Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Moments of madness.....

Today was wierd. It started off brilliantly and ended little short of a disaster. On the way back while feeling particularly ineffectual and useless not to mention like a total failure, I had this moment of blinding clarity. An epifany even! As a broker one cannot live life in terms of years, months or even days. Nay, if one wishes to retain any modicum of sanity over the longer term one must live by the minute. We brokers epitomise the whole 'Living in the moment' concept. Think about it for a moment. Take today for instance. I was up at 7am, groggy as hell, eyes pink and gritty - a miserable bunch of minutes. Then we got into the car and drove to the station - very little traffic and good music. I caught a not particularly crowded train and got a place to sit by Dadar station - a good bunch of minutes. At Churchgate the first cab I caught agreed to take me to my office - one really good and freakishly rare minute. We had a normal start to the day, then one of my clients gave us a huge deal (brilliant moment) I got a couple of meetings fixed up for the coming days and all was well with the world. All in all a few rather good hours with some minutes of pure joy sprinkled in between. In the evening we all had a good chat, things started winding down - noting fabulous but nothing miserable either. Then towards the end just before quitting time, one meeting got cancelled, three more rejected, a client came back with really negative feedback and to top it all off I was informed that our competition managed to arrange a dinner meeting with a HUGE client that I had unsuccessfully been trying to crack for months. Trust me that was one of the most rotten hour's of my young life. I seriously considered chucking it all up and taking up teaching in Kindergarten! I was that miserable... Still am actually. Although there is a logical part of me that's saying, "Come on, stop beating yourself up, your day was good, its just the fag end that was bad." there still is a part of me that's saying "You've failed! He did it, you can't."
Now, all of the good stuff that happened throughout the day has been overshadowed by a handful of incidents that through sheer bad luck didn't get dispursed over a healthy period but hit all at once. Therefore I say, live in the moment! Frankly I should have taken the time out to enjoy the first part of the day to the fullest, perhaps then I wouldn't be feeling so rotten now.
To think that I actually wanted a high flying job in finance... what the heck was I thinking? Obvioulsy I too have some seriously delusional moments.... From now on I plan to enjoy the moments as they happen....Perhaps I shall retire early and write a book.
P.S. as I write this, I'm smacking my chops over the absolutely fabulous dinner my long suffering hubby put together for me... enjoying the minute to the fullest!!!! If he chose to throw his lot in with a neurotic, over stressed ,workaholic of a woman... well who am I to complain?