Finding Dory

said it was forever

Recently, I completed a year in Frappe. Journey seems to be such a phony word. Feels very uncomfortable and clearly glorifies suffering. This July I’ll complete 3 years of living alone and trying to make my own money. I roughly started my first paid job when I was seventeen-ish. Frappe is my third workplace. That said Frappe is not at all different. My previous workplaces were also around open source and they were very small companies roughly less than 10 in size. But unlike a lot of other freshers in Frappe none of the things were “culture-shock” for me.

Though, I can’t put myself out of my own thought process in the last 3 years. It’s sometimes horrible to think about the kind of things I’ve always thought. Sometimes, it felt “I’m painstakingly behind” and sometimes it is “I’m messing with myself early, so maybe I’m at least a year ahead of the people in my age group”.

I’ve always felt alienated in whatever surrounding I’ve been into. Maybe, maximum amount of healthy and happy time was only 3-4 months. After which I’d always feel like the girl in Linkin Park’s Numb music video. The only difference would be that she is tortured by others at moments but I don’t get tortured. It’s hard to escape the questions sometimes. There’s very less buffer but as some specific humans we don’t even let that buffer be empty. I’d blame the person who paraphrased “More is less”. It’s horrible, horrible and horrible how greedy I and we are.

I don’t really know what to make of the last 1 year. Working in the Frappe Cloud team felt very natural and full of bonding but the reality of corporate knocked my door every day. I hate time but it’s my only best friend who does his job well. The job of leaving me behind and being honest with his own motive in life. It might sound like nonsense gibberish. But, if you were in my shoes you’d understand what I mean.

Shoes remind me of all the costumes I’ve tried on. I joined Frappe to build a big project. Got knocked by my reality in the first month itself and dropped the project. I joined L2 Support. Did programming + support for 3 months. Dropped it. After that, burdened myself with a lot of L2 tickets, and also mentored a new person while being a newbie myself. Dropped that afterwards. Did some more L2 without writing a single line of code for 4 months. Dropped the job itself and did a domain shift. None of the costumes hid my gastro-intestinal fluids and my nude body. I am convinced that the costume cannot be skin. But I was just in search of something that would cover my body and keep me warm. You might’ve seen me using a harsh language in support tickets. I couldn’t control. Just because someone pays my salary, doesn’t mean I leave my human characteristics and become a customer-empathetic robot.

I’ve always felt that if there’s something which will kill me one day will be “honesty”. Because, I’m a liar and at times I’ve caught myself lying in the moment. If you’ve read “Wild Sheep Chase” by Haruki Murakami you’ll know that the plot is all around a sheep which has a yellow star on its back. The narrator goes on a free expedition to find that sheep and ends up finding out that the sheep is his friend. His name’s “Rat” who allegedly commits suicide on the mountain. The sheep was just a fluke, but in reality it was a calling. The more you listen to the callings of honesty the more you might be walking towards a new start or an end. I don’t really know what I want to do. Maybe, I just don’t want to know what I want to do. If you’ve figured out what you want to do, then a 12 minute applause for you.

I prefer raw honesty over radical. Radical honesty has the potential of being deflected. Raw honesty has the power to bring discomfort, uncertainty and build a direct connection with the reader or listener. I prefer raw honesty because recently I’ve started to believe that Robots understand exactly what I’m trying to convey through writing. And, that too without any context or interaction with me. But, humans fail to. It’s not a problem at all. As humans we are meant to worry about capitalism, politics, making pancakes and frying sausages, raising kids and so much more. We should not bother about finding deeper meanings. If someone ends up finding deeper meanings then that person might be very invested and must’ve made understanding something their motif in life. Not everyone does. Not everyone should. Some things are only supposed to be written, sung and conveyed for specifics.

I was buried in self doubt before joining and I still am. Nothing has changed because even though I cannot control myself, I did have the control over few things. I sub-consciously made sure that I won’t change. I have a very deep hate for the word “improve”. I’ve always wondered “Why do I have to improve ? I’ll never be the best or perfect why do I not stop here in this weather ?”. Improvement is like pride. You can never be fully proud of yourself. At least I cannot and I’ve found myself in that position very few times. By nature, humans let go of their pride from time to time. What you were proud of today, will not be the same tomorrow. I don’t know how people feel proud when they’ve improved. I feel like they are just climbing a watermelon tree.

Probably, the only natural improvement in me has been the harshness of the questions I ask myself. Previously, I questioned “where do I stand?” but now I question “is standing still even possible at all?”. I don’t know how people figure out the offerings of talent or skills to the company. Whether it’s the talent or skill or both the bullshit aside “sincerity and obedience”. For 1 year, I personally couldn’t figure out how to offer either of talent or skill to the company. And just ended up working with instinct. Maybe, that will be my offering anywhere I go.

With time I’m becoming more regretful and miserable. It’s awful to think about all these screaming voices in my mind. But, I am guessing all these voices are troubling me for a reason and I should listen more to them. I don’t think it’s going to cost anything very valuable.

This one moment when a psychologist asked me “What would be that one thing you’d want to change in your life ?” and I answered, “I don’t want to change anything. It all has come together inside me as a package”. If I think about what I have become in the last one year, then the only word I have is “Nothing”.

Finally achieving what I wanted but till then

young, tired and jagged.