Dealing with drafts

If you noticed, or go and check now that I ask, you can see I published lots of articles in quick succession.

Those were old drafts which I had accumulated since I stopped writing things properly. And that has been the case for many years now. Some of the old drafts have no relevance now, but nevertheless, if anything was longer than a couple of paragraphs and had some message, I just published them all.

I ended up deleting some placeholders. Ugh I hate those symptoms of procrastination,and greed to cover things which actually doesn't have a strong pull to write about. Of course many were about fleeting feelings of elation or frustration, but two lines of bullshit or a page of well planned placeholders for a travelogue don't cut it.

Generally I am all in for drafts as that allows ideas to mature, if you leave something out for years at a time, and you actually move, then it is just rotten, stagnant pieces of an earlier life. Better be displayed as a relic as it is, rather than by trying to polish it and get attached to the past.

Now and many times, I have this question in my mind. Will I write again? Write again like in those peak years of 2013, on those topics? Nay, mostly not. I would or might write about new things, new mindset and whatever I feel like in future. No guarantees there though.

Sometimes I feel I am a self-obsessed maniac who loves to see his own writing. But I also remind myself not to be too harsh on myself and ridicule that same idea. 

Suomi

[A very nice topic that has a special place in mind, but I don't have a space in my mind anymore for old drafts. Hence publishing it. Will follow up with a proper travelogue if I care about it enough ]

Finland!

A name that always popped up in my mind with visions of ice rinks and ice hockey. And of course the name Helsinki rhymes well with rinks. "Helsinki sinks in rinks.."

So it was an like an explosive reaction when last year I found myself staring down the wings of an KLM Airbus as it cleared the clouds and flew low over the almost pitch black skies over Helsinki. There it was. Finland - and it looked nothing like what I had thought it to be.

Though I was able to do my basic research, the kind I wouldn't have done before, it couldn't prepare me for what was to become my permanent record of the land - the smell of birch, the quaint silence and the almost permanently frost at the tip of my nose.

 

Jungle diaries

[Been in draft for quite long. Not sure how to improve it further, hence publishing]

Having had thought through the idea of penning my jungle diaries umpteen times, I am not sure which way would sound best without unnecessary details. I now think I should try the narration style rather than the diary style.

The tale begins with me leaving for Mysore a day ahead of the scheduled date. I recall to date, how I forced myself to sleep extra as rest of my room mates left for their respective offices. I checked and rechecked my To-Do list and mentally made calculations for acquisitions. I had still many items pending in the list, and my plans were rather loose in nature (as it usually is) .

With no one to discuss with or consult, I just went about with whatever came to mind, hoping it would suffice, and set out for Mysore. Reaching there by evening, by a friend's grace, I set out with my acquisition plan. It involved going half way around the city and meeting other friends who had agreed to lend their equipments. Thanks to my pals who were into wildlife and travel, I received a sleeping bag and a pair of binoculars. With it, I felt I had enough stuff in my arsenal to survive in the jungle without too much trouble. I slept peacefully at my friend's place that night, content with the acquisitions.

Early next morning, I caught a bus to Ooty. The route to Ooty runs through the Bandipur forest and the conductor informed me that I could get down at some certain point and walk rest of the way to the gates. In the bus, I noticed many others who were dressed and carrying equipments like me. So I kept my eyes and ears tuned to catch any mention of the census. I had begun to feel nervous and excited at the same time as I had no idea where I was headed to, and what I ought to be doing there. A bit of spying helped to quell that stress a bit :)

Outside the gates, I met a few guys who had come in from various parts of Karnataka to participate in the census. These guys were excited and loaded with information about the entire process. I was able to quell much of my nervousness just by chatting with these guys. My lack of experience, company and language barriers did annoy me a bit, but I was just enjoying the moment, anticipating the unknown.

Soon enough, the inauguration was underway and the officials came forward to explain various aspects of the procedure of the National Tiger census. Coupling that with the chit-chat we were having amongst ourselves, I was able to build a rather decent image of what lie ahead.

After lunch, we were to be allotted our respective ranges. These ranges would be where we would be stationed for the entire period of the census. There was a considerable amount of excitement and apprehensions among the volunteers, as it seems the nature of experience varied across ranges. There were supposedly some camps deep in the jungle which provided excellent chances of spotting tigers and/or other highly sought after animals. These camps were also mostly inaccessible, provided with only bare necessities and in practice meant a real hard life in the jungle, fraught with danger of wildlife. On the other extreme of the scale, lie ranges which were on the outskirts, buffer areas and near the offices of the department, offering fewer or no wildlife, but overall a more comfortable stay. Needless to say, no one preferred the latter.

With the excitement rising, and many groups already talking about using their contacts and influence to get desired camps, I felt completely stranded. I had never even considered such a situation, and with no knowledge of which camps are good or whom to ask, I just sat quietly. Soon, the names of people allocated to various camps were called out, followed by varied responses and frantic requests for exchanges and adjustments. I could see that not all such requests were granted.

In the next one hour, I was allocated to some camp's name which I couldn't make out, and after following several instructions to change camps based on someone else's requests, I was finally asked to board a jeep. I silently did that, and found 5 others for company. We quickly got introduced to each other by the time the jeep reached our destination camp. Having completely lost sense of whatever was going on, I slowly recovered now and listened carefully to one of the fellows who seemed to know certain things. It was heart wrenching to realize from his words that we had been sent to probably one of the worst camps. Even worse than the fact that I was completely clueless was that I couldn't react to what was gonna happen next..

Measure of happiness

[Publishing an old draft]

How do you know whether you are truly happy about your life?

Everyone has dreams. Everyone has aspirations. Everyone has expectations on them created by relatives,friends, various people they have met in life and finally and most importantly, themselves.

We are all weighed down on one side all these. We also have to take decisions. In this matter, some get lots of well placed and timed support people in their lives, whereas some don't find much. There are some who don't even look for support and jump straight in, the haughty kind.

Mountains

[Publishing yet another old draft]

the fascination with mountains has been part of my existence from time immemorial. or atleast I believe so, and most of people who know me, acknowledge the same quite easily. after all its not so difficult to miss the obvious excitement and expressions I show when I am in the vicinity of mountains.

but it wasn't always so. there is always an explanation for every single expression and pattern shown by a human mind, this much I know from my interests in the study of the mind and brain.


in spite of the fact that most of the mountains attract me like a magnet and make me feel very happy, some mountains fail to do so. this in spite of there being no lack of 'key' elements of attraction around the mountain. i found this to be difficult to explain but I understand why its so in some of these cases.

Ye ol magical drafts

Publishing some very old, probably bullshit, and movie inspired drafts

--
the castle rose from the floors in a moment and stood with its high walls against the face of the infinite armies of charlatan.
the men couldn't believe their eyes as the magic was playing in front of their very own eyes.
many sang hymns to the great lord up above in the sky while others wailed and begged for retribution.

magic was hitherto only an unknown foe, but when it spread its wings and breathed fire on their mind, the soldiers found their wills floundering and knees knocking.


---

my pen shone against the twilight sun as I kept on drawing cannons after cannons placed upon the basic walls. if the master was to see me do this, he would have ousted me for not remembering the basics of castle architecture. the battlements hardly drew any resemblance to what an architect would have suggested, and it would not have held against a proper siege for more than a couple of days.but then, here it helped as the soldiers were taken aback by the strange designs of my castle and believed it to be of unearthly origin.

i continued this for a good 3 hours until I felt the army could fight no more. the moment I kept my pen back into my box, the magic started unwinding itself. the parts of the castle turned to dust, in the order they were created. the eerie scene of floating battlements sent even stronger waves of fear across the soldiers, as I could see through my mirror.

that is when I noticed the presence of a faint white light. it seemed to have popped up from nowhere and suddenly it filled my view of the battle scene. I couldn't control anything or see. I took me several spells to finally figure out the source of this light.

There stood, upon the hills that overlooked the battle plains, a figure dressed in sparkling white. That figure seemed to hold a bright white orb, and it was the source of this unearthly blinding light. I had never known of such a source of light that could blind me.
---

It starts with a crushing feeling

Edit: I put a stupid title as I couldn't find anything more truthful

Considering the enormous pressure of tasks, responsibilities ,and things in general that I get to deal with of late, I thought I should write about them.

The key events are : the Crushing feeling, the sinking feeling,... (more to be added whenever I realize it )

A crushing feeling of sorts is what exhibits itself at these points in life at first.
And that crushing tons of forces turns into a sinking feeling only when one's ground isn't hard enough to hold it up.

So, at the crushing stage, you know that you have mismanaged either schedules, promises or priorities to let that happen. But then, that is the point to re-align priorities, find spare willpower and exert all forces against the crushing forces. This action, when done well at this stage with focus, gives tremendous boost to productivity, and results too are generally good. The reason for talking about results too early is because it is an observation. An observation which has a confirmation bias that when shit happens and you manage to get out without falling into the pit, you generally would have done better than the average lot who avoid shit altogether.

So there it is;how to handle a crushing feeling. If not handled, what could happen, you ask?

Well, some of them lead to a sinking feeling if the crushing lasts for a while and you haven't really done anything to alleviate it. I would first be concerned why you didn't do anything. Are you incapacitated due to multiple crushing issues, or is the sheer intensity of some of them so high as to blow your defensive fuses, or did some of them trick you using a bias and made you fall quicker than usual?

There are specific solutions to each of these types, and more to be found for any new types that do come up. Anyway, we are only concerned with the ones you can't handle at this stage.

This brings us to the sinking feeling. Now if this is in spite of all your efforts at the early stage, then boy, you have something to deal with. If not, go back to those steps (I know, I didn't write any steps) and try all of them until you get over the sinking feeling. Well, for trying well you might even cut down the sinking feeling to a crushing one, which you already know how to deal with. Voila.

Now for the ones that haven't reduced significantly, or haven't at all. I would now apply all cognitive tricks rather than try to face it emotionally, as most of the emotional tricks would already have failed. Now cognitive tricks are neat little lies that you tell yourself( quite like those you tell yourself everyday anyway), to deal with nasty truths( or lies that are hard to disprove ). I won't be able to give a generic trick here until I figure out how to write about them in that fashion.

Tips? Be smart, think wacky. Question the improbable and impossible ones, without worrying about consequences of unraveling even the most closely held beliefs. After all, most of the pain comes from closely held beliefs on ideas, people, things, and sometimes yourselves. Just be careful on what you are unraveling. So how to be careful without worrying about what it leads to? Well, in my software mindset, I can ask you to keep a separate namespace, or virtual environment to do the experiments with the hazardous material. If it doesn't work, you should have rollback stacks which allow you to forget what you saw inside. What is said,seen and done inside your namespace, remains there. You commit it to main DB..ahem neurological system only after a period of trials,contemplation and building enough checkpoints and identifying potential symptoms of early disasters.

Now, some of you might think: "I get the problem, but what did you say did for it?" or "Damn, how do I do that mumbo-jumbo?". Some of you may not even catch what is being talked about all through out. If you are in the first group with questions, which I assume might be the case with most of you who have read it till this point, I can help. For the others, well, not time yet for you to grasp this. Skip.

How to build yourself a nice HAZMAT(exciting term) area or sandbox(meh) environment?
Well, you do that simply by allowing generally toxic ideas to be formulated in your mind without judgement, and extract useful, positive information/messages out from it. Now, if you haven't tried it before, or have a fragile and emotional mind, I would tread carefully with these suggestions. What works for me may not work for someone else. Same way, what works for a serial killer's mind doesn't work for me. So take my advice with that in mind. I am not asking you to think of murdering someone you dislike, or doing something nasty beyond your normal range of aggression (God save me, if my reader turns out to be a psychopath, and doesn't read beyond this step).
Now, in order do that activity without damaging your own conscience( though I do admit that I haven't been able to make 100% leak-proof HAZMAT area, often poisoning my mind for a short period at times with that activity ), you need tools and belief systems adaptations.

In terms of tools, I can throw some terms like meditation, deep visualization, keenly observing own responses, reactions of people around, and general changes in mood/tone of yourself and people you interact with. Also being able to visualize your mind as being outside yourself helps you see yourself objectively and then on questioning provide subjective inputs which help you in diagnosis. It helps if you are generally suspicious or curious about anything in the nature, people, yourself, and all mumbo jumbo without judgement on sensibilities and external validation. Just play cool.

Belief system adaptations would be a major one if you have beliefs which disallow such practices. Moral codes, fear of judgement, believing in external validations, stereotypes etc. obstruct your ability to lift heavy mental weights with different and opposing ideas. So I have observed that people who are shunned from certain sections of society due to whatever conditions of non-compliance often have a very high mental resiliency, and if applied correctly they usually have a huge mileage in life.
But, don't try to force it. It is the non-compliance part that is important, not the getting kicked out part. If you are willing to not force a compliance just to stay put, then it also means you believe in your own methods, without which there is no way for you to go ahead. These paths seldom have guides or gurus to lead you.

Of late, I have felt that the path of certain religious orders, mystical sects and a multitude of non-compliant groups that defy definitions are similar in that sense. The availability of a teacher/guide is a boon as well as a bane. If not chosen or acquainted with the right person with the right level of independence given to the individual, its all a waste. Most of the frauds happen because people choose for compliance even in the exotic wings of life which are meant for non-compliance.

What a comedy. hu ha ha