Appreciation

These days we all are getting the appreciation mails :) . And this gets better and better. People are getting appreciation for doing their standard job. And being happy about it.
This may be motivating for whole lot of people but some how I find it funny. Appreciation for anything seems like taking away the value. I'd like my contribution to be acknowledged and thats all. Not really made out an example for anything.
The doing of a job gives me pleasure. A work well done, I don't need appreciation for it. I already know if I did a good or bad job.
Do I need appreciation for things I just did, w/o my heart in it? More pertinent question, why did I even do it?
Primarily appreciation/acknowledgment is motivating only when it comes from people I respect and I anyway know I did a good job according to my standards. Now, an appreciation w/o a definition of standards is truly limiting.

Salary is low

Why do we continue to crib about low salary? Is it low? OR it is low in comparison to everybody else?
Can I make my ends meet and save some for my 100 K? Yeah, I can and I don't want to compare my salary with equivalent profiles (it is low actually :) ). Should it affect me? I don't think so.
Two people are never same, some just negotiated better, some passed out from IIT etc.These will be rewarded no matter what.
Ok, let me ask a more pertinent question. Will I leave if I get a 20% raise from the competitor company? No, I don't think so.
I may leave because of following reasons
1. My colleagues think they are too smart and can go back to their stated commitments (verbal , so what) and then write mails like -"hey Gagan, I think there is a disconnect here, What I said was not this(whatever) but blah, blah ....." .
2. How many times I'm disturbed from doing what I like doing. At my place if I'm reading a book I'm not disturbed, but in office on an average I spend 30% of my day in meetings :) . Truly hateful. I'd prefer keeping a day aside for status, skip, and other management meetings, just don't be there everyday.

What to do with life

Few things, wasting my time on.
In the nutshell how do I answer "what do I want to do with my life?" .Truthfully, nothing, just allow me to read books, sleep a lot and generally allow me to be a bum. But nobody accept this answer. Essentially they say, I should do only what I want to do but "what I want to do" should be a secure choice and ultimately should lead to a paycheck :) . Too bad but I want to be a bum, thats it.
Alright, let's explore this further, I agree that I should do what I truly, sincerely believe in, what I'm good at, time loses its meaning when I'm doing it and once I go for the smoke after indulging in it and I enjoy that too. wow, lets decide/discover that. Let's give it a 'Dil Chahta hai' test for 2 minutes.
zzz.......
Alright 2 minutes are over, and do I know what I want to do? Boom, still I want to be a bum.
Now we can explore this decide/discover part a little later, or perhaps in another post.
Here is how I want to go about it.
Let's go with needs an desires -:)
What I desire is a bungalow with a private beach and a hill resort cottage, good food (read Lebanese), good wine(read not too fancy but good red wine ) :) and be a bum. About 100 millions $ -:)

What I need is a monthly pay rent,some budget to buy books, surf net and standard Dal,Roti.About 100,000 $ :)
Ok, I can start being a bum pretty early i.e. when I have 100k invested, isn't it? I don't have to get a paycheck necessarily to be a bum . I can be little more responsible, a little more patient till I make 100K. After that I'll be responsible/patient only for those who don't stop me(actually only those who help me) being a bum.
Wait a minute, this gives me little insight in my CEO's behaviour, how come he is so patient with me, I'm not great conversationalist, I don't do engaging conversation, I'm more of a blunt guy but he is still paitent with me. Only 2 reasons
1. I help him doing something he truly likes
2. He is making his 100K (Whatever that may be)