24

24 June

24 being the auspicious number that Dada Wore after relinquishing the numero Uno of India. Most of us will associate that jersey with the tremendous downward spiral that he went through but for what its worth.....

Today started early, partly because I had early morning testing to complete and partly because I was running way behind schedule. So, when I shook myself awake at 8.15, a full half hour before designated lift off, I knew this day would pan out in exactly the same way that most others had over the years, slow and groggy to start, an hour of productivity and endless doubts on the career path of choice. The sudden realization that this pattern repeats itself a lot also doesnt help out too much with my life. The productive time at work, if isolated wouldn't even fill a diary entry. This conclusion has led to sudden and mostly certain beliefs in my subconscious :

1. Productive time is essentially a by product of non productive time. Essentially when you get tired of wasting your own time, you do something rebellious that goes against the wishes of your fun loving self, you get work done :)

2. Non productive time is a necessary but not sufficient condition for some (and I stress some) work to be done by the end of the day.

3. By corollary, incentives that link your performance to your pay are generally kidding themselves because as you might already know, our performances are linked to our unproductive time, the causality of which, itself being variable causes HR hotshots to have nightmares and a constant need for tinkering to resolve these issues.

With these things in mind I had set apart a fair chunk of my time on work 'issues'. Mostly time that I would have usually spent gossipping or going on wisdom walks that culminated in another round of passive smoking. However all my well laid plans were thrown to the wind as the Sign Off for my latest release approached. There were (as there always are) teething issues and massive show stoppers, each took its own sweet time to get resolved but at the end of a long day with frustrating boiling over, the last cuppa was spent reading the sign off mail. That made all the horsing around from morning to evening worth it. Even the clueless expression that the Ops guys wore when coupled with the incoherence of their willingness to take a shot and "debug" the problem was sticking out like a sore thumb in a Picasso Masterpiece. Finally, the problem got inflated to such an extent that we all agreed it needed a bigger platform with more standardized solution that ...ayckety yack.. Wasnt our fault that your system isn't working. And with that ever so smooth transition of blame, we were ready to sign off on another glorious chapter in our lives.

I had almost thought that the 2nd half of the day would bring some ideation to a tired, worn out but still enthusiastic mind. However the myriad issues made sure that plan never saw the light of day. My brain, as dysfunctional as it is did hit upon a rather brilliant idea last night though. Since most of my efforts are concentrated on making something truly original, I have overlooked the obvious, the fact that.....more on that in the next post. In fact both of these have the potential to become Strat.in classics.