wonderment

Yes, that’s me … many many years ago… like 5 years ago? I say many because I definitely look like I belonged to another era. Hehe! This picture was taken in 2003 at West Coast Park (I think?) It was the third year graduation outing and for some reason all the boys in our batch weren’t there! Ahh… the memories of yesteryear. I remember that I was so involved in Campus Crusade that I’d always go to the CCC room after class, above Canteen One, on the third level, in Ngee Ann Poly, to find someone to talk to, or just chill.

I’ve just had dinner with some of those people in the picture. There was Eileen on the far left, Lijing (second from left) who joined us at the last minute, Calyn (next to me) and Cheryl who didn’t come. Likai, my ex Campus Director and Sharon my senior also joined us.

Felt really nice to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in ages. I miss being able to talk about our ministries, and share the hard parts as well as the rewards. It really made today, a day that began rather badly, end off well.

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

I’m now enjoying the last bits of my sudden 2-week hiatus from work and I’m very reluctant to go back on Monday.

I keep reminding myself that work is not all about my personal satisfaction, there are a lot of factors that make up job satisfaction.  I remember being asked the same question at the Mass Comm interview and  I said, “Nothing can be totally fun and glam, there’ll be the boring bits and  you have to take them both. I’m sure I can learn something in the boring lessons to help enhance my total Mass Comm experience.”

That may have sounded rather glib, but I kid you not, I really believe it. I honestly don’t mind the boring mundane bits when I’m doing anything  because there will be the bits where it makes it fun and worth my while. Just as long as the boring mundane bits don’t become more than the fun worthwhile bits. Or the depressing disillusioned bits are tougher to bear than the emotionally satisfying bits.

I’ve held off  talking about it publicly but I think I trust my blog readers to empathise and sympathise than to question my choices. I’m glad there are just the few of you who know this blog and know the position I’m in. I’ve chosen to talk about it here and now because the “older people” I’ve chosen to talk to have made it more stressful than helped elevate my anxieties. I’ve prayed about it, cried about it - I’m tired of feeling like an emotional wreck for the last couple of months and I want to do something about it.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, someone  who goes at something with gung and ho and regrets nothing. I still don’t regret what I’ve chosen to do, but I am quite surprised that only 7 months on, I’m feeling like it’s time for a job switch.

If there’s one more thing I believe, it’s that anything can be too good to be true. My dream career that literally dropped onto my lap is becoming more of a chore and a burden to me than something I really want to do for the rest of my life. On top of that, there are the depressing, disillusioning bits that are harder for me to bear.

I am not suffering excessively at work, the Em isn’t maliciously evil or anything, my colleagues are sweet and all, but my gut tells me that this just isn’t right for me. It’s the same fear that I felt just a month before I came home from Melbourne and I was standing at the crossroads between this and another job I applied for because I knew I’d love it. The only problem? I worked for an NPO before and this was another NPO.  In terms of career advancement, I wasn’t about to go anywhere.

This, on the other hand, would give me a leg up. Never mind that it was just a tiny company, even tinier than my old company, but I would be exposed to the real corporate life, I would have the opportunity to know and rub shoulders with real corporate people.

However, 7 months on, I feel like a caged bird. I have never known to sit still in one place for 8 hours on end and just type away at my computer. I’m infamously bad at administration and yet I’m assuming a job scope that is all just about administration. I am supposed to develop programs, but I pretty much do everything else from data entry to IT support. I have no contact with the outside world, apparently phone contact is supposed to suffice, but who yer kiddin’?

More so, what hurts me most is when I know nothing I do ever pleases the boss (the perfectionist) or me (the bigger perfectionist). I cried in front of the boss during my performance appraisal because I believed I didn’t contribute as much as my boss said I did.

Sigh … it’s not a pretty picture. With so much complaints, it should be easy to go isn’t it?  But I’m finding it so hard to scrape up enough courage to do anything!

She’s invested a lot of her time in grooming me, training, explaining to me why things work the way they do. She’s given me a lot of say in what goes and what doesn’t and criticizes me constructively for what I do wrong.

She’s not evil like I said … but she’s not everything I hyped her out to be.

I’m very tired about the whole thing. Very very tired about thinking so much about it. But this is my first biggest challenge in my work history … I wonder how it’ll pan out? Can I last till July when I have fulfilled my verbal commitment of staying for 1 year? Shall I just submit my letter in May and give her the required two months notice without any prior negotiation for anything else? Or shall I speak to her about a career development and salary review even before the review comes in July?

Should I find a job now and submit my letter as soon as possible, disregarding the fact that I’d promised her I’d work a year?

URGHHHHHH

Thank you for your kind prayers for me.

I seriously have gotten the blessed end of the stick, God has been kind. I escaped the rough bits of the disease, no rashes, no bleeding, no terrible nausea … I have been chirpy and can handle most daily functions and the best thing of all - my platelets are on the way up! Today, after a not-so-nice run in with the doctor I went to (after my own doctor made me go to the polyclinic for the weekend) I finally found out my results and I’m back in the healthy range -152!

I’m still not back in my pre-dengue count of 244 (Nov’07) but I just have to go for one more blood test to certify that it’s going up up up!

I’m tremendously grateful for the long rest. Has helped me consider quite a few things that have been getting me down … well, I can’t reveal too much now because of the sensitivity and uncertainty of the issues but once they become official, then I’ll share.

For now, to bask in the joy of finally being able to clean up my room!!

My blood platelets are up! It’s 126, just 14 points more and I’ll be back in the healthy range. Oh I can’t wait for the day when I don’t have to take another blood test. I don’t go hysterical at blood tests like I used to, but if I can, I’d like to stay far far away from them for a long long time …

Just one more thing to go … the bodyaches! I don’t think I need to feel like I’ve done a gazillion crunches and then when I get well, the truth sets in!

It’s Day 3 since I found out I had dengue …

No one knows for sure when I got bitten, where I got bitten. With my hectic schedule, I could have gotten it anywhere.

This is a real strange disease. There are no predictable patterns, another person’s experience doesn’t necessarily translate to yours and even the doctor can’t predict how far along you are.

She tells me its the critical phase, these few days, but I’m fortunate that I haven’t got it so bad. I’ve got a healthy appetite, even though I can’t eat my regular portions or what I’m used to eating. I’m still pretty cheery and chirpy, the only thing that gets me down is looking out of the window and thinking about how I used to run to the MRT next door to catch the train to work and now if I even think of walking downstairs, I’ll probably be so out of breath I’ll blank out for real. So near yet so far.

The bodyaches are bothersome but not overly painful. I just feel like  I’ve run the 15km marathon I did last year, 5 more times. 

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy, having the time to relax and catch up on my reading, finishing my essay for my graduate diploma course yesterday and emailing it in. No one’s been calling  my office line and the emails have gotten lesser so I can really cut down my worrying about office work. I called Val today to pass the Em some messages and that was that.

Now, it’s just to wait for the doctor to call me back on my results early this afternoon…