1 year and where it's brought me

It's been a year (and 4 days) since I started my first full-time job. Thankfully, I still have it. Thanks to the powers up above, at the corporate that is. A year and 4 days ago, I wasn't nervous about the prospect of my first job (not that I'm nervous even now). I wasn't having any nightmares about my boss-to-be or the kinda work I would be doing. I was pretty cool about it. In fact, the night before, I was busy watching Khosla Ka Ghosla till probably 3 or 4 am. The movie was so good I couldn't help stopping it mid-way. I looked at it as a good omen - a great movie preceding an important milestone in my life. You know how Hindus worship Lord Ganesh before embarking on a new venture? Something like that. Of course, in a very different, and most possibly incomprehensible, manner.

So what has transpired in this one year? How has Pratik Patel changed? Hmmm, where should we begin ....

- I've been to New York twice this year. The second time round, I fell so much in love with it that I dedicated my work-related password to my love for the city. Weird, but true (the truest things are always weird, no wonder we're so afraid to face it). But seriously - NY rocks !

- On last count, I have watched around 80 movies in a theater hall in the last year (I must have watched as many, if not more, on my computer). In the space of 10 days in March, I watched 19 movies at the Cleveland Film Festival - by the end of it, I had impressed myself. I never knew I could love cinema so much. I have even incorporated the terms 'film' and 'cinema' in my vocabulary - signs of a budding film buff. Now I'm excited at the prospect of learning how to make one.

- I never knew I could control my sleep as well as I have for the last year. I used to dread two things : sleeping early and waking up early. Now logically, in order to wake up early you have to sleep early - double whammy, right? .... Wrong! People who know my sleeping patterns know that the patterns can be very long. I proved them all wrong - I shocked the hell out of some! Heck, I proved myself wrong! I somehow managed to sleep at 1 am (some nights a little later) and get up by 7 am (some days a little later).

- I went to my first (rock?) concert. I knew only 2 of the 10 or so songs that they performed. But it was fun - I had a few beers. So when is Pink Floyd having their reunion concert?

- I've learned that I'm not cut out for this 9-to-5 routine. I've done it for a year and I'm already sick of it. I need the unplanned, the unpredictable; at times, I crave it. I need a sense of being unsettled in life, I feel restless without it.

- I've seen that people my age are moving on to bigger things in life now, or at least they have the big ideas in their head. Sometimes, I think I'm doing something wrong. But then, I'm so good at self-confidence that I tell me to be myself. Thank god for letting me be myself - amen to that ! :-)

- I've also failed to keep in touch with my close friends. It's not that they don't call; I don't return their calls. If you are reading this, I'm sorry.

- I've learnt that no amount of money is enough in life. If you have enough money for it, you will buy that new mp3 / video player, that Seinfeld box set, that book, that .....

Some of these don't even count as a form of change. Well ..... at least, it happened.