That strange feeling of complacence again

I thought about it a lot ... i am in a situation that led to the "low" years of my life; again.

Long ago when i was in school I had but one ambition - someday i would be the captain of my house. It came true. In the 12th standard i was selected to lead my house at FAPS ... Selected not elected (in FAPS, not very surprisingly, elections were not the way in which student body leaders were appointed). Well what could be wrong ... its great news... my dream come true. Well the precise problem was i had forgotten to dream beyond that. Here i was at the pinnacle of my achievements with no idea whatsoever as to where i wanted to go beyond that.

It was the beginning of a period of low confidence and lack of vision in my life. The first two years of my engineering suffered the most because i just could not grasp the simple fact that i had to move on and set higher goals and get more ambitious (the fact that i did not stop working hard at academics was the only saving grace in my life). I have come to realize that the hubris of having achieved my ultimate ambition has lead to me losing out on lots of great opportunities in the four years of my engineering.

Well so here I am with a degree in telecom engg and a job at TI. And once again i have reached the next goal i had set for myself once i had recovered from my 'captaincy high' only to realize that once again i had forgotten to dream beyond.

Here I am with a dream job in TI and yet no goal or ambition to carry me further. I have spent the last few days in convincing myself that if i don't dream again soon i will probably be stuck here at this level of achievement whereas I have much greater expectations from life.

The only comforting thought I find here i that i have been able to identify the fact that i might fall into a dangerous routine of complacence once again and therefore i am probably better equipped this time to hand "that strange feeling again".

I have already started charting a new course ... and at this stage in my life it is more time consuming than my previous endeavors. The challenges that i set for myself this time carry greater importance. The goals i set for myself now will be critical and therefore the first step in my planning involves deciding how exactly should i plan. Should it be one single "large" goal and a one track approach ... or should it be several short term goals with no particular "large" goal multiple tracks hopefully leading somewhere ... or the most difficult approach of them all ... properly planning out several short term goals ... parallel tracks ... that lead to one ultimate goal ... an amalgamation of the tracks into one at a temporal point that i need to fix right now.

Some of these ideas are thoughts that have come off the top of my mind in the past one hour... one hour in which i have progressed from a clear minded person to a sleep craving IT employee...

I think i should allow sleep to win today....