Taking time off

Note: I read my friend Rambunctious Whippersnapper's latest post about Career and it made me think about my current occupation, hence the post.

I think I overuse the words "life", "fate", "depressing", "mind", "thought", "desire"...but hey, don't blame me. My mind is constantly going through depressing thoughts about what my fate will bring me, and what I desire from life ( heh heh). I guess I'm at that stage where there are so many paths visible that choosing one, and the right one at that, is quite a challenging task.

These days, the most frequent question I get asked is " Oh, so what're u doing now? Studying or working?". People get most surprised when I say, "Oh, I'm on a break, just chilling for sometime". I can see the look on their faces, which just drops me from their expectations of someone useful to talk to. It's as if i've broken some un-written law which condemns you if you're just idling away and not constantly running in the rat-race. Taking time off? How dare I do that when there are people slaving like ants to beat the competition. Don't know what I want to do? How can I not, when there are so many options available to me, and in this day and age when opportunities are popping out from every corner. I feel those eyes pierce me with looks which ask how I can even think about wasting a year of my life, when others my age are always on the go, and can't even think about not doing anything.

To all those people who judge me for my choice of taking it easy, I'd like to very politely tell them that I'm tired of running around and stressing. I've had my share of competing, my share of stress (what a big share that was!) and my share of worrying about what to do in life. What's the big hurry anyway? If not this year, next year i'll do something "worthwhile", as people put it. If not next year, then the year after that. I still don't get what the big rush is. I might be coming across as a completely air-headed spoilt brat, but hear me out for a while. What use is that decision which you take just to beat the crowd, just to be doing something that seems respectable to those peeking people? What use is that life chosen in hurry, and then later regretting your decisions? What good is a career or a job in which you're neither happy, nor satisfied, and as a result often, not even successful?

So, I say, just chill yaar, if you take a decision in time, good for you. If you don't, the world is not coming to an end. Instead of being fixated with one thing even if I'm not happy, I'd much rather try out a lot of things and then decide what I want to do. And even if I already know what I want to do, and still want to take things easy, I really don't see the big problem with that.

I have a lifetime to live, what's a year in that? Right?