Airport blog

Yesterday I finally resigned from Cognizant. It felt weird after working like a dog for 5 years. I am still not sure why I resigned. Is it because I want to do a PhD or is it because I needed a break? I am right now in the airport and have to catch a flight to Delhi. There is barely an hour for the flight. I am in Starbucks and slowly all the pent up emotions and feelings are starting to catch up. Last night I was frantically trying to pack with Reena really doing the bulk of the work for me. I now have leisure in a long time to actually look at my decision with a degree of scepticism and maybe fairness.

I have long felt like a failure in my job not able to do anything well. This I guess stems from two things – a certain amount of perfectionism and also a craving for approval from everybody. While perfectionism is good to a certain degree, it is the craving for approval that scares me. I have always been afraid of failure. I thought I had overcome it when i was in my early twenties and even tried to live it up, this failing has caught up with me again.

During my entire stint in Cognizant I was trying to be something that I did not want to be. Obsessed with success, not taking time to do things that I really wanted to do, basically not balancing my life. It is always easy to blame somebody else for one's failures, but if I take a hard look at what I was in the past 5 years, I was obsessed by success, wanting something more than what others had-completely greedy.

I think I wanted a break from that. Even now, as I am sitting in the airport, I have nothing left in Cognizant. However, I am still scared of the legacy that I am leaving behind, what others think of me. I am worried if I cleaned my laptop effectively. I am worried if I inadvertently left back any personal data. I am worried about the minutiae of life rather than see the grand picture.

In my last stint as well, I think one of my failures was to get involved in details and not see the big picture effectively. With all these failings, do I have what it takes to be a good researcher? Will I ever be able to give gyaan aka the late Mr. Prahlad? Is it worthwhile making all these sacrifices if I am not Mr. Prahlad? Should I have been just satisfied being a middle manager who is good in some ops activities and making some presentations?

I am not that good at networking, do not make friends easily and feel very conscious giving lectures (although I cannot stop once I start). Am I taking the right decision?