Gaurav's Blog

This can usually be found on Twitter.

First, to let everybody know: I've linked my blog in to my 43Things page, so some posts (like this one) might seem a little bit weird and out-of-place. Relax, I'm not crumbling under the pressure of school (almost over!), life (almost begun!!) and ... is there anything else? Not at the top of my mind right now, but anyway - it's not me going nuts, it's just that I'm responding directly to a particular goal on 43T, and moaning and groaning at the same time (which is why - hey! - it's here on my blog!). So, yeah. Just to let you all know. Do lemme know if you get 43T accounts, it's *very* easy to track other people's lives on that!

Now, my long-delayed attempt at answering Yvette's question, which was directly about growing about, and indirectly (I think?) about change.

First of all, growing up: as anybody who has had the misfortune of hanging around me for any length of time will be only too willing to admit, I'm not in any sense of the word “grown up”. Nor, to be honest, do I have any idea what it is to be grown up. I don't know many grown ups - parents, relatives, and so on, sure; but in my family we've always been pretty close, and not so uptight about age distances, and besides, adulthood has a different meaning when you're a kid (anybody who doesn't enjoy the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV show) and once you've grown up (anybody who ... ?).

On the other hand, I've had friends who I've seen take on enormous problems, and coming out on top, and they're the ones I'd point to as “grown up”. They've felt the hot wind of adversity, the mocking laughter of unlikelihood, the shuddering cold of ... I pick up writing style from whoever I'm reading (or re-reading) at the moment, I'm afraid, and right now that's a gentleman from Columbia and another from Portugal, and I think that's showing ... coming back, once you've faced real disaster (which I haven't, by the way, just to confirm) - that's when you know you can take the world standing up, and that's (probably) when you do start to stand up.

And what about me? Well, not having faced absolute disaster-in-progress, I'm not sure how ready I am to stand up, and I'm really getting very nervous about graduation coming up pretty soon ... on the other hand, living by myself for the last four years has made me realise that - whether or not I get my tail out in time - I won't be run over by the proverbial train just yet.

And as for change, all I can say on that subject is that I'm all for it :). I like change - I don't like sitting still - I love moving (which is why I like cycling, which I intend to get back to any day now!). Change, by itself, doesn't scare me all that much, although - like most of my family - I carry around the treasured Vaidya gene of overworry, and I although I'm always late for planes and meetings and suchlike, I don't like that very much.

Not done yet. The one thing which scares me about Yvette's post is the sentence

(finish paper 1 hr before Rosh Hashanah. Rosh HaShanah dinner, Tashlich, decide to become a Jew, go vegetarian, Cheshvan, Chanukkah, decide to eat meat for a month, give up on meat again, Purim, moving towards Passover)

and that scares me, because that's a bit like what my life looks like right now (go to lab, read lecture notes for Monday's exam, fix up TaxonDNA bugs, try to get it to compile on Linux, ... graduate, try to learn Spanish, find a good job, etc.) and it's kinda scary not seeing anything in there which is reflects more than a year or so ahead. I mean, just looking at my 43Things list, I have exactly one goal which defines any kind of structure to my life more than a year from now (I want to live on land I own, eventually), which is sort of worrying. But, come to think of it, I don't have anything planned for the next year anyway - really. I mean, there's just nothing I can say with any certainty about today+6 months. The next few months are going to be played strictly by ear, for better or for worse, which - see last paragraph - is scary. But hey - that's what life is all about, yes?

(As an aside, what is it with my friends and relationships? In the last one week, two friends of mine have got attached (separately), two friends are dating, and another friend's crush is ending up in those weird places where crushes go once the crushee suspects something of the crusher ... I'm convinced this is an example of my May-is-the-month-for-affairs beliefs, but who's to say?)

This post was posted by Unknown at 8:40 am