Hate your job? You're not alone.

Today I spent some time googling ‘hate your job’. Most of the websites offer ambiguous or unrealistic advice, some of them don’t even offer anything – they just give a platform for all the people who hate their jobs a platform to rant.

I flipped through at least 9 pages of search results to find only one site that was close to useful - WiseBread, a site full of articles that teaches you how to ‘live large on a small budget’.

Like most others, it gives a list of tips on ‘how to survive (and Thrive!) in a job you hate’. The one difference is, it has captured my attention from point one.

‘Know why you’re there’.

Basically it says you have to remember why you took the job in the first place. Remember the process that led up to your current situation – the job search, the interviews, your conversations with others about the job, your conversations with yourself about the job, hearing that you got the job and accepting it… the point is that you took the job for a good reason. And yes, I should constantly remind myself of that reason whenever I feel like I’m losing it.

‘Have realistic expectations’.

It’s a big bang in the head – ‘don’t expect yourself to ever love your job’. Just because you don’t love it doesn’t mean something is wrong. I used to think there’s something wrong with me, always finding my job annoying no matter where or with whom I work. But it’s ok to be unhappy, it’s ok to hate your job, it’s ok to be dissatisfied because there are other areas in your life that make you happy.

Another tip that I adopted right away was ‘Personalise your space’.

Easy enough, it’s just putting up pictures of things or people that motivate you for working. I’ve changed my desktop from a dull preset blue screen to a red yoga poster, and I’m planning to put a nice picture of the people I love on the desk. They help you feel that you’re more than your job, help you remember why you’re really there and help you choose to stay.

After all, it’s all about perception and choice.

Nobody knows

I had some time to ponder over my job over the holiday, and the pondering resulted in depressing outcome.

It all began when I was watching a romantic comedy – the leading actress asked how the main actor liked his job, he answered, ‘it’s good, regular hours, steady paychecks.’

As she shockingly discovered that he hated his job, she said, ‘if you hate it, you should change it.’

He looked at her in doubt, just as I would if someone told me to quit a stable job that I’m perfectly capable for.

The story went on. They fell in love but were soon driven apart by a stupid misunderstanding. The guy pulled himself together and dived into his passion for alternate music, in the end producing a heart warming musical that won the girl back.
So are movies a reflection of life or are they an exaggeration?

Friend A said movies make everything too simple – there is always other stuff to consider in life.

Friend B said movies make everything too easy – it’s like the main guy is just waiting for a happy ending no matter how screwed up his life might be.

Who’s to say a certain decision is right or wrong? Who knows what would have happened if the main guy has stuck to his boring job? Or if his musical would turn out to be an utter disaster?

A yoga master once said that there is no right or wrong decision. When you make a decision, it may not be the result you expected. The only way to find out is to go through the experience and just do it. “The total acceptance of what it is”, he said.

Who’s to say if I would have been better off staying with my old boring job? Or if I would achieve more if I endure all this crap and stick with the new one?

Then it dawned on me – I don’t know what I want.

All my life it’s been about what others expect of me, they expected me to go to college, they expected me to get a decent job, they expect me to climb the corporate ladder and one day be ‘successful’.

Parents, friends, or even people who you barely speak to anymore, they’ve watched bits and pieces of your life and they expect you to become something more, accomplish something bigger, be better for yourself.

It doesn’t have to be put into word or action, it’s in the air.

When I failed a test in school, it wasn’t myself who I felt I’ve let down, it was my parents.

It was never about me.

And after all these years of skipping through people’s gaze, I have no idea of what I want anymore.

The guy in the movie has music to fall back into. I’m afraid if I was to let go of the career ladder I’m so desperately gripping onto, I’d only fall through void and emptiness until I crash the cement floor and die.

When I was a child, my mum used to tell me that I was collecting rocks in a river. It was hard work, but the more I picked up, the more likely I’d find a rugged diamond.

Silly as I am, I thought I found my diamonds when I threw my graduation cap in the air, not knowing life is all about collecting rocks.

And the diamonds? Who’s to say you would be better off if you’ve worked your ass off collecting rocks? The diamonds may just be as distant as the carrot hanging off a donkey’s forehead, an unreachable fantasy that drives you through everyday’s pain and mystery.

So what’s the right choice? To endure and reach for the stars or sit back and laugh at all the sweating donkeys with carrots in their eyes.

God only knows.

QUOTA

Is there a quota for everything in life?
You can only eat that many greasy burgers, spend that much of money, sleep for that many hours…
And I’ve just discovered another quota in my life in the past month – I can only write that much!
I started my new job at the turn of the decade, (now there’s been lots of debate on whether the decade starts in 2010 or 2011, but I’ll take TIME’s side and say, “Well, the millennium started in 2000 didn’t it?”) and it’s been exciting, challenging, overwhelming and humiliating as I begin to get a taste of all the sweet and sour as a reporter.
But nothing bothers me more than this – I’ve lost my will to write outside of work.
Words used to be my friends, and now they’re my bread and butter.
I dig them up from my rusting head and transfer them on a computer screen from 9 to 6 (that’s only the minimum length of time of course), and more often as time passes, I can feel them running out.
It’s always “xxx partners with xxx to launch xxx’, or ‘xxx bags/wins/scores/snatched xxx’. Words like ‘bolster’, ‘reshuffle’, ‘frenzy’, ‘push’ stay afloat in my mind.
I just hope my blog won’t end up filled with words like that, not that I update it often.
See? Writing quota!

Inspiration from yoga

Taking yoga classes a few times a week has become a habit now. On the days I skip my class, I'd be twisting and bending at what my parents think 'angles that are only possible when you're possessed' when I go to bed at night.

However, practice doesn't necessarily make perfect. I fall a lot during practice. I can't hold myself up with only my arms. My legs shake like they're being electrocuted when I half-squat. Not to mention sore muscles and back pains when I didn't check all my alignments for all the postures.

Yes, yoga is physically challenging. An hour of power yoga is extremely intensive and liberating when you realize you survived the session. What more challenging is the focus it takes to keep calm during all the possessed-like twisting and bending.

A yoga master wrote, we're all waves in the ocean. So similar and yet at the same time so different. There is no way to compare, and no need to compare. The core value of yoga is to find that inner peace during practice - the focus on your pure self and nothing or nobody else - and extend that feeling to your daily life. How you cope with the conflicting demands from the outside, like pulling your hands and feet with opposite force; or how you keep your balance in the ever-changing environment, like bending backward while standing with 1 leg; or many others postures that resembles life in so many other ways. How you can be yourself, concentrate on yourself, while being in an ocean of waves.

Yoga is not the only way to this realization. It is merely my way of achieving physical strength and mental balance in this frantic world. Some people find it overrated. But it does give you a new perspective to life, or at the very least, to your fitness level.

Job hunt

Finding a new job is like going on a blind date. You have to wear your best outfit, put on the right makeup, pretend to be graceful and confidant and all that you’re not on a normal day. It’s a daunting and frustrating experience.

And just how do you know that’s the right guy for you in a brief 30 minutes chat? How do you let your true colours shine through? And if you do, is that what he’s been looking for? How do you be aggressive and humble at the same time?

And then, you move on to a long wait. You twitch and jump every time your phone rings with an unknown number – maybe that’s him calling you for a second date! Even though most of the time the unknown call turns out to be promotions about personal loans, crazy diet or English courses, your heart still drums a tiny bit faster and heavier when your phone does ring.

That’s not it! You also check your email every 10 minutes for new messages – and you never forget scanning your spam box either, just in case.

When you're sure there’s absolutely nothing, after checking all channels of communication for a gazillion times, you start making excuses for him. Perhaps he’s too busy, or he went on an urgent business trip, or he was in a car accident, or he was kidnapped… Or maybe, he’s meeting somebody new and it just slipped his mind to inform you.

Isn’t this annoying, having to wait and wait and wait for someone who barely knows you to tell you if you’d be a ‘valuable asset’. I hate it, yet I have to keep going on blind dates to find my Mr. Right – most of the time just to get shut down – until I get to a point where I can’t be bothered to try anymore. Then, it’s time to stick to reality – yes, I’m good for no one and nothing – and prepare to be alone for the rest of my life.

It’ll be fine. I can go on walking tours with widows and lesbians.

PS. This is 100% purely analogy. I love my boyfriend. I just want a new job.

The fine line between profit and ethics

It's easy for me to choose because I don't run the place. I earn a fixed amount regardless of how I choose to approach my work. My manager though, I think she's lost it.

I'd like to believe that all decisions made in business are binding, so is a decision to hire or fire an employee. How she can tell my colleague she'd extend her probation and give her more training, and at the same time ask her friend to join us is beyond me. How can she look someone in the eye and tell her, 'we'll keep you', while planning to replace her? What's the point in doing that?

She'd say our company is losing money, and we can't effort an inefficient team member. Right, how about the rest of the team who witnessed ur evil scheme? Does she not think this would affect us? That this would demoralize everyone and drive us crazy?

In a tiny company like this, the link between commitment and performance is clearer than ever. Sometimes pay raise and better benefits can't fix what's wrong, sometimes people are not as materialistic as we presume.

And this is obviously coming from a person who doesn't have to support a family yet.

But that's not the point. There'll never be a pay raise anyway, cheapskates.

Favourite kiss of all time

There are countless memorable kisses from centuries of literature, photography and movies. One friend of mine loves the Hollywood leg-popping kiss, another is crazy about kisses in the rain, or as my boyfriend says, the upside-down Spiderman kiss.

My favourite is one of the classics, the unforgettable, the everlasting - V-J day in Times Square.


Shot by Alfred Eisenstaedt on 14 August 1945 at Times Square, New York. Source: Wikipedia :)