When did December become such a big scheduling nightmare? Now I “know” rationally that it kind of always was like this. But this time? This time feels a little too insane. I’m in India for the holidays and going to be here till mid-January.
My social circle seems to have exploded overnight. Or over the year, whatever. Need to figure out how to let go of people to start making space for new people. Or figure which ones to retain and which ones I don’t need to make too much space for. Now I kind of understand why some people at parties look like they have ZERO interest in mingling and connecting.
I want to take a slow day for myself today, do some writing and reflection. But actually do it.
Okay, so maybe I can start with the biggest thing on my mind today. Which is the decision around geographical movement for myself. For a few months now, I’ve been thinking about moving back to India (for the time-being). I’ve always thought that here’s where I want to build my life, and though enough people have tried to convince me that I may not actually want to this, I’m now sure that I will never know until I actually try it for myself. So, that’s that. But if I were to humour the world for a little bit, and because it does make sense to, I’d like to seriously articulate or tap into the reasons behind this desire.
- I want my familial connections and existing connections (some of my existing close friends) to be a more frequent part of my social routines. Not just over calls and videos, but IRL. And not just once or twice or thrice a year, but more frequently.
- I just feel more connected to the overall “vibes” of the Indian cities that I’ve grown up in or spent time in. And yes, that’s not to say that you can’t build this anywhere else, but so far, I’d rather explore what already is than try to build this somewhere else.
- I do like some aspects of Indian culture: the food, the TV, the media and content, and though I can “bring” with myself a lot of it wherever I go, I can’t really connect more with it (or deepen it) without literally being here.
- The freedom around career choices: While this is going to be a hard, confusing, potentially frustrating question by itself, I still want the choice to quit my job whenever I want to or take long-term breaks without having to think about completely changing my life.
- If I ever reach a point where I can help other people grow, I want the people here to benefit most from it. ie I guess I want to give back (maybe I can’t do enough of that remotely).
Okay, I think the reasoning is mostly sound. Now, to the fears behind this.
- Feels like a big, relatively irreversible move. My (recent) judgement of India seems to be from breaks over the holidays etc. So can I really predict how I’ll feel on a day-to-day basis? Probably not. But does that necessarily mean it’ll be bad? Probably not, either. And that’s what I find out. So it’s an experiment of sorts, and of course, the cost to the experiment seems quite high. But I also know that if I want to come back to a tech job, I know it’s possible with some preparation. So it’s big yes, but maybe not necessarily irreversible.
- The way I’m currently planning to do this is to take a break from job. This has come about from the need of me wanting some freedom (in terms of time and work commitments) to spend some time doing the things I want to do. And I’m worried that this freedom will eventually get boring and I won’t know what to do next.
The counter to this has to be a belief in my inner self. That even if I do get bored and find myself without any answers as such, I will be able to cope with that.
The other thing I need to do is set some intentions behind the move+break. I think the primary intention is to find work that I can feel more aligned with. And to at least figure out what kind of work that’ll end up being for me. I can’t narrow this down more, because that is daunting, at the moment at least. I have options that I want to explore, but the exploration itself cannot happen right now. And of course, to figure out whether an Indian city is truly a place I can be in for the long haul or not.
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