Restless

For the first time ever, I am absolutely bored of my work routine. It's easy to fathom why. Days, weeks and months pass by without doing anything else. There's no concept of fix working hours. There is no concept of a holiday. We work 16 or more hours a day, 30 days a month, 365 days a year. We might be in holiday resorts, we might be at home, whenever we are free, we work. They say and eventually you start believing them, that you need to do all this to remain at the top of your game. That you can not have longer gaps in your career. Your career will suffer. I want to ask them, who is at the wheel here? You are steering your career, or your career is steering you?

Life might be equally stressful in other disciplines. I have no clue about that. But I know that I chose this field for the joy of work. Over other important things that are usually instrumental in choosing a career. If the joy is missing, what's left in it for me ?

You also start thinking: Is this all there is to life? Work round the clock without having time for other things? Without time for personal things? Finer things? As often repeated as it is, you live only once. That too no one knows for how long. So, I have been thinking more and more of stepping away. To understand myself and what other things I am capable of apart from work. I love research but I hate the baggage that comes with it in the form of stagnation, boredom and tiredness.

Research is science, but research to a large extent is also a creative field, full of imagination and needs a rested and not a tired, bogged-down mind. The flight of novel ideas can not come from someone who has lost touch with the joy of creation.