Love in the Age of World Domination

The Laziest Way to do it

I am a big believer in figuring out the laziest way to do anything. Put another way, it means figuring out the "smartest, easiest most efficient way to do it”.

And there are a lot of people like me.

I mean seriously - why do you have to deliberately slow your minds down to do something in 10 steps when you can do it in 2. It takes talent to simplify things, whereas making things more difficult is easy.

With me, usually what happens is there is a period of extended procrastination because, after all, speed kills. And then suddenly, under pressure or duress (or some kind of threat to my life), my mind focuses. And it focuses sharply. Then I want to what I am doing as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Some people simply don't attach a value to hard work for the sake of hard work. They prefer being creative and figuring out how to do things quickly with the least amount of energy possible. This is probably the combination of impatience, the ability to act impulsively, and a willing to take disproportionately high risks. We love it. We get high on it.

That’s one reason people like me don’t do well in large, conservative bureaucratic organizations where they often have the mentality of “that’s the way we’ve always done it so it should be good enough for you”. A certain big Bank comes to mind.

My response to that is “that’s the way you’ve always done it, is because you weren’t:

A) smart enough

B) creative enough

C) or had enough initiative to come up with an easier and more effective way of doing it”

There's something arguably attractive about being busy. Busy is important. Busy is respected. There's also a stereotype that all smart people are busy. The ultimate place for busy bitching was B-School. Go anywhere, at any time of the day, it was full of busy future businesspeople busily competing with their busy friends about who is busier. I am sure in this respect it is no different from Law  School or Med School. You know what busy really means? That you didn't get to go to b-school or college, so you're busy working three full-time jobs to support your family. Thats the real busy.

My Worst Nightmare

Would be this.

If I had to go without internet for more than 48 hours that would be truly awful. Cell phone - I don't mind so much. I've never been a big caller or one of those people who have really long chats on their phones on a daily basis. I text some, but never more than 10 messages per day.

I do communicate considerably more through IM, and Facebook, and email, and my blog. Hence why an online outage would be harder. But the major reason life without the internet would be truly a challenge is not for the communication aspect but for more functional matters - I read my newspapers online, I listen to music online, I watch TV online, I pay my bills online, I check weather reports and stock markets on line, I shop online, and I write online.

Its pretty much everything. Without the internet what would I do for even a day? I'd have to get outside. On to the streets. In this cold. Hmm, yeah, I like not so much.

And Looking Forward

So I am making a list and checking it twice. For all I want to do in 2008.

Which is superficially: a) exercise more, b) drink water, c) stop eating chocolate, d)  just decide and marry someone already! 

I wonder what this year has in store. Is it going to be the Greatest Year yet or just an Average Year? In the end, does it even matter? I've come to realize that no matter what big goals one may have, and how many of them one accomplishes, all that matters is how each day was lived, and whether one was reasonably content each of those days. In the current age of discontent we live in, there is little point in pining your happiness on better jobs, bigger homes, thinner bodies, hotter relationships, or what have you, because getting any extraneous thing only holds its allure for a few months before you set new goals. Want more. Pine for the next thing.

An Average Year would be just fine.

In that spirit, this year I want to keep my resolutions really simple:

1) I want to care less about the things I really shouldn't care so much about. And more about the things I should - like health check-ups, and meditating.

2) I want to show up for people I've promised things to, for commitments I've made. And on time. To stop running, always an hour late, a dollar short, and a button missing.

3) I want to be thankful for what I already have, but most importantly, for all I already am.

4) I want to make the most of a life that is set in one of the freeiest places on Earth, in the most prosperous country, at the turn of the 21st century.   

5) I want to stop regreting time lost - whether it was the years lost back in the day, or just the hours lost yesterday. Everything takes the time it does. We get where we get when we get there.

6) I want more time to play with my photos, and picasa, to understand depth of field and white balance, to make memories in sepia. I want more time to think in colors, decorate, to match the carpet with the right shade of Roman soft shade blinds, I want more free time for learning and reading, editing things and playing with stuff.

The Year of Patience

2007 was a Hell of a Year.

At the beginning, like, everyone else I put down some resolutions.. some of which I actually did, such as taking the writing class and the photography class, writing a short story, and strength training + losing 6 pounds (although I gained it right back a few months later).

But there are things I achieved that I had not planned out to do at all, but which turned out to be major. First, after much hang wringing I left the World Bank and joined a environmental research think tank to work on clean energy and finance issues. And that was scary - leaving the security (and money) of WB  - but its turned out to be one of the best calls I have ever made in my life. Its turned out to be a spectacularly good fit for the weird combination of skills I have, and for my reading-writing-isolating personality, as well as an amazing place for leadership and personal growth, even though I haven't even yet taken advantage of all that.

Second, I really put on the Big Boots and tackled my convoluted finances, paid off my b-school loans in its entirety, bought a condo in DC, and put some cash away for a rainy day. It feels really good to be in control of one's financial future. And charming to live in one's own home. I feel like my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and on a piece of ground that I own.

Third, kicking and screaming, I started to date. It wasn't all fun, and most of the time I felt like "someone please shoot me" and 'seriously, do I have to do this?". But eventually I met someone amazing. Then circumstances intervened and that changed too. But all these were phenomenal experiences, which more than anything demonstrated to me that I really don't know much about what turn my life is about to take. Like who woulda thought that things would come to pass the way they did.

But most of all, there are the immeasurable things - 2007 was the year of Patience, of being alone, of discovery, of learning how to depend on myself. It was the year of confidence, of faith, of knowing that it was all going to be ok no matter how my life ended up. It was the year of small step slowly taken, like little pitter patter baby steps, but lots of them, and its added up. It was the year of coffee, and good reading, and endless conversations late into the night. It was the year of living freer, feeling stronger, making choices that matter. It was a spectacular year.

The Messy Business of Life

This has got to be the longest time between posts on this blog. I am sure the irony is not lost on anyone that the last post was titled 'a slacker's guide'. I have now officially broken my own record for ultimate slacker-ness - and this time its in something I love to do. Writing. Thats like me slacking on sleeping or eating cookies.

Its been a hell of a two months.

I just returned to Washington after a month away for work to Indonesia and Malaysia, and then Sri Lanka for vacation. Although I was super-stressed before going, the work part of the trip turned out to be awesome, in particular the Big UN climate conference down in Bali - 10,000 people, zillions of side events, crazy media circus, amazing resorts and beaches. The actual negotiations in the plenary were fascinating, although, not being used to UN processes, found them a tad strange, and not convinced its the way to solve complex problems. I have never been a fan of far-removed top down approaches to problem solving.. although I can see why in the case of climate change this may be the only way to go.

As for Lanka, it was exactly as it is every year. Too hot, too party-crazed, and too many vehicles on the sum total of 4 roads that is Colombo. Not the most zen place for a relaxed vacation but its got its usual charms: midnight mass where an incoherent non-English speaking priest read out a pre-written sermon while we giggled, got bitten by mosquitoes, and watched the strapless and  backless fashions; Christmas day lunch replete with pork curry and 'wattalappan' and uncle M's umpteenth stories from 1932; followed by a few days at a beach resort. Basically you can square it all off in 5 days. 

But now about what happened before I left town in Dec. In a one sentence nutshell I found myself in the starring role of a very bad Mexican teledrama.. or one of those romantic comedies gone awry. I promise I will write That Story one day soon, but for now suffice to say that it involved two men, one proposal, one new boyfriend, one soul mate, and massive doses of high stakes drama that played out over the course of five weeks, which left all three protagonists drained and in much need of space and time..  hence my trip to the East came at an opportune moment.

Part of the reason I couldn't bring myself to write in the last months is that so many crazy things were happening all at once, and my emotions were so all over the place that I didn't know what to chose to write about, or if to write at all. Eventually the choice was made for me by my own hesitation- I wrote nothing. That seemed less fake in a way than writing light-heartedly about random stuff while staying silent on the most important thing that was happening.

And every day, there was a new twist, some major new development in the story.  And little lazy slacker me- there's only so much I can cope with at once. For God sake I can only drink one cup of tea at a time. And I can definitely only love one person at a time. Loving two very amazing beautiful people - doing right by them, treating each kindly and with equanimity, having to think every action and every word through and through, it took a toll on this old goat. I mean, people, I am no spring chicken. My heart is all bruised and battered, I have never felt so pulled in so many directions, so caught between a rock and a hard place no matter which way I turned.

I have thought about whether I really want to tell this story. But given that this blog is dedicated to writing about love and the like, its not like I can get away without writing about some of it at least. So I will. Just not today.