going through change

ever since i’ve started working full-time, i’ve never really settled anywhere. every few months i changed jobs for various reasons. professionally, most would think that i have not acquired enough working experience in all the jobs i’ve worked. i wouldn’t blame them – how much can you learn if you’ve worked at a place for less than a year?

yet, i personally feel i’ve learnt a lot. there are things i’ve yet to master, but there are also things i’ve accomplished. this job that i’m about to leave is the most fulfilling occupation to me up to this point. sushi said to me in an im conversation recently that in this 10 months working at the bookshop, i did quite a fair bit of things.

in a way, that’s true. i’ve never worked harder in my previous jobs, never been so stressed, never really fit in before until this job. i (along with my colleagues too) was given a workload of more than one person because we’re always understaffed. i’ve never taken an annual leave with this job. not because i didn’t want to, but because the work culture was such that taking unnecessary holidays is frowned upon by the management and i don’t have anyone who could help take over my duties if i go on a holiday.

i’ve changed. i am aware that i’m no longer that college girl. coming back here feels a little strange because of who i used to be. yet, i still feel the same. i’m still horribly insecure. i still feel like i don’t know so much for someone my age. my favourite baskin-robbins ice cream flavour is still maui brownie madness.

i guess the essence of who i am is like a lego tower that you keep adding blocks on. the foundation is made up of the same blocks, but as it grows more new ones are added.

now i’m going through yet another period of change. i have a two-week break before i begin the new job. the new job is going to be scary, but for now my focus is to make my break meaningful in such a way that i feel refreshed and motivated to contribute with my new job.

change. i still don’t like it because i fear the unknown. but if i didn’t let change happen to me, i could still be that girl who pines for her college days. i’m glad i no longer feel that way and to some extent, i’m looking forward to this new phase in my life.

Setback

Computer died!

Why does this always happen when I want to be in the mood to blog!

I wanted to gradually go back to those posts I used to write – you know, all musings and ponderous and thoughtful.

Now I don’t even know if ‘ponderous’ is an actual word.

So while I get my computer affairs back in order, just pretend I haven’t actually got back in blogging. Like I’ve disappeared off the face of the blogosphere, because that is how I feel after one day without the Internet.

Yes, severe withdrawal symptoms I’m dealing with here. Grieve with me, people.

Meanwhile, I keep my mind off my Internet-less state by gorging on Gilmore Girls reruns. And reading. Thank goodness for the books. None of this e-book, Kindle nonsense for sulz.

Sigh

After posting yesterday, I felt I sound too melancholic for what should be a good thing. Going back to blogging means I’m getting in touch with friends I used to interact with through this platform and also getting in touch with myself.

I wanted to write about the gloriously exciting shenanigans I have been up to the past month. (Which is to say I didn’t go out and change the world. I did buy too many T-shirts for my own good though.)

But this morning, I turned on the computer to realise several hard drives have been wiped out. I had suspected something was wrong when I couldn’t copy some mp3’s to bring to work (where the computer speakers are actually working unlike this old hag). I was running late and I figured I’ll use today, my rare day off, to figure out what’s actually wrong.

Too late. The hard drive where I store the really important things are completely gone. All the camwhoring pictures (the nice ones, mind you), vacation pictures, daytrip pictures, college assignments, pretty pictures, CSS codes, bookish stuff, my book log (of all the books I’ve read since 16). All gone.

I guess I should be grateful that pictures of me, ugly and otherwise, are around Facebook, ‘cos they’re the only pictures I have now. And that I never got around to deleting some pictures from my e-mail.

(Strangely enough, when I re-installed Firefox, which was gone as it was located in one of the missing hard drives, none of my bookmarks are missing.)

Ah, life.

Quarter-life Crisis

I laughed out loud when I read this Wikipedia entry yesterday.

Emotional aspects
Characteristics of quarter-life crisis may include:

* feeling “not good enough” because one can’t find a job that is at one’s academic/intellectual level
* frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
* confusion of identity
* insecurity regarding the near future
* insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals
* insecurity regarding present accomplishments
* re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
* disappointment with one’s job
* nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
* tendency to hold stronger opinions
* boredom with social interactions
* loss of closeness to high school and college friends
* financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
* loneliness
* desire to have children
* a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you

I experienced every single thing on that list, and I still do some of them occasionally. I’ve mentioned in some posts before that I was going through a quarter-life crisis, but I thought that wasn’t real… not real enough to warrant its own Wikipedia entry, at least.

Am I still suffering from quarter-life crisis? I think most of the anxiety has been wiped off by my recent career development. My energy and creativity are being channeled into something I’m truly passionate about, so I’m not feeling ‘not good enough’ anymore. The desire to find a significant other and even to the extent of having a little girl to call my daughter is there, though I’m definitely not mature enough to become a mother now. And maybe my desire to dye my hair blue has something to do with my going through this quarter-life crisis thing.

I’m thinking again… is it really a crisis that I was/am going through? Yes, it does feel alarming that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and all that. But isn’t that a good thing that I was aware of the lack of life goals I had? Maybe it should be termed as quarter-life awareness… the realisation that you need to set directions (or otherwise if that’s what you’re more inclined towards) in your life in order to lead a happy and fulfilling one.

*

My Bangkok trip is back on! The political situation in Thailand is getting better as we speak, I believe… I’m so totally stoked that I’m even looking forward to eating my in-flight meal! 😆 My apologies to Lovelyloey as I cannot make it to Singapore this time… I have made a pinky finger promise with Angel, though, that we will visit Singapore during the Christmas season. 😛

Bangkok, here comes sulz!!!

Growing

It’s something we do every day but we don’t notice it. The daily growing is too minute in result to notice any difference at the end of each day. But give it some time and then one day you realise your baby’s growing so fast, or your parents are greying quicker than you think, or your body is growing sideways and downwards just a little too much for your liking…

We can’t stop growth. With each breath we take, every decision we make, we grow. Sometimes we regress, sometimes we progress. They are all growth nonetheless.

Growing… am I? But I just said we grow, whether we notice it or not. So I must be growing, even as I type these. I’m growing, even if I don’t feel as if I’m doing that. But why? Why don’t I feel my growth? If growth is taking place within me, surely I would be the first person to see what has grown?

Yet, it is often the people who don’t see you often who notice the growth in you. They are usually the ones who bring to attention of something about you that’s different from the last time they’ve seen you. Without them, you might not even have realised you’ve grown.

Grow… it is something I have no power to stop, and something I will not realise that I am doing until it has been done for a long time. Then I look back to the time the growth took place, and understand that during the time I most likely wished I didn’t have to go through (or that I wished it would never end, depending on how pleasurable that time was), I was growing.

Have I grown?

Yes… but I do not know what is growing within me right now. I shall have to look back at this time in the future, and then perhaps I might know what part of me is growing right now.

Mistakes and the Making of Them

As the saying goes: we humans are not born perfect. The reality is this: we try to be as inhumanly perfect as possible. Whatever we do in life, we try not to make mistakes. Have you actually consciously made a mistake, unless it was to prove a point? I don’t think so (but if you did, tell me about it!) because mistakes are costly. You have to do something again to get it right.

People are willing to pay extra to get something done just right, whether it’s that half an inch less on the hem of that little black dress or just the right sharpness of the bridge of the new nose the plastic surgeon is sculpting. They are willing to hire someone with experience for a job, to lessen the likelihood of mistakes.

The fact remains that as long as we are human, we are bound to make mistakes, no matter how experienced we are at something. What matters though is that how you learn the lesson of that mistake and how well you bounce back from it.

I’m at the point in my life now where I frequently feel like a walking mistake. I know I’m not, but the mistakes that I commit, new or old, makes me feel like I have the ‘Midas’ touch, except that whatever I touch doesn’t turn into gold but becomes a mistake. I suppose I must be patient and persevere, and remember that practice makes perfect!

That phrase would refer to the probability of mistakes that can be lessened the more we sharpen our skills in something. What about other kinds of mistakes, like something we are only given the chance to get it right once? I suppose essentially we are all given one chance to make the right choice in almost every thing we do; there are just some things which are harder to repair or undo when you make a certain decision, like getting a tattoo.

So, we go about life, trying to be as perfect as possible but inevitably stumbling at some point. But rather than to admit we made a mistake, sometimes we pretend it’s not. We might call it a “blessing in disguise” and think that “things” happen for a reason. But I suppose to look at it this way can be true – Thomas Edison, after all, famously said:

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

But what if we had the power to see the future? What if we knew whether a decision to do something this way or that would be correct or wrong? If you had the ability to tell what’s the best way to go about your life, would you do as what your vision tells you? Or would you still go about the ‘wrong’ ways just to see if it’s really as wrong as your vision proclaimed it to be?