Solitude

When was the last time you wished for solitude? Before a few days back, I can't think when. Most of last year, I have been wishing to overcome single-hood. I have looked around, dated a bit, been disappointed in the worst ways possible. cried in my weakest moments, punched in my strongest...! It's pretty much been a roller-coaster of emotions for me.

Pan camera to the last few days. Note my daily schedule:
06:00 - Wake up
08:00 - Breakfast
08:15 - Move ass out of hotel and walk to work
08:30 - At desk, laptop open, work begins
17:30 (on an average, not counting the day I left at 20:00) - Walk back to hotel
17:45 - In room, changing clothes
18:00 - In hotel restaurant reading a book
19:30 - Dinner
20:30 - TV or movie on laptop
22:30 - Sleep

My interactions with people are limited to people at work, the hotel receptionists, the restaurant stewards and stewardesses and the occasional old man asking me if I'm wearing Coco Chanel! Oh and of course, the countless people I smile and say hello to, everywhere I go - hotel, streets, office, bus, wherever. On the weekend, I went to Brussels and walked the streets with nothing but a map, some cigarettes, my passport and cash. I saw couples in love, kids having fun and old people generally chilling. I ate waffles bought from the street and heard live music in almost every alley in the heart of the city.

And I'd have thought that all this should make someone want to have company even more. But it didn't. Quite the contrary in fact. I love spending entire evenings doing nothing but reading my books and drinking the occasional beer alongside. It's such a welcome change from the long working hours that lead to a need for bouts of drinking (stress can really make you want to unwind with a drink) that leads to lesser sleep that leads to crappy mornings that leads to not wanting to work the long hours of the week. I feel better, I'm finishing my books in record speed and I don't go to bed thinking what my future is going to be like. Simply because my present is so relaxing! No tension, no concern, no stress. I sometimes find myself looking for more work to do (unlike how I hated waking up in the mornings to get to work back home) and I cannot say enough on how I love the hotel room all to myself! Nobody to ask what I'm doing, why I'm not eating, what are my plans for the day, whether I'll be home for dinner, who's on the phone or who I'm meeting in the evening. I don't want to make my parents seem like monsters, because they're not. They're the most understanding people on the planet (well in some ways at least), but some irrelevant nuances get very annoying when you have to deal with them everyday. And I'm sure somewhere deep down, they feel the same way about me as well. I am SO difficult at times, I wonder how they keep their cool.

Coming back to the point, I find that the constant push for me to excel in a field that I don't care much about breaks me back home. Not that I'm doing anything different here, but that push isn't there. I'm not expected to work a long week in lieu for a life to myself. I sometimes wonder if I did the right thing by taking back my old job. I wasn't making enough money writing, but should I have tried harder? I'd sure have loved 10 hrs of writing a day rather than 10 hrs of rationalizing application landscapes!!!

I picked up a book from the hotel bar yesterday and reading it made me feel like getting back to writing. All I need is inspiration, and working where I am today, gives me none. Back home, all I want to do at the end of the day is to talk about anything but work, or better still, not talk at all. And I don't get to do that. Most days I come home to a phone call from work, asking for more work to be done. And that's because that's just how it works in Mumbai if your employer has given you a laptop. Time to yourself....what is that?

That is solitude.

And I'm loving every bit of it.