A Rose-tinted Life

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

Working at night

I seriously like working at night. I’ve been happily sending emails for work. On a Sunday night. At 1130pm. I know. Don’t start hurling stink bombs at me.

The very thought of being able to plan my timetable and when I’m going to do work thrills me. I can finish my work tonight and go out to play tomorrow morning!

The Em’s like me too. Just after I sent her an email about something else, she just sent me an email about her kaput email … which doesn’t make sense because how can I get her email if her email isn’t working?

Anyway, back to work. If I can finish some stuff tonight, I can go out and run errands tomorrow morning before everything shuts down for the holidays.

There would be no doubt that I would be willing to stay and learn from the Empress. She’s phenomenal in communication!

I can’t believe that I just crossed the 4 month mark of being back. It doesn’t seem so long ago that i left Melbourne and it doesn’t seem so long that I’ve been working! Where did all that time go???

Anyway, I’ve been away from my blog for so long so I owe an explanation.. Let me say it best in pictures:

That’s my boss on the right, Anna the helper in the middle and V my colleague.

Me and mah “baby”

The Boss has been wanting to submit her application portfolio for The Master certification since 2006 but because business has been so brisk, she didn’t really get down to it until recently. (If she becomes The Master in her industry, she’ll be the first person in Asia and the eighth person in the world with that kind of status. It’s BIG.)

So what usually takes one year of data gathering and preparations, we had to pull together in one month! I couldn’t  imagine how it could happen and now that we’ve even managed to package it and Fedex it off to her mentor in America for the first cut … I don’t know, it’s pure thanks to God that we’re still sane.

I was really stressed out today though. I hate doing things like punching holes and cutting tiny bits of paper when I’m rushing for time and then also knowing that I’m forgetting stuff and being asked to “check again”. On top of that, because I was still very tired from the rushing around to print the stuff yesterday, I didn’t really feel very chirpy which Val picked up on immediately. She was such a brick for rallying us when the Boss and I were nearly at each other’s throats and coming in at the last part of the packaging (which I honestly suck in).

The best thing was, I couldn’t help but tear a bit when i thanked her for her help  through SMS and she replied that I would do the same for her too.

For a while, I’ve been wondering if V really liked me. Perhaps it’s my self-awareness in overdrive but I sometimes wonder if she sees me as a threat to her relationship with the Boss. After all, she has always worked for the Boss alone.

I remember her warning me not so subtly when I first came, saying that she would not “sabo” me because she will “die” from the work and then I shouldn’t “sabo” her because then I would suffer with additional work to do. Not a very welcoming thing to say for a new colleague but I grew to love her ability to be super frank and quick-thinking in the tightest situations. She was never inherently evil and always helped me with things I didn’t know and things I messed up so I wouldn’t get blasted by the Boss.

So to be recognised by her like that today, it made me happy to tears.

At the end of it all, my “baby” is just but a pile of papers. It’s not my effort alone because so many others contributed to it. However, for my colleague to see me as someone who will support her and not sabo her, and for my boss to see that there’s more to me than just plain forgetfulness and laziness is the best thing that could come out of this project.

I also love it that the Boss gave me time off tomorrow morning. I think she meant I was to rest (I must have looked a wreck!) but I have to run a ton of errands, applying for my driving test, closing my bank account, registering for my Grad Diploma course (that’s another story), going to check out my friend’s boutique … what rest?

He he.

Thursday

I had my first cup of freshly brewed coffee with a generous spoonful of condensed milk.

All I can say? Beautiful.

To the coffeeholic, there’s really nothing to shout about, but to the person who doesn’t touch coffee after an absolutely nauseating experience at a certain coffee joint she used to work at, this is a big deal.

I complained to Anna how tired I was feeling and she quickly retreated into the kitchen. “I will make you a cup of coffee with condensed milk, very nice. You won’t feel tired anymore.” I tried to refuse, telling her about how pukey I feel after drinking coffee, but she told me to just try.

3 heaped tablespoonfuls of fresh coffee powder (I learned you always store coffee beans in the freezer to keep its original taste) and boiling water that was a little cooled later, I got an aromatic cup of coffee.

I was skeptical right up to taking my first sip, and after that I was totally sold. Downed the entire cup in one go. So gorgeous. And now I can’t drink cheap coffee anymore.

——

What was the last post about you might ask?

Let’s just say, I know now, that in everything I need to confirm with an external party, I must write an email with the details, even if it’s as seemingly simple as a telecon date and time. I’ve been doing that all these while, but I don’t understand why I didn’t this time.

Client calls at 9am (even before I have stepped into the office) and expects to talk to my boss. I’m not even in the office and say I’ll call back in 5 minutes. I distinctly remember it’s 10am, and try to check my email for some proof. I cannot find it and my heart sinks to my toes.I have to rearrange another timing because my boss wasn’t at her desk yet (if you know what I mean). I call and the next timing he can possibly speak, is 930am.

905…915..920 … no sight of her. I grow incredibly antsy and at 925, I can’t take it any longer and knock on her door. Thankfully she’s ready to go and we make the call at 930am.

I tell you, if I can survive this job, I can survive ANYTHING.

Well, almost.

Crap. I wish my fingers weren’t faster than my head.