Chaosplay

As you know I have been outsourced, and I will have no job in September. My company is doing all these feel good classes for us, as we train our replacements. During one of the class about dealing with change, they had this circle with 8 slices & each slice representing different part of your life. The 8 slices were:

1. Career
2. Health
3. Friends/family
4. Self improvement
5. Spouse/Significant Other
6. Spirituality or religion
7. Physical home/environment
8. Financial stability

Our job was to fill in each slice representing our satisfaction in each area. My circle was almost empty. This was suppose to be a private exercise but I really didn’t care so much, so I showed it my friends. Luckily, they made me realize that although I am not really satisfied with any aspect of my life but I am doing much better than most people. For example, I workout regularly, eat healthy, my resting heart rate is 50 bpm. That is really good health! But I gave myself 1 (lowest score) in health slice. Similarly, in every category, I am not only doing better than average but in most categories I was way ahead of curve. (I don’t want to brag, and my biggest thank goes to God for it. Without His mercy, I would be nothing). But I am not satisfied with anything in my life. My actual performance had no correlation with my satisfaction level. I am super critical of myself. When I accomplish a big project at work, I don’t think of things that went well. I think of things that went bad & how I could have done better.

Basically, I yearn for perfection & anything less than that has no value to me. It also pushes me to work hard & keep improving myself. Perhaps, I got these qualities from my parents. Pakistani parents are just like Asian parents; any grade less than 100% in school will get you in trouble. 99% is no good, seriously.

But is it healthy?

Probably not.

But I still rather be unsatisfied & work hard than be satisfied & be a lazy bum. I guess the best thing in the world would be, to be satisfied but still work hard. I guess I am afraid of satisfaction.

Perhaps we should teach kids that perfection is not a state but rather a process.

For me, I need to see various shades in between perfect and imperfect.

I haven’t written a detailed post in a while because I had this epiphany. I am working too hard all the time. My parent always pushed me. I was never satisfied even after great successes. I still never feel satisfied. I think its time to relax a bit. I will make it when I make it. In meantime I don’t need to sacrifice fun and enjoyment. I need to be content. I don’t really enjoy late night coding anymore. So I should stop coding and find out what I really enjoy.