Ninety one

I know poverty is out there. I know how important money is? still, I tend to forget in the comfort of my life. Yesterday I went for a photoshoot at Dadar Market in Mumbai. Life is tough there. Competition is fierce. The selection pressure is ruthless. Evolution is in progress, survival of the fittest. I even saw a person, who recently lost his hand, maybe in a train accident. He was smoking and talking animatedly with his friend. Life goes on. No time to cry or self-pity, you need to fill your stomach. Philosophy is for me, not for them. One day in a similar market a roadside keysmith told me, if you desire the wealth around, even a million will be less for you! and he refused to take extra money from me. I will make a photoblog later.

Ninety

Every one love simple life. But no one wants to live one. I found that simple living is tough. As I said earlier, thinking and doing are in two different domain of life. The connector that connects these two domains is lazy. I wanted to do a project like one lens one camera. I keep searching in the net what should be that camera and lens. I am not buying too many things and hence let me buy the costliest one. How about that? Fundamentally I don't prefer simple living but I love talking about it and I appreciate and say wow when others do. The weekend has started and I have a list of things to do. Today I have maintained the weekday routine till now and hoping that I don't find a new series on Netflix and do not watch cricket in the evening.

Eighty nine

Guilty and regret are the same or different? Select, right-click and search in Google. The first hit takes me to Karen's Blogs. I did not read that blog. I will read it later. Doing something wrong and hiding it leads to guilty. More than that, you are not punished for the wrongdoing, and your consciousness keeps telling you about that. I waste time I regret that. I spend money. I regret that. Regret is a personal feeling of missing out something. You only can regret. But "guilty" you can feel it, or someone also can tell you that you are guilty of wrongdoing. I need to think more about this, while if you want to read more, you can go to the blog as mentioned earlier.

Eighty eight

Today morning I was listing to Ray Dalio. One thing that hit me very hard. He said he was more feared about boredom and mediocrity than failure. It struck me like a lightning bolt. It is right for me too. I need to do much more adventurous. 

Eighty Seven

As I was walking across the market, I saw a couple from a distance, and they were engaged in animated talk. All of us see anything unusual or usual we form an opinion. I thought about this couple why these people are fighting in public. As I approached them, I heard them and couple were talking in Kannada, that is my mother tongue. All of a sudden my opinion changed about them! Why so? In spite of knowing this bias, very often, I am a victim of that. Familiarity bias a strange thing. If a person belongs to your state or speak your language or belongs to your religion, without much thinking, we assume they are right. I suppose, when we have limited data points, the brain tries to find out some data, even it is absurd and irrelevant to make some decision. We can't remain uncertain, human brain always wants definitive answers.  

Eighty six

What is the purpose of my life? My purpose in life has been reset many times during the last 40 years. For the time being, I don't have any meaning. I am living in an auto mode. Do I need to think about purpose? I am living to live nothing more than that. I am not afraid of death. I am scared of " not leaving behind my footprint". I know that this word has marched ahead without keeping the account of the greatest accomplishments of the human race in the past. Still, I am carving for "being unique". Maybe this is my purpose of living. But the question is in what field do I excel and which skill would set me apart? This blog series is one such exercise to find the answer for this irritating question. 

Eighty five

The habits are difficult to keep. They are like a chain if one link is missed rest will miss. If I have to keep a habit going, I need to keep them every day including weekends. Once you miss a habit, next will be missed and by the time you are frustrated and lost patience and end up in binge surfing on the net. The Internet is basically promoting aimless wandering across so that you will see all the advertisements of all the companies across many websites. Oh yes, I am blaming the internet and time being I don't have enough will power for a thorough introspection. 

Eighty four

Yesterday I met with a minor accident. My left leg was sprained. By evening pain intensified and had to go to a doctor. When you get injured or sick you will notice that body part carefully and all of a sudden you realise the function of that body part in the day to day life! My left leg was sprained, just below the knee, top of the calf muscle. What is the function of this muscle? Not a scientific study but just an observation. You need this muscle for bending the leg and walking. Surprisingly not very significant for cycling. This muscle is crucial to balance on one leg in a slight slant position. I realised this when I am mounting on cycle/bike. You can't do sit-ups. Once the pain disappears, I don't pay attention to this. What does this mean? Our brain though knows theoretically that all parts of the body are essential for smooth functioning, the brain doesn't keep an account of that. This accounting will be too much work for the brain. So only when we get injured, the brain pays particular attention to that part. In life also we take many things granted. For example 24x7 internet availability, or ATM machine or fuel etc. Only we realise them when they are not available. The funniest part is, once service resumes we again get back to normal life. The brain only remembers very bitter, sad and traumatic incidents and not small mundane pain and loss. It is not like computer hard-disc, the brain makes its own choice of what to remember and what not and even we don't have any control over that.

Eighty three

ಯೋಚನೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು ಒಂದು ಕಷ್ಟದ ಕೆಲಸ. ಕನ್ನಡ ಬರೆಯದೆ ತುಂಬಾ ದಿನಗಳಾದವು. ಓದಲು ಸುಲಭ ಆದರೆ ಬರೆಯಲು ಕಠಿಣ. 

I tried to write a few things in Kannada. Google has improved transliteration to a great extent. This gives me encouragement to write more in Kannada. In spite of reading and writing English from the past 30 years, I should say I have little or no grip on English. The effortlessness and fluency in Kannada is a different level. I have done all kind of courses, read many books and wrote many things in English. Still, I don't think I have command on this language. All I achieved is that now I can read English and appreciate a good writer. I can make out good and bad writing but I can't say why good is good and bad is bad. 

Eighty two

Some tasks look very simple and we think that that is so easy to do. However, the simple things are most difficult to do. I was supposed to sit quietly for 5 mins per day. It is more difficult than running 5 km. If you don't believe me, try it out for a week. I think and plan so many things and all of them look so easy and I feel I will do them with ease. But when that moment arrives I am lost. For example, I had planned to leave office one hour earlier, still, I am here sitting in front of PC and reading some stuff. 

Eighty one

What I am supposed to teach my daughter? I am sure about the irrelevance of the school. Today morning I was watching this Google talk Yuval Noah Harari: "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" | Talks at Google. Prof. Harari emphasis on emotional intelligence and capabilities to reinvent many times in life. This is an intriguing suggestion. But I have to study and understand these concepts so that I can teach this to my daughter.

Eighty

Enjoying a process is like meditation. When I am doing macro photography, I am deeply immersed in that. Angles, light and shallow depth of field takes me to another world. At the same time often I don't get a satisfactory end product (photo). Even more often the audience won't appreciate your work, and you feel frustrated. I know that I should not go by the judgement of others. But that is only theory, we have evolved to seek appreciation from fellow human beings. When my daughter wants to flaunt her new dress or pencil box, I feel irritated and would tell her, be simple, and that is not good to show off. But the Sotic sitting deep inside me would say, don't you expect that other people appreciate your photography. Don't you flaunt your F1.2 lens? Yes, I do. Let me keep my mouth shut. 

Seventy nine

I am pursuing photography from a decade. From the last two years, I had lost interest in photography. I was doing that but not with the enthusiasm of the beginning. Reading blogs, books and Youtube, I learnt that professionals don't care for mood, creativity or getting bored of doing a thing, they keep doing what they are doing. I too used similar mantra here. Whether I liked it or not I keep shooting and editing photos. Often it was boring and frustrating. Again I am back to photography and trying to even videography. It is obvious that I am spending more time on review sites and checking out prices. Though it doesn't help in improving photography, reading about gear and technology is fun. 

Seventy eight

Today is my daughter's result day! She is not worried. Worry is a big word at the age of 10. She is more concerned about her Youtube access than results. Here we are in the next generation. I am really not sure about the need for handwriting, and all those things taught in the school are relevant in 2030. The technology and the world is changing too fast. I really don't know what to teach her. But logic and common sense are needed forever. But there are hardly any tools and course to explain these two skill sets. I am also trying to teach her resilience, it is so difficult to teach. As a parent, I don't want to put her in difficult situations. However, without rough patches, you hardly learn lessons which no school nor university would teach. I am finding a way to stimulate conditions which seems harsh to her.  

Seventy seven

I keep reading many personality developments, productivity and positive thinking kind of books. It is a kind of addiction. Very often I failed to put them in practice. I was introduced to these kinds of books by my grandfather. I don't think he read these books. Because our home library doesn't contain this kind of books. He was worried about me and must have bought them exclusively for me. Now after more than 40 years, one strange realisation happened to me. Most of the things written in these books were practised by my grandfather in his day to day life. How did he know all these things? No idea, but a tough childhood, stressful life, in the beginning, must have taught him these pearls of wisdom. He accomplished great stuff in his life, and I think he wanted some of his kids or grand-kids would follow his footsteps. Unfortunately, none of us rose to his height. I would say we all got too much of comfort in life. 

Seventy six

From the past few months, my skin allergy has gone up. It is irresistible and you end up scratching and more you scratch more itching will popup. I found the same thing with shopping. One lens review would lead you to the shopping site and you are looking all around. This leads to taking a look at a new camera or a tripod or a flash. The chain is endless. Forcibly you move out away from the internet, it will subsidise and senses come back. It is true with itching also. If itching temptation is too high, you distract is by watching something or reading something or go for a jog, it will subside and eventually disappear. 

Seventy five

My flirting with stock market dates back to 2009. Somehow I failed to sustain the interest and momentum in investing. After one year of active investing, reading tons of books, I slipped back to passive investment through mutual funds. Whenever I hate to go to work, I wished I had financial retirement and do something else, I am stuck in the same job. When this topic pops up in the brain again, I get motivated to go to the stock market to make some money. I know after a decade in the market that becoming a real millionaire is a slow process. This year again I have started with the stock market, but not with great enthusiasm. Let me see how does it go. I also know that most of the wealthiest people on this planet got there by being in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing! Hoping luck favours ready mind, I am taking this jump. 

Seventy four

Discerning noise from signal in life brings mental peace. But often I found myself enjoying the noise. Because enjoying noise allow you to procrastinate. Why do I procrastinate? I found that I avoid certain uncomfortable situations. When I force myself into doing the things I don't want to do, I will finish the work and feel great about that. 

Seventy three

I missed two days of blogging. "Routine is the enemy of time" was the comment of a cyclist, who quit his job to cycling. According to him, if you fall into regular time fly fast and you will never notice that. Partially I agree with him. But routines make your life easy and you can focus on other things in life. We have more things to do than a snake. That is what my daughter said. We were rescuing a  baby snake of the common Krait. The snake was small but very aggressive.  After a few attempts, we were able to move the snake to a safe place. I was wondering why was that so aggressive. My daughter said, all other animals need to defend enemy, eat and sleep and they are not humans. Humans have a lot of other things to do than just survival. I was stunned to hear this thing from a 10-year-old. 

Seventy two

Will power. I read and experienced the fact is that will power is not an infinite quantity. Often we forget that the brain is an organ just like leg or hand or heart or liver. It works like any other organ. It also would vary in its capacity to carry out stuff, just like some are good runners and some are not. In 100 meter finals of Olympics, you hardly find any white skin man/women. Why? Because they can't compete with a sports person from African origin, whose muscle built is unique for fast contrasting and giving the burst. Similarly, our brain has a different capacity to carry out tough tasks. Some have more willpower as compared to others. Further, if you use willpower in the morning in resisting buying an online phone, soon after you are offered a super calorie-rich food, you can't resist that food. Why? Because you have already used up your willpower in opposing of buying the phone. I just stated a simple example, but that is how it works.