Ex beckons on Facebook

Its now I realized that the last time I blogged was a year ago. The reason is pretty clear to me. Its time for me to experience some catharsis.

Ive had my second relationship and second break up. I know from the first experience how long I take to deal with it. The first one took me about 3 years. It was awful to go through the surge of helplessness repeatedly.

So when i got into my second relationship, I was skeptical. All that I was most concerned about was it should not break up. But this also was not meant to be. The cracks came very early and again I struggled, overriding my feelings, my ego just to make it work. My stupid heart would not let me have it any other way. Then the inevitable happened- I was dumped.

So there I was back to square one, thinking day and night about it, going through bouts of crying, feeling the pain literally in my heart. I spent hours on the facebook profile eager to know what was going on in my ex's life- So many questions- was he already seeing someone, thoughts of him having moved on already.

Visiting his page was more important to me than visiting mine. I realized that it was almost an obsession with me. Thats when I decided to work towards weaning myself away from this . Ive now managed to do this for 3 days much to my relief and its not been too difficult. Have to confess though that I have an urge today which Im controlling. But Im fine if I visit it once in while as thats a better way of gradually moving to a phase of complete disinterest.

While Ive finally deleted all his messages to me on phone, Im waiting for him to take back the money thats due to him to remove his contact nos as well from my phone.

But what Im still toying with is removing him completely from my facebook. This morning I had a very strong desire to do that. But somehow didnt quite get down to it because of work.

I wonder what I will do eventually.

One thing is certain, Im gradually becoming good at the art of getting over being dumped. At this moment the thought going through me is that its not such a bad thing to get dumped. Lots of worse things happen in this world. ...It was just a passing thought!!..

First Among Equals

Likings at the workplace are very subjective. But they can make all the difference in someone feeling good about their work environment or feeling awful about it.
Im particularly referring to liking for certain people for no obvious reason- THEY ARE SIMPLY LIKED and PREFERRED OVER OTHERS. So even if they dont make any significant, worthwhile contribution to the work, they will get undue importance and attention. Interestingly this is not reserved for unmarried girls. The young married girls are equally strong contenders for this liking.
So while Im slogging my butt off, behaving politely with my superiors and not doing anything, whatsoever to make them feel insecure, making noteworthy contributions by doing quality work, I dont get even a fraction of the attention given to the subject of the HODs liking.
Im sure many of my creditworthy counterparts face this in their organizations. Has anyone been able to tackle this.
My strategy so far has been to be nice t this subject of liking. I infact join him politely when he is showering his love and affection for her and she kind of basks in all the glory. The reason for this is that he gets quite protective of her if ever a snide remark is passed or if she is made the butt of a mean joke.
But honestly I feel absolutely irritated about it. Why should there be a first among equals at the workplace? Its one of the most demotivating truths dominating workplaces today

KCK- The bitter corporate truth

Today I watched Karthik calling Karthik. I really liked the movie for many reasons. I like Frahan, I like Deepika, I like them as a pair, their chemistry rocks. But what really touched me about the film was Farhans moments of glory in his office after constantly having to take crap from his boss despite being so good and earnest at his work. Mind you, his boss even takes him for a meeting half way till such time that he needs to and feel secure about all paperwork work being right....afterall, thats what will clinch him the deal. Not once does the obnoxious guy think that here is my golden goose, let me impart him some training on handling client meetings and my business will rock. Instead he bullies Karthik, trampling over the confidence of an already under- confident guy so ruthlessly. What they showed was so true. Thats how the cororate world functions. Its ruthless with those who show even a little weakness, no matter how good they may be at their work. One has to be an expert at camoflaguing ones weaknesses. While many organizations boast of imparting training on personality development, its nothing more than a tick in the box for HR. the truth is- organizations want people who will deliver from day one. They only take from you, theres not much that they give. Hence YOU have to learn to take as much as possible from the organization.
- Ask, ask, and ask shamelessly- At the most you will get a No for an answer.
- Be assertive
- Ask to be send for training programme
- Ask to be send for seminars
- Ask to be allowed to attend meetings wherever possible

Aghast helplesness to naxalism

It was a holiday for me and I was at home doing practically nothing. My only contribution for the day was a couple of official smses, a stinker to a despicable client servicing whore, paying the telephone bills and running some mundane errands for my mom.
While I was buying myself some medicines from the pharmicist during my visit to the market, there was a sudden commotion outside the pharmicists air conditioned shop. The next moment a man barged into the shop with a heapful of clothes and dumped them on the floor and rushed out. I realized in a couple of seconds what was happening. The man again barged in with another heap of clothes. This time however the pharmicist raised a bit of a protest saying he would not allow this. At that point I got a closer look at this man as he stood for about 2 seconds with a look of aghast helplesness and desparation conveyed through every muscle on his face. He was a fair thin man, wore a shabby T-shirt and trousers and had a beard. I felt distraught seeing his expression..any one would have actually. I was about to tell the pharmicist to help him, but thankfully, the pharmicist did not protest any further and allowed him to dump his precious stocks that he sold on the footpath.
The cause of this situation encountered by this man and numerous other poor, hardworking souls in this country is the raids by our corrupt, inefficient, apathetic police force. They like us to believe that by clearing away some of these poor souls from the footpaths once in while (read, when they want to make a quick buck), they are helping control crime.
So while the rich can keep getting richer, the poor must keep getting poorer. Finally when these poor are trampled beyond human endurance, naxalism is born.
This is the irony of this nation.

Trying hard to hang on and stay positive

What would I do without my daily dose of motivational quotes, followed by some successful self counselling.

Its tough...It hurts cause I get punched where it hurts most... my heart, my ego. Yet I continue to work like theres no tomorrow.

I bend backwards to make sure I put in that extra bit and take the feedback given during my appraisal and act on it diligently.

Yet, I find myself getting constantly ticked off by my bosses. The vibes are cold. I know well they have the power and so I console myself saying, "every dog has its day"

Even winning an award at an industry function did not get me a word of appreciation. I know the reading is clear- My face is not liked. Sometimes.. and Im almost certain about this, they just push me cause they think, "heres a sub-ordinate whos good..so let get the most out of her, which means doing far more than Im expected to do...

It baffles me how some so called seasoned professionals can be so biased, insensitive and completely insecure when it comes to sub-ordinates.

He asserts his authority not through his work, but rather through his aggressive, arrogant and unfair behaviour towards people and me for sure. Beauty and fair skin are the only two attributes which soften him. So now you know what his level is.

Whats is sometimes and rather strangely a sort of consolation for me is the fact that Ive realized this guy is not a very sound professional. He has lots of learning to do himslef. His sense of judgement and instincts are rather weak.

They say whn the going gets tough at work, its best to put your head down and work really hard. Since my taling will not help, Im hoping my work will do some talking for me.

Beauty and the Corporate World

Yes..the topic says it all..If you are beautiful then you can get away with being just ok at what you are supposed to be not just good...but great at...thats the corporate worlds approach.

This is an approach thats only made me feel helpless and bitter many times. Can I really do much about it? Helpless cause i cant do anything to change my looks. Im brown and average looking..not the fair and lovely kinds. Bitter..cause Im very good at my work, but have to struggle and hope to get the appreciation or attention for really good work .Sometimes i get it... a lot of times.. i dont. I dont have any illusions about my quality of work because I get appreciated for it from various quarters who unfortunatey will not be able to influence my growth as much as a certain gentleman for whom beauty comes first. My beautiful, fair and lovely colleague gets attention for doing her regular work. She automatically draws the Titan to her. Shes also quite animated when she talks and is a good package overall. She rates above me in the looks and dressing department. Im not a bad looker and neither do I dress shabbily, but no matter what I do its not something that i can match up wuth her in. But Im far superior at what Im there for...which is my work...Theres of course a significant experience gap between us. I have a lot more years of experience. At the level of experince at which she is now, I had to really work my way to get noticed. I worked hard, really really hard, learned things the hard way, because of which Im good at what I do, most importantly I learnd to work without getting noticed. But this is a rather tough situation for me to handle. I have someone whos much junior to me, yet getting more attention than me for a reason which is not right. But I really want to find a way of addressing this..God help me and you too if you are reading this.

AP- Account PLanning- huh...woh kya hai?

I cant help but wonder as to who came up with the concept of account planning as a function that is part of all top advertsing agencies today. As my experience in the marketing function grows, I am compelled to conclude that this is truly THE most non-productive and worthless function in an advertsing agency.
While there are some brands and categories which have tried to use these individuals soleley because of their good IQs...(that is all you need to be in this function, it requires absolutely no other skillsets and abilities) and also sheer laziness on the clients side, on most brands they are used purely to put together some jazzy presentations- (read- only stye and zero substance) for the top honchos of the agencys.

To give you a very specific example, there was an account planning starlet who put together a flashy presentation and had content which was completely based on a “research” that she claims to have done with a pathetic sample size. The findings were so arbit and mostly based on a lot of her presumptions about the TG. (She dared to present this in front of the Marketing Head of the brand she was working on)

I know I cant blame her completely..thats just the nature of the job of an account planner. Its so vague.

One would have to really struggle to find an apt job description of an account planner- I know some of you who read this line will probably want to throw a pice of paper at me containing the job description. But Im almost certain that it will be nothing but just a collection of facncy words put together. It will read something like this “Must have strategic bent of mind, ability to decode a consumers mind”:)..

God help this function. I for a fact know that I would never require the services of an account planner.