their interview game show. But I have always been one of the three that have been rejected for not being qualified enough or for being too qualified, or for whatever else reason they could make up.

That really sucks, doesn’t it? I mean, its all fine and dandy if I don’t get called in for an interview. I don’t actually feel the pain of rejection as badly. But when I get called in for an interview, I get to the final stage of the interview process, I am the very last ones out of hundreds they pick out, and then I get the boot, that hurts, that really, really hurts. It hurts where it counts most, in the self-esteem booty. It hurts even more when you see the person they chose over you. You look at that person and you look at them and you have this look on your face. Seriously? Seriously, you chose that loser over me. I can’t believe it.

Of course, at that point, you want to pull out the race card. Is it because I am a minority? Is it? Well, is it? You will never know obviously, even though non-minority individuals get selected over you every single time. You could blame it on the race card, or you could blame it on the fact that you left the last company you worked at after only one year and went to travel for a year. Maybe that could have something to do with it? What do you guys think?


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Categories : work

Accomplishments over the past year

18 04 2011

Okay, I have some thoughts to share with the universe and with my readers of course. I’m really happy with the way some of the thoughts I have been putting out in the universe have been received. They are getting accolades and that makes me very happy indeed. I just realized that I will be reaching the one year anniversary of my return from my trip abroad at the end of the month, April 26th. It is crazy how fast time has passed. It feels like just yesterday that I was on a beach in Goa with Ritz, just chilling and getting burnt. And now its been a year since that event, more than a year, and yet, it feels like moments have passed.

I was thinking about last year, and what I have accomplished in that year, and I feel proud of myself. I have managed to put in almost 15k into my loan repayment, without actually having a full-time job, which in itself is an amazing accomplishment, I must say. I have this feeling inside of me, oh, I cannot pay off my loans, unless I have a full-time job. That is a stupid feeling, a weird feeling, an unnecessary feeling, and that is the reason, I do not believe in it anymore. I do not need to have a full-time job or a high-paying job to pay off my debts. I am doing great the way I am going at it right now. In one more year, I should be almost at the end of the debt-paying journey, which is kind of a feat, I believe with a server position part-time that too.

I have made some great new friends, Carly, Michelle, Zina, Tom, Anna, and I have made friends with a politician in my backyard which is nice. I have learned a lot about politics and gotten involved in my community. I have read at least a hundred books in the past year. I have gone out a great deal and partied it up in my twenties, as I wished it to be. I have been going to yoga since I came back from my trip, so I have been going to yoga constantly without any breaks for about a year. I have taken a bartending lesson, which helped me with my getting a physical, movement job. I have been spending more time with my family and loved ones, which is nice.

I have been using cash only for the past six months, and using my credit cards only for rare online purchases.  The cash is king idea is so helpful to people in debt. It has helped cut down my spending by 80%. I feel uncomfortable now putting anything on my credit or debit card. I use only cash that I have on me. I don’t even carry my cards with me anymore, they sit at home in my purse. I have cut down on my personal belongings. I have given away all the clothes I do not use, and I have cut down my cosmetic jewelery garbage by giving that away to a craftsperson. My life feels less cluttered, in every way possible. I have cut down as well on the number of activities that I say yes to. If I feel too overwhelmed I just say no. I do not try to do everything.

I have finished writing my first book about my travels abroad. I have grown my hair so it looks nice. I am in the best shape of my life with yoga and eating healthy. I am learning more about where my food comes from to figure out whats in it. I have been using fewer chemicals in my home and body, less product, and less cosmetics. More natural. The only product I really use is eyeliner. I use a natural eye cream, cocoa butter for my body lotion, aveeno naturals for my face morning and night, and lipbalm. I use natural coconut oil for my hair to make it soft and condition it.

Looking back, I feel good about this year and what I have accomplished in it.  Onto the next year and a lot more good stuff to come.


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Categories : Fitness, Food, Life, Money, Reading, Relationship, Travel, Universe, work, Writing

Feeling stuck and blue

13 04 2011

I am not having a good week. Seriously, awful. Is it a test? I dont know what it is, maybe the ups and downs are a normal part of life, or maybe it isn’t really a down, it is just my perspective of it.  Whatever it is, I cried a lot more this week, than in the past 9 months combined. I dont know whats going on with me. Hormones? No, it is the feeling of uselessness, the feeling of unmovement, the feeling of being stuck. As you know, I want to start traveling soon, and by soon, I mean, in the next year. I already have a travel partner, we already know where we want to go, the travel bug has affected my bloodstream, it has taken hold upon me. I wake up every morning dreaming about it, unless I am hungry, than I dream about food.

But because I cannot for the life of me, find a job, I am stuck. I am unable to move. I am unable to travel, until I find a steady paycheck job and use it to pay off every last shred of my mortal enemy, my student loans. The funny thing is that I used to congratulate myself on the fact that the only loan I have is student loans, not realizing that the reason I had to use loans for school, was because I spent too much money on crap, which then I used my savings to pay off. Thus, no savings, resulted in taking out student loans to pay for school. Ughers! I used to be a shopaholic, and thank God, I am not anymore, I learned my lesson, but now, I kick myself in the backside every time I remember, the thousands that I had saved up and that went down the drain. Of course, not really down the drain, it went towards providing me with life lessons, valuable life lessons about money and debt that I will keep with me forever.

Another reason I feel blue is because of a man. Of course, a drumroll isn’t needed, I only feel blue about men nowadays, as everything else in my life is in shape. Why are men the way they are? Why don’t they mean the things they say? When they say, I will call you after work tonight, does that mean, a week from today or never? I dont understand. Whenever I think a boy likes me, I get excited of course, especially when I like him back, and then nothing. Kaput! The flames are ignited and blown off as quickly as they began. What am I doing wrong? Am I doing everything right, but it is just not meant to be? Real relationships aren’t supposed to be that hard, right? I mean, you are supposed to like each other, why wouldn’t you want to see more of each other? Maybe I need to get a life, and stop bothering the people in my life who actually have lives. It seems everyone else I know is busy or stressed out about time, except me. I have oodles of it, for good reason. I actually planned it out that way. I want to be in the moment, I choose to spend time doing the things that matter. But still, when I really like a guy and he doesn’t call me back for a few days, I get blue.


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Categories : Money, Relationship, Travel

What script are you following?

3 04 2011

I am reading the book, Simple Prosperity, by David Wann. He asks us to consider what script we are following when we are living our lives? That is a really interesting question to me, as I have been pondering on the same question for a while now. The reason the question irks me is because it is so true. What script are we following? Why are there so many of us following the same way of living? Why does everyone live the same exact life? Why are we becoming so two-dimensional? Why are we becoming so similar in the way we live our lives? So similar that our facebook status updates wouldn’t be indistinguishable from some one else’s.

We all are born, go to school for about twelve years, go to a university for four years, get a 9-5 job after which pays reasonably well, get into debt with credit cards and student loans for the life that we want to lead, get drunk every friday and saturday night so we have something to talk about on Monday morning, get married in a big hoopla getting into debt for it, so we can prove to the world that our wedding is something different, have children, because of course everyone has to have children (!), and then wait for retirement, focusing all of our attention on our children, as we ourselves lose all semblance of a life.

I mean, is this all what we have to look forward to? Is this the ONLY way a person can live a life? And if the person wants to live differently than they are persecuted, until they conform to the ‘normal’ way of living. Why does everyone need to get married or have children? Is there a rule book somewhere that says we cannot do otherwise? Will the time-space continuum fail if we remain single or childless?

The funny thing to me is that no one even thinks about living a different way. I mean, for a lot of my friends, living a different kind of life, without marriage or children or a big house in the suburbs or a vacation every year in Mexico, doesn’t even seem a possibility. It doesn’t even enter their thinking process. Why would they think otherwise? It has been working well for their parents till now, it should work out well for us as well.

I propose a different script for my life. I want to live a nomadic life. I want to work six months of the year and travel the other six months. I want to visit a different country every year. I want to work small, part-time jobs, and spend all of my free time, volunteering in politics, and other environmental charities. I do not want to get married or have children, but I do want to have relationships. I want to consume as little as possible, so I do not have to worry about storing all of my stuff when I leave the country for six months at a time. I want to do working holidays and teach English and work on cruiseships.

Of course, everyone asks me the question. When will you stop living this way and live normally again? I always look at them with sadness in my eyes. Why do I have to stop living this way ever? I ask them. Will I run out of something in the near future that I will need to replenish by staying at home for long periods of time and having children and a marriage? Will that save me from something unknown? Why do I have to stop? Unless I get tired of it, I do not think I will stop.

What do you think of my script? What is your script?


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Categories : Life, Reading, Travel

For sale: MBA, unused, almost new

26 03 2011

I have an MBA from a reputable university in Canada. My life has been like a clothing dryer in most cases, tumbling up and down, into and out of most of my careers. I became a government worker, because they asked me to, after being a student worker with them for a while. And I joined the MBA program when there was a lot of dissatisfaction in my life. I didn’t know what I was doing with myself, I was worried I was floundering. I wasn’t contributing to the world in a way I wanted to. I felt that I was just being a burden on the planet, instead of being a contributing member. I wasn’t leaving a positive footprint in anyway on the planet, environmentally or otherwise. It was time for a change.

Not knowing any other way to discover myself, I decided to go for more schooling, the only way brown people on this planet know how to advance themselves and learn more. If I was a Canadian, I would have given up everything and started travelling, and that would have been a better way to discover myself, than anything. But whatever. I spent thousands to get a degree in Business. Looking at me now, looking at my personality from my blogs, you can surmise that business would not be a good fit for my green, yogic ways. That would be a correct assessment. I graduated with honors, and got a great job right away, with a great company and a great boss. Everything seemed rosy, until I realized that the personality required for business, cut-throat, driven, competitive, hard-core, is something that I do not like to be. I am none of those things. I like cooperation rather than competition. I like rest rather than hard-core. I am relaxed and unhurried. I am easy-going. The business clashed with my personality.

The time came for me to decide either to change myself and fit my round peg into the business square hole and be unhappy for the rest of my life, or remove myself from the job. I left for my travels, and I had the best time of my life. I realized I needed to do the MBA to realize that I do not ever want to work in that field. Of course, it is an expensive trial by error, but it is a lesson that will stick with me forever.

Now, I have an MBA, almost new, that is unsaleable, and unusable. I am hoping to use the skills I learnt in the program for some charitable organization and so I have been applying like crazy on Charity Village, Canada’s premier charity job site. Hope I get something, fingers crossed.


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Categories : Life, work

Alternative lifestyles (not sexual :))

10 03 2011

I was thinking to myself a few days ago, I need to find some other people who want to live an alternative lifestyle like I do. It seems like in spite of all the crazy happenings in the world, in spite of all the signs to the opposite, people are still living the same way. Our environment is dying. Our spending is out of control and putting us into debt and working jobs we hate. We have no freedom. But still, we live the same way. We are not changing the way we live. We are not going to change the world. One person cannot change the world. But a legion of us surely can. It has to be a monumental effort. Together, we can make a difference. But it has to be more than a few thousand people in the world.

All of us have to realize that we have a choice. We can choose to live differently and we do not need to be afraid that we will be rebuked  for it. I have been feeling down the last few days, because I was feeling that I am being rebuked for taking the year off to go do my own thing. I haven’t found a job, even though I have been looking for the past year. But I just realized that in spite of having no steady job for the past year, I have been cruising along without dipping into my savings, I have been paying off my student loans every month and I have been going out and having fun along with it. I cannot believe it when I think about it. But I have!

Isn’t that crazy? I mean, this is a good lesson for me. I can live without a full-time, steady job. I know this is hard to hear. I am going to repeat it though. I CAN LIVE WITHOUT A FULL-TIME, STEADY JOB. I myself have a hard time to hear that. Most people do not want to hear that statement. A full-time job is necessary. It is the way people live. Without it, what would we do? We have to work full-time otherwise the world will fall apart, right?

This mystifies me that I haven’t observed this fact before. I mean, I do not have a car, I do not live on my own, and I do not go on shopping surges, but I do live luxuriously at home with frequent outings, and I love the use of the cheap TTC transit in my beautiful city. I think this year is going to change the way I think. I already know that I will not work full-time forever. I know that I am not going to work forever. I know that I am going to travel a lot. I am living a dream life.

I do not want to seem like I am congratulating myself. This is as new to me as it might seem to you. I am as baffled by it as you are. Some days are good, some days are bad. Some days I want to just buy a car and not be jostled and fondled by the TTC users in rush hour traffic. Some days I just want to fuck-it-all and go to Hawaii to visit a friend. Some days I just want to crawl into bed, because I feel so little and useless because I am not a useful cog in the system of the world. I am not a functional member of society. I am just present. I do contribute by eating out, dancing in clubs, and making occasional purchases. But I am not the person, Obama would turn to, to help improve the economy by shopping.

I am still discovering the ins and outs of this way of living. The alternative way of living. Good for the environment, your mental health and relationships. Let me know what you think.


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Categories : Life, Travel, work

Travel log #1: Personal Space

2 03 2011

I felt a bit of shame a few days ago. We have a cousin from India living with us while he’s going to school and he annoys the hell out of me. It is just the spoilt person in me, that is unwilling to have someone else in the house with us. I love my siblings to death, but I cannot usually stand anyone else living with me. I had the hardest time having people over to my place when I was alone in Waterloo, and roommates is hard. But then I thought to myself, charity begins at home. I cannot think about helping all the people in the world, volunteering and giving myself to others, until I begin it at home. I cannot treat the people in my house like crap and then think I am a saint for helping out the rest of the people on this planet. That is foolishness. I decided to try and be nicer. I really try. I usually fail miserably, but at least I am trying.

The problem of course is personal space. Personal Space is a big issue in North America. We have so much of it, we are always looking for more of it. We like space, in between us and around us. When I was traveling in South-East Asia, that is one thing that I noticed. People in Asian countries do not have a lot of personal space and therefore, they do not expect a lot of personal space. I would have people ramming right into my back and front as if we were sardines packed into a careening bus. Ladies would put their children on my lap and their bags on theirs, as if I was just a piece of the furniture. I would have to delicately remind them of the contrary, by putting the child back on the floor or back on them. It was too hot for me to be feeling charitable in that way.

I realize some of the space was pushed on, because the men in South East Asia are so touchy-feely and gropey, as they have no idea how to treat a lady. They are so gross sometimes. Some of them are such gentleman. They would carry my bags for me. They would buy me dinner, without any expectations. And others would snuggle close to me while we were seating on the bus, and pretend someone had pushed them from the side. So annoying.

Also, sitting in my family’s house, they also didn’t realize the concept of personal space. When I am sitting on a couch, reading my book, I want to be left alone. I want space, and time to be by myself. A lot of times, I would have to leave my family’s homes to travel by myself just so I could be by myself.

Eventually, after being in the company of Asians for a few months, I lost the concept of personal space as well. I didn’t mind someone coming up to my face and chatting with me. I completely lost my sense of people having to stay a few feet back. I actually grabbed someone’s children and held them in my lap, so they could hold onto their bags.

The minute I came back to the vast space of Canada, I was back to original ways. Now, I need a lot of space, just to be myself. Otherwise, I get cranky.


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Categories : Relationship, Travel

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