The Personal Blog of Sachin Ganpat

The internal musings of a disorganised mind.

Archives for May 2020

Will I ever take that step?

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I was going through some old Evernote notes while I was doing some cleaning up. (In reality, I was procrastinating on my final year Masters thesis.) I came across several notes going back to 2011 about making a career change. This has been something that I’ve been looking at for almost a decade.

But I never made a step to make that change.

At that time, it was also when I quit my job and was looking to start my business. I ended up starting that business along the same career path. I ended up not changing anything much. Even the work that I got was a continuation of what I was already doing in my old job.

I’ve always looked at the hard work I’ve put in building myself to where I am. It’s hard making a change to something else. It’s was especially difficult given that I have a family to provide for and a change in careers would mean a considerable difference in lifestyle.

Even as I think about it now, I’m terrified of the prospect. I am terrified of losing the advances in my current career. Of losing my status. Of losing my influence.

Which is confusing, as I thought about this and the contradiction to my purpose yesterday. Guess knowing my purpose isn’t enough.

Given this, and if after all of this time I still can’t make that change, will I ever do it?

What purpose?

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For quite some time, I have been questioning what am I really doing? And for why am I doing it? And recently it’s been getting worse. I put it to a mid-life crisis, but this has been a question on my mind for more than a decade.

Over the past few days, I thought about it a little more.

At first, I thought that my main goal was to be super successful. But I realise now that is not the case. I mean, I want to do important stuff. If I get a chance to save the world, why wouldn’t I take that chance? But that’s not my goal. I just want to do cool stuff.

My main goal is ensuring that my family is taken care of financially, which is the only reason that I’ve been working where I am now. Not for a career. Not for status. Not for influence. Just to provide for my family.

If that were a given – that my family would be taken care of financially – I would spend the days learning about stuff and teaching it to others. Just doing things that I think could make others’ lives just a little better.

The thing is that while my main goal is providing for my family, I find myself neglecting them for the work that I’m doing in the hope of providing for them. There’s a contradiction here.

If I know what I would like to be doing with my time, and what is my ultimate need, then it should be simple to determine the best way to resolve the contradictions.

At least, you would think so.

Life after COVID-19

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I’m sitting in my living room right now with my wife and two kids reading while I’m typing this out. The COVID-19 lockdown has sure changed things for everyone.

With school out and much of activities limited, the kids spend more time at home and have found different interesting things to keep them occupied. Reading had become a regular pastime (although TV and games have not gone away).

We were not a family to get out, to begin with, a curse when you’re a family of introverts, but it was useful having an option to go out to a movie, or park, or beach.

Some normalcy is returning with some of the lockdown rules being rolled back and businesses starting to reopen. We’re still limited in group sizes, and from going to beaches and rivers, but at least we go head out and exercise once again.

One wonders how COVID-19, or at least our response to it, is going to change the way we operate from now onwards.

I see some businesses in the tech sector saying that they’re going to be fulling remote work businesses. This is easy to say when you don’t require people to be physically at your location, for example, with manufacturing. I wonder if those businesses would see this as a reason to invest heavily in automation and robotics now?

What about people’s personal lives? Will they now seek entertainment from home and spend less at cinemas, restaurants and bars? I doubt it.

I think people want to get back to a place of normalcy. While introverts like myself are enjoying the quiet time, the other half of the population is losing their minds and want to get back out there.

Whatever the response, there’s no doubt that the way we live, work and play will change. We could only hope it’s for the better.

Priorities

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After my scare yesterday, I spent most of my night on the couch in between vomiting. I still don’t quite know what’s wrong with me, but I feel a little better now.

But through the day, I was less worried about how I was feeling and more concerned about all the things that I’m not doing. All the work that is piling up while I recover from whatever I’m going through.

How did I end up like this?

I always wanted a life of freedom where I didn’t have to be worrying about all the things I can or cannot do, but yet still I ended up here.

It’s a choice, I know. I choose to act this way at the moment. I could say that I will change my ways and put more priority on myself and my health, but that’ll be empty promises.

At least I can say today I didn’t check my phone messages or email. I’ll deal with that another day. For now, I’ll try to relax and get better.

Scared

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This evening I had a serious scare.

I started to feel light-headed, and my vision started to get dark. I sat down immediately, and when I felt the feeling pass enough, I checked my blood pressure.

It was reading 70/38 with a pulse of 44.

I’m no doctor, but that didn’t look too right.

My wife got me some water with some salt in it, and I laid down with my feet up. We called the doctor and after getting some info, advised me to go to the hospital.

Up to that moment, I was worried, but now I felt really scared.

I generally don’t feel scared of death. I would usually feel far off and an abstract concept. But in this case, it felt like a real possibility.

In my mind, I just worried about what would become of my family. If they would be okay and have I saved enough to take care of them? Will my kids be alright without me, and were they worried (I don’t think they were)?

Otherwise, I just focused on the next step – getting checked out. I will worry afterwards.

Everything checked out fine. The doctor said it might be some new medication that I’ve been taking for some pain. He advised to stop it and monitor for a day to see if things improve.

So disaster averted for now.

I still feel like shit, and a bit worried, but not scared.

But it did give me some pause. I need to ensure that my family will be okay without me. I can’t say for sure that I will be there for them for a long time.

Bad decisions

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Every day I find myself working hard and wondering, “Is this worth it?”

In my life, I’ve made so many bad decisions that it’s getting harder to try to make them on a daily basis. I keep second-guessing myself. And as time passes by, I find myself making less and less risky decisions.

I know that you’re thinking that’s not a bad thing. But it is.

Going the path of less risky decisions mean that it’s less likely for me to take a risk.

  • Changing jobs
  • Starting a business
  • Making improvements
  • Challenging the status quo
  • Standing up for what you believe

These are things that involve taking a risk.

When I was younger, it was easier to take chances, because even if it was a wrong choice, I had time to recover. Now I ask myself, “What if I make a mistake now? Would I be able to recover?”

And I’ve made so many poor investments in my time.

  • Buying stocks at the wrong time.
  • Investments that didn’t bring the type of return that I expected.
  • Starting a business that didn’t bring the success for which I had hoped.

So my net worth is a little weak at the moment.

I have to consider things like healthcare and sending my kids to university. Taking financial risks now bring me anxiety rather than excitement.

The bad decisions that I’ve made in my life have not made me a better decision-maker. It’s made me too cautious.

A glimpse into others’ lives

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It wasn’t so long ago that if anyone was working at home, hearing kids in the background, or dogs barking, or anything domestic coming across a business call, was considered to be unprofessional. Who could forget this viral video?

Now here we are during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us working from home, it’s become acceptable to hear all those sounds, or even to see them in video conferencing sessions. Even news or late-night talkshow hosts filming their bits from their homes will have their families and pets participate.

We’ve somehow now realised that these are people with real families, and it in no way made them any less professional about it.

We could now see that as people, our personal lives and business lives need not be separate, and this whole thing about work-life balance can change to something else.

Perhaps this pandemic will change the way we see each other. Maybe it will make us more personable. It will allow us to see each other as people.

Best-Laid Plans

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One thing that this COVID-19 has impressed upon us is that there is nothing that is so well planned that it cannot be up-ended.

While many of us would have made plans for this year, they all would have changed in a pretty short time.

I would have planned to travel this year to visit family and friends in the US and Canada. Of course, that’s not happening now.

My daughter was supposed to do the SEA exam and now has to wait. We have no idea what is going to happen to the schools.

All this is wreaking havoc on me. As someone who likes to have a plan in place, being unable to count on that is unnerving.

But I still try to keep some semblance of control by planning my day and trying to get at least one of my items done.

It’s been getting better.

I still going to try keeping some of my plans in place.

  • My plans to start a new business is going to be challenging, but still going to try.
  • Fell off the wagon with my M.Sc. project, but time to get back on.
  • No official 5Ks or 10Ks this year it seems, but I can do a virtual one, and plan to.
  • Going to use this time to minimise my “stuff”, especially the digital things.
  • I’ve been cooking some more, especially since food places were closed, and there is nowhere to go.
  • This is an excellent time to control my expenses, although it’s hard to guess how it’s going to turn out, as prices are hard to guess and the economy is breaking.
  • Plan to take control of my time. It’s been hard working from home these few weeks, where the boundaries between work and home are blurring.

The year has been terrible so far, but will still try to make the best of it.

About this blog

This is a blog mainly about my personal thoughts and opinions, but it's also a personal journey to self discovery.

  • Have you ever thought that you have a greater purpose than you are serving now?
  • Do you believe that you have yet undiscovered strengths, that once you find them you will be unstoppable?
  • Do you think that this is a world that's on a wrong course and we need to stop it before we destroy ourselves?

Well I have, and I want to do something about it.

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