Work-Life Balance & Bullshit.

How often do you find yourself holding your head and thinking what is up with you and how are you ever going to get your shit together? If you ask me, well that is one frequently visited headspace for me.

Here's what I strongly believe in, that it's more important to not lounge in that headspace for more than a moment and to know that, it's absolutely fine if you do not have it all together now, but soon you surely will. Or at least you can hope for the best.

As it's not the thought that 'counts' for me, it's just a thought that all it takes to change your vision over life forever.

I think it's easier to clean your mess, what's difficult is to keep it clean while making sure you do not mess up again. Now, this can be taken up as an example in both terms, physically and mentally.

So what if you suck at your job no matter how much effort you put in and your boss cannot help but show you with every single opportunity that you are nothing but an easily replaceable item for the company?

So what if you are slogging at your 9-9 (yes! that's right) job giving your best only to get the bare minimum with zero appreciation and still have no option but to keep at it?

So what if you have super EMIs to waive off and your husband really wants to plan for a baby despite knowing the current situation?

The what if's are never-ending and get wilder and weirder the more I sit to think back on all the stories I have heard! But I feel astounded to know that every story has not had the typical "happy ending" yet in the end they are happy. Isn't it ironic?

Let me explain, while some chose to give up their jobs, which may seem to some like a dull move, whereas for some it would be like waving the white flag, the individual now is no longer under the toxic pressure and is HAPPY. While some actually chose to fight back and take on that challenge no matter how drilling it truly is and yet at the end of the day manage to hold up that smile and be HAPPY.  Whereas some actually felt, you know what let's get pregnant, 'itne EMIs already hai, ek aur le lenge' and that was a HAPPY ending for them and isn't that what matters the most!

Clear examples of where work and life can be balanced if we throw away the weight scale altogether!

Getting to that isn't work-life balance the most overrated concept in the current times?

How about I paint you a picture!?

You are working on a very important project which's deadline is due TODAY while sitting in one corner of your cosy home space.

Now can anyone just tell me where did I go wrong with the scenario?

I'll tell you where!

The focus point loses all its focus the moment cosy enters the scene. Where your dining table turns into your work desk and your mom is the boss even while you are at work!

Work from home - our current & hopefully soon to be over reality hit us hard along with the pandemic.

Where we have somewhere with time lost what differs our homes from our office.

Where the thought of whether the mic is on mute and the camera remains off runs rampant on our minds before we can share a few words with our loved ones or even take a loo break. I have heard stories of how one tends to lose focus with their bed insight and how working mothers found themselves handling their work and kids and kitchen all under the same roof. Imagine the horror!

I have had my own share of stories while working from home and I'll be honest and would just love to brag about how easy it has been for me! I really don't mind working from home because I love my home. I am in my comfort space with the people I care for and vice versa and I would like to make it very clear that I am not an introvert before you go on and tag me as one. What I am is a couch potato who loves her cosy corners in her "small little world" and being in the constant care of her loved ones. This brings me to a point where I could say that I have found a semblance of balance where my work is not my life and that tiny little hyphen that holds strong for me between Work-Life Balance.

The sole credit for my oh so proud declaration of having the "best of both worlds" would go to my adorable family whom I love to the square of infinity and beyond(those who know, they know) because I get to attend client meetings while I cuddle up with my cuties and if you do not believe this to be a privilege, we cannot be friends.

But I also know that's not the case for all, which is acceptable and reaffirms my faith in why I believe I truly am blessed and supremely privileged. Grateful.

To be honest, I have actually never have had a hard time finding focus be it at any place, now I surely have to thank my ah-mazing reading skills for this awesome power of mine where I can tune out the world and its noise and function with focus, thanks to fiction.

But don't you go being so envious of me so soon! The boon surely comes with a curse, where my otherwordly focus magically happens to leave me just when I go to revel in my true superpower- IMAGINATION.

Yeah, let's go back a few sentences. Where I said, "I could say that I have found a semblance of balance where my work is not my life and that tiny little hyphen that holds strong for me between Work-Life Balance." The keyword still continues to be "COULD". The hyphen may still be there but it is surely accompanied by an "&".

Welcome to my version of Work-Life Balance & Bullshit. Period.

What seemed all under control and fine was actually just a big whole sham where I was completely oblivious of how I was losing hold of the element that I cherish the most. I felt I was losing it with every day that I spent working. Now let me be clear once again.

I don't hate my job, I love working and I absolutely love writing, but I do hate my boss. Anyway, that topic is for another day.

Getting back, hopefully, on track, I truly felt I was losing a very integral part of myself - my imagination, my creativity & most importantly my dreams.

I was happy and somewhere even satisfied but I was not... just not... I don't know. All I knew was that something was missing. Something important.

Which later in my trepidation, I am come to realise that, what I was missing (and still am) were my dreams.

Now don't go off track. I know what you are thinking... so what? She is just missing a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep, which is the definition of dreams, thanks to Google.

But that's not the definition of dreams for me. My dreams are my escape, a much bigger escape route than any of the books I have ever read. They are my creation. They are my friends where I have fashioned friends, characters, stories, worlds and so much much more. And lastly, what I treasure the most is that they are just mine. Only and only mine. Mine to build and mine to break, mine to see and mine to wake, mine to kiss to mine to kill. As they made me feel mine to me and me to mine.

The dreams which gave me wings and a vision to share this amazing world of mine and how could I have done it without using the wisdom of words and the skill of storytelling that I wish all beings could cherish, which eventually led me to meet the writer in me. And just like my world took a full tilt and I found myself penning down the 1st chapter of just a tiny aspect of my world for the people of the actual world to see.

I know that not everyone feels this level of obsession if I may call it that to their dreams and may find it to be silly and too overrated. But trust me, when you have lived literally every nth of your life dreaming each night of bringing life to a world where you create and crave every inch of it. It would matter. It would matter so ducking much.

You would miss making that magic and marring the mundane. To my utter disbelief, I got to know that I had completely stopped visiting the world that I love the most. In this new journey of mine where I entered the corporate world, I somewhere walked out of my own.

The realisation came like every morning where I felt like a bucket of ice-cold water was poured onto me to wake me up. And wake up I did.

That's when I thought, 'Well that's not happening.'

So here we are and here's my first step towards knocking on the doors to the world which have shut on me. Maybe they will open up again!? Who knows?

That's my story while I try to backspace off the Bullshit from my Work-Life & Bullshit. But again, maybe I should just keep on dreaming!

Hearing and telling stories never goes out of style. So drop in your tales of how you deal with your 'Work-Life Balance & Bullshit' right in the comments.

Till then, I will hopefully see y'all soon with another one of my weirdly wonderful thoughts to share.

Just because...