Facebook - De-Addiction

I have a very urgent task to complete by tomorrow morning for which only 20% of the work is done and here I am sitting at home writing this blog. The point is Facebook has literally taken the fun out of my writing, my thinking, my activities and my priorities. By writing this blog I want to declare upfront I wouldn't be FaceBook'ing for at least 2 weeks from now. Let me see how hard is it gonna be.

Only few days back I observed Sruti Puli being absent from Facebook totally, like pfff, gone up in the air. She was die hard FBian liking the posts, posting the comments, posting videos, all in an instant from her net connected phone. I don't know the reason behind her absence but I am willing to bet she wanted to get rid of FB and experience 'real' life. I always believed the self-control comes from within and it should not be forced upon. Liking cutting the cable connection, stopping play time, stopping movies and many such things that parents resort to in controlling their children and making them focus on studies. My parents didn't believe in such restrictions. Mom was in control of all our studies and she had a very proper way of going about it. Exams or no exams all days were treated the same. We had proper 2 hour play time, then studies , movie in the night (on a weekend) and then sleep.

Holidays was a different matter altogether. During exams time we automatically cut down the play levels as for one you see no children coming out to play. Also, the fear of exams, tension and many other things are on your mind that you hardly care about losing your playtime. As we grew up, we were left on our own to make the decisions. Excepting for one time when my mom forcibly took away all the novels in my room during Engineering 1st or 2nd year, I don't remember any time my parents being strict upon controlling us. That was the time when my reading was an all time high and I was going on a marathon reading sessions. From then on though, I learnt my lesson.

Fast forwarding to the present, FB has become an obsessive compulsion. Comments and likes started bothering me more than the work. Time to time I go to gmail and check the Facebook folder for any updates. If not the mail, thanks to the ubiquitous wi-fi, I keep refreshing the FB app for any new messages. Browsing through the news feed, commenting and then having some laugh on some of funny videos has become a very absorbing fabit. If I don't find videos, then I start going to friend's wall and browsing the archives. I somehow absentmindedly am seeking some solace from it. Its a very annoying and disturbing feeling to be living like this. Whenever I write/post/like I expect a wall post or Like. How stupid, isn't it? That's true and I am willing to accept that I am one. I don't want this burden anymore.

I want to force my self to quit this Fabit. I wanted to do this right from morning. But because of the fabit, I saw the messages and commented too. From then on all through my office time and beyond till now, I haven't even opened once. Of course, mail is providing the updates of lack of updates. That I will leave it alone. I know one more day, nobody will even bother. You see in such fast moving feeds, there is no point in going back to old topics and writing something.

Phew! Enough is enough, back to work!

P.S. Of course, not ALL is bad in FB. Its a different debate altogether for some other time.

Regaining my senses - I

Taking off from where I started off, I have successfully been able to steer clear from my distractions for one whole week without

• Watching movies
• Transferring movies
• Downloading movies (I confess I dettered a little by downloading 'Kerala Cafe' for Nikmo. I still achieved my major objective though of not spending enormous amount of time digging for the next movie to download.)
• All of the above intermixed.

It hasn't given me satisfaction yet, as my objective of spending quality time with books or blogs hasn't been truly realized. My work at office too was partly the reason as of late I have been coming back home late in the night. That also explains the 'Part I' of this post.

Watch out for part -II.

Random Thoughts of an Absolute Demented Mind - My Mind -Part II

Here is what is going to happen now. I will try to roll out as much as I can while I watch IPL simultaneously.

There are some general thoughts on mind now about blogging in general. Of late I am running out of titles and coming up with so stupid ones. Is there something like ‘hit the wall’ for bloggers? I guess there must be. No, I am definite there is one - I hit them so vigorously almost at equal intervals of time, it puts me down like a patient suffering from third-degree burns for months sometimes. There was a while back reading certain posts in Lalitha Larking, it hit certain emotional chord in me. Her posts are simple, thoughtful, not much fancy but poignant and heartfelt. I have also decided to focus more on thoughts than on the gloss. How I wish I could turn back the time using time-turner (like the one Hermione had in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) and pen down all those sweet memories of Engineering days, those unbearable dimwit lecturers, those bunk the college watch the movie and the list goes on and on. But if ever time permits I will with inputs from Laddo herself J . Here are upcoming titles (well at least then I will have an idea what to write about…)

100th Post Celebration
Mom’s Trip To Bangalore
Plays
Quinn’s Quest to Laptop Series - The End

Apart from that I also have to write a mail to Mihir – poor thing, must have been wondering what happened to me and how come a simple question regarding my occupation could put anyone on high alert. Boy, I am going to have a ball writing that. And then there is one blurb of all my current favorites to my mom’s friends…All in short time.

Random Thoughts of Absolute Demented Mind - My Mind

“IT is the time when I play beyond my capabilities, when I know I am so tired that my legs starts aching, my breath coming out in gasps, sweating profusely, I enjoy the most…” – Jash (sometime, not really sure when..)

Well that aptly sums up my current state of mind. Of course you know coming from Forum, shopping all alone in the Landmark for around 2 hours to get the right books, all my thoughts were focused on one thing and one thing alone – “Blog”. As has been happening for some time now every time I come across a misspelling in a hoarding or something that touches my past briefly or some conversation of “little” significance words starts framing in my mind and I make sure I tinge it with a touch of humor and there is also a auto-spell checker to correct the words – to THAT extent I keep thinking.

So what is the first thing I realize coming here – power cut? Was I surprised – HELL…Yes Goddammit…a big YES… Somehow I feel that one bad rainy day that led to crores of loss, some 60 trees, 100 electric poles, etc. etc. has tarnished ‘Ejipura’ beyond control, beyond normal, beyond the ‘elite’ zones, beyond the ‘no-power-cut’ zone, beyond the sleep-well-in-the-night-with-download-zone. Normally I don’t crib about things like these and just enjoy my sleep mentally noting to get up early in the morning to do at least some of the things I promised myself. But man yesterday was the limit. Successfully making a journey back home half an hour ahead of usual timings, tired, hungry, eager to blog I was welcomed home with a power cut – a very very long power cut that stayed till 12:30 in the night and to only make the matters worse I wasn’t sleepy. And now again on a weekend – can you believe that??? But I am fully prepared now come what may I am here to blog…

Here I am in my room with absolute darkness all around except the light from the laptop, flies moving around stinging me relentlessly relishing every blood drop they suck in. What a stroke of good luck for them eh? This might be the day that they might tell it to their children who will relate it to their children and this goes on and on. What follows is one of the worst jokes you might across..read it with caution...no force “You just won’t believe it, mate I am telling ya. He was rock solid like a stone, first we thought he was dead but when there was some movement in his legs we all backed off and kept distance waiting for those hands to come slamming down. Nothing happened, then we all attacked together and began feasting. It was only little later we realized that we were unnecessarily being cautious. And so remember whenever you come across this bloke with nice specs and a good looking face, sitting in a dark room busy typing on the desk- that would be the day you won’t forget”. And sometime now one of the guys is going to come in and announce to the world – ‘ baap re, veediki pichekindi ra babu, ee mobbulo laptop mundu kurchni blog rayadam ento, aa dunnapothi body ki asalu domalu vunnai anna feeling kuda kalagademo?’ I am just guessing it might be Mr.Thati. (no one has come so far…)

Well for once in my blogging life it is my determination rather than willingness that made this blog and also this is the first time ever I am writing first in ms word before posting it on the blogspot and it feels absolutely ridiculously great. This might be the most meaningless post but if not for this then I am sure it would have taken another week or so to bring it up again. When I started off this I had something else in my mind altogether …

well more on that in the sequel….

Edit:

Thanks to my grit and determination miraculously the power is back in this course of events. Freaking Awsome Dude!!! - Ya I second that..

P.S. - Many of you who might have come across this googling for the great Arnab's blog and being disappinted due apologies...you see I am outta of ideas for titles and well as I was constantly doing alt-tab, alt-tab I couldn't have better title...