Happy

I was contemplating what makes me happy while taking my youngest daughter on our daily walk today. To be completely honest, I don't know what makes me happy. I'm still trying to decide if I'm a happy or sad person. I'm not a happy person, that much is certain. However, it also doesn't make me depressed. I don't have any sadness or depression. I have my bad days.

There haven't been many occasions in my life where I can honestly say that I've been happy. The day my baby was born would rank as my happiest day. My memory remembers this specific moment. That was perhaps my happiest moment.

When I was a child, meeting my cousins, indulging in junk food and sweets, and drinking Pepsi made me happy. I loved watching movies, going on rides, and reading good books. When I had good grades or moved up in the class, I could see it on my mother's face, and that made me happy. I don't remember any nice memories from my teenage years. My adolescence was not a good period of my life.

In my early 20s, at the end of my university life, when it came to knowing, I scored the highest GPA in my class. That made me happy and getting a gold medal made me happy. Actually, my father was happier about that than I was. Aside from becoming financially independent, I believe that getting a new automobile and travelling the world made me happy throughout the remainder of my 20s. There have been a few occasions in my professional life when I have been extremely delighted as a result of a success I had: a promotion, a pay raise, or perhaps landing a new job.

My dad used to say that my wife is a happy person, and I should look at her, but I don't know if she is still a happy person or not. She is probably less happy than before.

Happiness, in my opinion, diminishes as we mature in life. You search for new things to make you happy because the things that formerly made you happy don't make you as happy as they once did.

Nowadays, I believe that anything that brings my kids joy also makes me happy. If they are successful, I'm happy about it. I'm happy when we travel and I'm happy when I see their smiles. So, yes, children are the focus right now, but what makes me happy? There ought to be something to make me happy besides the kids, so I need to figure it out. Perhaps a few interests, a few jobs, or something else that has no place in a person. I should be able to feel happiness. In actuality, I need to look inward for happiness rather than search outside of myself for it.

Dated: 02-Nov-2022

Life at 40

Yesterday and the day earlier, I was going through my blog. I proofread it, fixed grammatical mistakes, and paraphrased some sentences. I know I have stopped writing regularly and I can see long gaps in my writing. At times, I do feel like writing something, but I procrastinate. I need to be regular because when I go through my old posts, I realise how my life has shaped up over the years. How my thoughts, worries, and joys have changed over the years. How have I transformed over the years? Today I have limited time. I will try to complete this post instead of saving it in drafts only to be completed next year. I have just dropped my kids off at school and the youngest one is at day-care. My wife is at work, and I am at home, all alone. I must complete a solution pack by Friday, and I should be concentrating on it instead of my blog, but I want to write something.

Reading my old posts yesterday, I realised how much my life has changed over the years. There has been a challenge in almost every other year of my life since I moved to Australia. Initially, I struggled with the emotional challenges of being alone, being homesick, and later, I had some work challenges for a year or two, and then personal relationships and family challenges. I also realised that some details of my life accounts are missing from my blog. Maybe I am afraid of what might happen if someone reads it and they know too much about me. Maybe I am scared of what they will think if my wife, kids, extended family, or friends read about it and judge me. I am 40 now, so I think I should stop worrying so much. I should live my life for myself, not for others.

I turned 40 this year. Time has passed so quickly. My eldest is 11 now. He will be starting high school next year. I have started to notice a lot of changes in myself and in my body. I caught a COVID earlier this year. There haven’t been any significant after-effects of it. But as I mentioned in my earlier blog, the lockdowns and working from home have made me mentally weak. My not seeing people for days (other than my family) and not talking to others has made my mind dull. I may have become a bit awkward at meeting people. I also realised that I have lived more than half of my life. If I am lucky, I may survive beyond 80, but I don’t know how many years I have got. At times, I am not afraid of death; I am afraid of my kids and my parents only. What would they do without me? Over the years, my parents have been my guiding force, whether good or bad. At times, my dad has encouraged me to take a lot of risks in my life, and all of them have been fruitful financially. I want to guide my kids when they are grown up to help them in their career, personal life, and life challenges. This is the fear I have that death will not let me guide my children.

Over the past few years, I have developed this fascination inside me of living on some spaceship or an underwater vehicle with enough supplies or systems to survive. This has come because of TV shows and movies related to apocalyptic life: Snowpiercer, Octonauts, Into the Night, Lost in Space, The Island, Star Trek, etc. Every night before sleeping, I imagine myself living in a spaceship, a submarine, or an underwater vehicle. I imagine how people live there and how they get their rooms or beds to sleep on. How do they find or grow food? I think I am watching Netflix too much.

Yeah, so this is what I wanted to write about. I have 10 minutes left before I start working on my solution pack. I must fix grammatical mistakes and have to publish this on my blog. I also have to come up with an interesting title for this post. So, I am signing off for now.

I just realised I want to write more (hint: house and the world in general), but that will have to wait for another time.

Dated: 26-October-2022

Reason

For the past few days, I have been thinking about what made me move to Australia. I can come up with the usual answers that I wanted to collect money, get a foreign passport, or for better career prospects, but deep down I know these weren’t the primary reasons. The main reason for moving to Australia is something else. I should admit it now. I was angry and wanted to escape from my home. I moved to Islamabad, but it was becoming very exhausting for me due to travel and toxic colleagues. So, when an Australian opportunity came, I took it as an escape from my previous work. But now in Australia, I have been trying to escape from it and want to go back home to the same place from where I wanted to escape from in the first place, but I have not been able to do so. My life has been so much different now. I have 3 kids. My family relationships are a mess. I have made some money and a house. I am growing old and sad. I should save this topic of growing old or getting evolved for later posts.

So, my reason for moving to Australia was escape, and the reason for not going back is money.

When we were kids, we read about the perspective of life from one angle: that everything is good. But when we grow up, we see a lot of things that what we learned earlier in life is very different from those. And we come up with a lot of different questions. In order to better understand different perspectives on life, some people try to change their environments in order to find answers to these questions. Some move towards religion, some move towards other people for comfort, and some move more towards work and money.

I don't have much to write in this post. This was in my drafts, and I wanted to publish it. Maybe next time I need more contemplating before writing, I shouldn't let my post be in drafts because that frame of mind is lost when I try to complete it.

2021: A year in review – So What Now Else?

It’s almost the end of 2022 and I realised that I haven’t put down my reminisces from 2021. Let me think and write down whatever I remember happened to me in 2021.

So, in 2021, we were still in the middle of a pandemic. Thanks to closed borders and strict COVID protocols, Australia was doing fairly compared to the rest of the world. I got a promotion at work this year. I have been waiting for it for the past 3 years. And it was not an easy one to get. I found another job and told my manager that I was resigning. So, I was on the negotiating end and got a promotion plus a very good raise.

I had my parental leave pending, which I didn’t want to waste. So, I planned to take it. I had been delaying it because I was hoping the borders would open and I would travel somewhere in the world during the time of this leave. But unfortunately, borders were still closed, and my leave was due to expire in June. So, I took my leave and, guess what... I stayed at home. I watched a tonne of Netflix and Pakistani dramas. I wasted 8 weeks doing nothing, or should I say "relaxing". I did do some renovations at home, but they weren’t significant enough.

In the middle of the year, Sydney went into lockdown. The lockdown lasted for 4 months. This lockdown was stricter than the previous one. People were actually scared this time. It became a daily ritual to know how many people had contracted COVID and how many couldn't survive. There was news of new infections and new variants everywhere. This has been the hardest time of the pandemic.

In 2021, I started to realise that I had become calmer. I have started ignoring things that used to annoy me. I don't know whether it was me being calmer or feeling depressed or helpless in this situation.

In 2021, I desperately wanted to travel overseas to somewhere I haven’t been before, like Canada or Bali. I was missing home, so I wanted to visit Pakistan. My brother-in-law was getting married, and my in-laws were waiting for us to visit Pakistan, but the stupid Australian government was not opening the borders. The vaccines came and people were getting vaccinated, but the incompetent government was quite slow in its roll-out. In October, there was hope that borders might open in November. I acted smartly and booked refundable airline tickets to Pakistan. I got a good deal. Luckily, the government decided to open borders, and we managed to get onto a flight and travel to Pakistan. On our way to Lahore, we spent a couple of days in Dubai. The trip was quite stressful because of the COVID PCR tests that one must take before boarding a flight. In December, the wedding happened. My brother and sister also came to Lahore during the second half of December. All four siblings were together after almost 6 years or so. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about the Lahore trip due to the tussle between my father and in-laws. This thing has been going on for the past so many years, and I can escape from it whenever I visit Lahore.

Overall, 2021 was a mixed year. I was happy that I was finally able to travel overseas. I think lockdown did have some impact on my mental health. I got a promotion, got a good salary rise, travelled back home, met my parents and siblings, and tried to be calmer. So, what else can I expect from Pandemic Year 2?

Its 13 March 2023 and I realized that I didn't mention one incident that happen in 2021. My beloved Khala passed away. I have been closest to her among all my uncles and aunts. Her loss was tragic and thinking of her brings tear to my eyes. She was wonderful to me. There has been some awkward distance since my marriage, which I believe was more on my end. I still miss her.

2020: A year in review – During this time

So, it is 2021 – it’s been many months since 2020 passed, but the effects of that year are still felt by everyone in the world. Let me begin my reminiscences.

• In December 2019, there was news of a virus breaking out in Wuhan, China. There was fear that it might spread outside of China, but for the rest of the world, little information was known at that time, and for the rest of the world, they paid no attention at that time. 
• During this time (in fact, from the last few weeks of December 2019), all of a sudden, I made up my mind to buy a house in Sydney. I started applying for pre-approval of home loans and started hunting down houses.
• Early this year, my wife had to travel to Pakistan to visit her sick father. Since she had to leave in an emergency, therefore, I stayed back at home with the kids. Sadly, my wife’s father passed away.
• When she came back, we continued searching for houses. When you have a limited budget, house hunting can be a tedious process, and it can appear impossible to find anything that ticks all the boxes.
• During this time, I noticed something odd and had to see a doctor. The doctor ran through many tests and did a procedure but couldn’t find the reason. This thing worried me.
• Meanwhile, the virus outbreak in Wuhan changed into a pandemic. Most countries in the world have started having lockdowns. So did Australia. During this time, I found a house that seemed reasonable, and it ticked some of the most important boxes, such as, in-budget, good location, and good land size. I made an offer and it was accepted.
• In May, I moved to a new house.
• During this time, I also started developing a friendship with an old acquaintance who moved to Canada from Pakistan.
• In June, I had my third child, a baby girl. I was always sceptical about having a third child, but now I would say better late than sorry. I think it was the perfect time to have a child. I got to spend so much time with my little one, and I have enjoyed all of her initial phases.
• Over the next several months, I kept busy renovating my house.
• During this time, my wife had some issues with one of her friends, and we had to distance ourselves from them. I advised my wife many years ago to not be friends with her. But she didn't listen. And now you see why I warned you.
• For almost the whole year, I worked from home. I never liked this thing. It's hard for me to work from home for such an extended period of time. In particular, being confined to the home and not speaking face-to-face with anyone apart from your family actually sucks :P

I hope things get better soon.

Regrets

Do you have any regrets in your life? Do you think if you had not done something in your past, things would be better in your life now? Is there ever a decision that you regret making? Is there any moment in your life in which you want to live again and do things differently? Do you have any regrets? I have seen people who say they do not regret their actions and decisions they have taken in their lives. Because that is what made them who they are. If you were to ask me, yes, I have regrets. Not one, but many. A few of them, I would say, are life-altering regrets. Sometimes I think if I had not taken that path or made that decision or acted differently in that situation, my life would have been much better and much different from now. But that is the beauty of life. You do not know what comes next, and unpredictability is the essence of life. If I look back on every phase of my life, I have some regrets. Probably not in the first ten years of my life, but after that. That leaves me with 29 years of regret. Maybe for the first ten years, I did not have any control or sense of what was happening in my life, so I did not have any choice about regrets.

My first deep regret started in my school life. I had the choice to change schools during year 10 and move to another school which had the reputation of its pupils getting the highest marks on the matric board. I felt emotional about leaving my previous school, where I had been studying since first grade, so I told my father that I did not want to move. However, I did not get the score I expected in Matric. I believe it was because of my school. I regret my decision deeply.

My second regret was not applying for the FSc. General Science group at Government College. I wanted to go for pre-engineering, and I could only get admission to FC College, which was second-best. I could have easily gotten into Government College in the General Science or Computer Science group, but I did not apply. Perhaps I was too overconfident in myself or ill-informed of the misfortunes of life. Ironically, 2 years later, I ended up at BCS in Government College.

Another regret was not applying to FAST for BCS. At that moment, it might have been a regret, but later I found it too small to remember.

During that phase of my life, I also went quiet. I stopped asking questions in class and felt shy when speaking in front of others. This has mainly to do with the circumstances of my home during that time.

The next few regrets were because of friendships I made or broke during my university education. But I guess that happens to most of us during college/university life.

In my early 20’s, one regret that I had was when I declined admission to the LUMS MS program. I think I should not have done that.

In my mid-20s, I regret not grooming myself physically and intellectually. I had time, money, and all the resources, but somehow, I kept holding myself.

I regretted the few friendships that I made during those times. I wish I had not done those.

So far, all my regrets have been related to not getting admission into school/university or having bad friendships. But when I look back, I do not know if they were life-altering regrets. Maybe yes or not. I cannot say anything for certain. But if I had made a proper decision, I would have been more content and confident with my life, having a sense of accomplishment. That is what I think, and I may be wrong.

But all these appear to be trivial regrets compared to what I gained later in life. I think I should have married later. I should have travelled the world before and settled into a life and career. Getting married at 27 was not a good decision that I made. It has nothing to do with my spouse, it has to do with myself. I should have waited for the right moment. Waiting a couple of years was not harmful. I should have waited and trusted myself instead of trusting others. But, when I trusted myself earlier, I was left with regrets. Therefore, I thought that maybe, for one time, I could trust others to make decisions on my behalf.

"Magar saab jab kismet mai hi dosh ho to sonay ki kaan mai jitna marzi doondo haath mai pathar hi aayeenge.. sona kabhi nahi milay ga."

But then with the decisions that I made, I can live with those regrets, but with the decisions that others made, I regret them more.

What an irony of life !!!

I am editing this post after a year. My current regrets are bad investments in stocks that I made. I should have waited or should not have become too greedy. Staying in Australia for more than a decade is also another regret. I should have moved out of here, but now I am stuck.

2019: A year in review – Joy and Stress… things go hand in hand...

2019 has passed. It was another challenging year for me. I was in Pakistan when this year began. I took almost 6 weeks of leave from work. This was the longest break I ever took from work. I was excited and had many plans for this trip. I met many old friends and ate out a lot. However, due to on-going family issues, I couldn’t enjoy myself much, and the latter half of this trip became stressful. The stress of the trip continued for a few months after my return.

During the Easter holidays, I visited New Zealand with my family. It was quite a memorable and expensive (😊) trip. Overall, I enjoyed this trip. Good memories I want to visit New Zealand again.

During the second half of the year, work started getting stressful. However, it was manageable.

Somewhere in the third quarter, my friend's wife (the only friend that I made in Australia) and my wife had a money issue which escalated to insults. It ultimately affected our friendship.

I have made plans to visit Turkey at the end of the year. But I got cold feet and cancelled my plans.

Healthwise, I have back pain issues quite a few times during the year. However, it didn’t turn out to be anything serious.

Towards the end of the year, my wife’s father became ill. This made things stressful for me.

Overall, 2019 as a year was a bit better than 2018. However, life still goes on. I have my fingers crossed for 2020.