my new canvas

list of things to do before i’m 30.

ok i’ve been talking about this list for weeks now… so here is a 1st Draft so to speak.

there’s a lot missing from this list simply because i forgot to write them down when they came into my head… not to worry though because the plan is to stop adding to this list by the time i turn 25, in August 09.

i know some of these might seem lame - but they’re important to me.

then the aim will be to try and get as many done before i’m 30.

and you know what if i don’t make some of them i’ll just move them onto my list of things to do before i’m 40… or before i die :P

it’s quite remarkable the changes i have noticed in my focus/perspective on things since i wrote this list.

if anybody has any suggestions or know of important ones i have talked about but i have missed off, please get in contact with me.

I’ll update this again in a few weeks.

rock on!

• go after one of my ideas
• start a s/w company
• fail then start another company
• go to ICYPAA
• visit jon in china
• spend at least 6months in New York
• spend some more time in Buneos Aires
• move back to london again
• travel scandinavia
• visit moscow
• see radiohead in a tiny intimate venue
• see radiohead play in a different continent
• see the album leaf
• build a push bike from scratch
• celebrate new years eve on the south bank
• go to a TED conference
• go to zurich
• go to alaska
• go to canada
• go to whistler
• go to antarctica
• go to san francisco
• go to south america
• go to a world convention
• do voluntary work for a cause I’m passionate about
• find a cause I’m passionate about
• go on a mens retreat
• finish making amends
• improve my french
• learn spanish
• learn how to ski/snowboard
• learn how to sail
• learn how to fish
• go to a music festival in a different country
• go to a music festival in a different continent
• do a course on photography
• learn how to prototype
• revisit database things
• learn how to use Java
• have a rainy day fund
• have a better understanding of economics
• hang out with estelle again
• watch at least 25 films from IMDB top 100
• read at least 4 books per year until i’m 30
• skydive
• improve my maths / re-learn basic math
• complete a TEFL course
• try piano lessons

twitter

wow i haven’t posted anything here for a while

you can find my ramblings on twitter though

http://twitter.com/pravinisram

hopefully i’ll start making more regular updates in the coming weeks.  I have a list of bits i’ve been meaning to post.

don’t hold your breath though…

A Wall Street Job Can’t Match a Calling in Life: Michael Lewis

one of my friends sent me this earlier today.  i just wanted to share it with you all.

Commentary by Michael Lewis
    Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — Recently I received a letter from a
young employee of a well-known financial firm, who asked that I
not mention his full name, his employer or anything else that
might give him away. Though a bit short on self-pity and self-
dramatization, this letter was otherwise a fine example of a sort
I’ve received often these past few months.
    “I am writing you for advice,” Anthony (let us call him)
began. “I graduated in May of 2008 and since July have spent my
time entangled in the culture of (his well-known New York bank).
I’m thinking about leaving. My dad labored his whole life so I
could have the opportunity to do something like this, so leaving
isn’t exactly what I want to do. I know if I stay here I could
work unbelievably hard and move through the ranks, or maybe move
firms… (but) I guess I’m starting to question the whole
securities industry.”
    The young man went on to concede that what attracted him to
Wall Street was the chance to get rich quickly, and the
excitement — but that both of these things now seem gone
forever.
    “So I have this plan to go to Hollywood,” he wrote, but
then instantly undermined himself. “I feel confused, a little
stupid, but yet somewhat confident. I mean, I read your book, I
figured out how to get to Wall Street from a non-Ivy League
school, and I got here. The only question now is, if I leave,
where do I go?”
    Let me try to help sort it out:

    Dear Anthony,
     On several occasions I have taken my own advice and it has
almost killed me, and so I’m a tad uneasy about offering it up to
you. But if you promise not to take it any more seriously than I
do, I’ll answer you as best I can.
    Let’s start by putting your problem into perspective: You
still have a job. You work at one of the world’s biggest banks.
It’s true: The thrill and money is rapidly being drained from
such places. Your big bank, like all the other big banks, seems
to be in the process of being nationalized — thus the longer you
stay the more you may find yourself in something resembling a
government job.
     But that’s not all bad: Government jobs are secure. You are
also young, in your early 20s, and without a family to support.
That is, unlike the vast majority of the people on and off Wall
Street, you have the luxury to wallow in your misfortune.
     Now let’s wallow. We’re at the beginning of a recalibration
of the role of finance in global economic life. The excitement
and the money that attracted you to Wall Street will probably not
return for a long time. If these really are the only reasons you
became a financier you probably should find something else to do
with your life.

                         Hollywood Lurch

    But before you go lurching into Hollywood let us make sure
you aren’t simply repeating the mistake you made by lurching onto
Wall Street. That is, let us focus less on your immediate
condition — safely employed but disillusioned — to the habits
and beliefs that led you into it.
     You were never exactly wrong. If you’d been born 10 years
earlier and behaved exactly as you have done, your career might
well have made you as rich and seemingly successful as you
imagined your father wanted you to be. You simply came to Wall
Street too late, and are in the strange position of a man who won
the lottery on the first day there was nothing in the pot.
The mistake you made, in your view, is to have played the lottery
on the wrong day. The mistake you made, in mine, was to have
played the lottery at all.
     There’s a question you might ask yourself: Am I looking for
a job, or a calling? On the one hand the importance you attach to
your career suggests a desire for a calling; on the other, your
instinct to abandon your chosen career the moment it ceases to
offer an easy path to fame and fortune, suggests that what you’re
really in the market for is a job.

                         Job vs. Calling

    The distinction is artificial but worth drawing. A job will
never satisfy you all by itself, but it will afford you security
and the chance to pursue an exciting and fulfilling life outside
of your work. A calling is an activity you find so compelling
that you wind up organizing your entire self around it — often
to the detriment of your life outside of it.
     There’s no shame in either. Each has costs and benefits.
There is no reason to make a fetish of your career. There are
activities other than work in which to find meaning and pleasure
and even a sense of self-importance — you just need to learn how
to look.
     Reading between the lines of your letter I sense that some
of your anxiety is caused by your desire for the benefits of each
— job and calling — without the costs. Perhaps that is what led
you to Wall Street in the first place, and why your mind now
turns to Hollywood.

                           Doing Well

    What Wall Street did so well, for so long, was to give
people jobs that they could pass off to themselves as well as
others as callings. Such was their exalted social and financial
status: Wall Street jobs made people feel special without
actually having to be special. You never really had to explain
why you were doing it — even if you should have.
     But really, the same rule that applies to properly
functioning financial markets applies to other markets: There’s a
direct relationship between risk and reward. A fantastically
rewarding career usually requires you to take fantastic risks. To
get your seat at the table on Wall Street you may have passed
through a fine filter, but you took no real risk. You were just
being paid, briefly, as if you had.
     So which is it: job or calling? You can answer the question
directly, or allow time to answer it for you. Either way, I think
you’d be happier if you stopped thinking of what the world had to
offer you, and started thinking a bit more about what you had to
offer the world. Real excitement isn’t just in whatever you
happen to be doing, but in what you bring to it.
    In the end, you have to look for it not on the outside, but
on the inside. In my experience, if you find it, the other stuff
will take care of itself.

 (Michael Lewis, author of “Liar’s Poker,” “Moneyball,”
and “The Blind Side,” is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The
opinions he expresses are his own.)