Spiraling hard.
So lately I’ve fallen into the spiral of overthinking again. At this point, you should give me an Oscar for overthinking. With overthinking, I overthink every possible outcome and come up with weird conclusions. One such conclusion has been that suffering, overthinking, regretting, and complaining will not leave me anytime soon. I hate being this person, this complaining bug bit me years ago and the wound is still fresh. Somehow, I feel the grass is always greener on the other side.
I wish sometimes I could describe what’s happening in my brain as poetically as Michelangelo did, describing his pain while painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It would be best if you read it; probably you will realize that complaining is an art.
But I’m no Michelangelo, people will grow tired of my complaints at some point. Yes, but let me put into words what I’m trying to say. So I recently sat down to explain to my friend how life has become a series of chasing stress and struggle. And finally, I see it as pointless to waste good years of our lives worrying about something that will never fall into place. I came to the US looking at the wave where everybody was a FAANG SDE. My ex-friends ( haha, adulting my love ) never cared about their GPAs, didn’t work for two years after their bachelor's, went to the US, caught the bus at the right time, and landed jobs in good companies.
I was toiling in rotational shifts, didn’t have an idea what to do next, applied for a loan, and landed in the US to catch the same bus. Little did I realize, that instead of catching it, I went under the bus. Recession hit. Forget FAANG, couldn’t even get into other jobs. I was told, that if you focussed on DSA for six months, you are good. I did focus. I confined myself to my desk. Leetcoded for six months, followed playlists of the likes of Neetcode and Striver. I never got an opportunity to show someone how to do a vertical order traversal in a binary search tree in Python. And then I graduated jobless.
Six months later, I found myself in a role in another service-based company. A role very similar to the one I had when I was in India. As I accepted the offer, I was very grateful for the opportunity. I finally landed something, something that was better than my on-campus full-time role. It was all God’s grace.
God gave me everything. God placed me here in a new apartment, in a new room, with lots of time to myself. But I wished, God took my brain away for a while at least. I had a tough time settling in, missed my family back in India, missed friends back in Tally, and missed everything and everybody literally. And in the midst of all that, the brain that I’m blessed with gave me spirals. Is this opportunity worth it? If you wanted another role in a service-based company, you should have just moved to another in India. How much are you even saving really? What is this entire journey worth if you cannot send any money back home and can only pay off your loans for now? I compared myself at this point to my colleagues back in India, what a shame! What an amazing liability have I become! My American dream is trash. With my parents aging in India, and personal struggles, I do not feel it is worth it. So my conclusion is that I should have simply stayed in India, And sung to myself —” Mai Mein Shunya Pe Savar Hu,” a Poem By Zakir Khan, drank some chai, and worked at my old job.
I wish I stayed at that zero. The beautiful zero Zakir described. I want to tell dearest Zakir that I have fallen into something beneath zero. A negative. Too pessimistic you think? I lost my optimistic self under the bus that I wasn’t able to catch.
The little optimism left in my heart wants to see what’s in store. I want to see the other end of this tunnel, if there is. In the midst of all this, I keep telling myself- its okay if you didn’t land yourself your favourite SDE role in FAANG. It’s okay if you don’t have SDE on your LinkedIn profile.I keep quoting Harivansh Rai Bachan to myself — “Man ka ho to achcha, na ho to aur bhi achcha.” — If things happen according to your wish, that’s good. But if they don’t, that’s even better.”
Probably I will wake up someday and realize that this was all necessary. This spiral, this pain of navigating challenges away from home, was all necessary to feel alive. I quote to myself Harivansh Rai Bachan ji again — “Sangharsh hai to Jeevan hai, jab tak jeevan hai, tab tak sangarsh hai” which translates to — “Struggle is life, as long as there is life, there is struggle.”
