The stewardess came to check on me again. This time she sat next to me and asked if I was all right.
"I'm fine, thanks," I said with a smile. "Just feeling kind of blue."
"I know what you mean," she said. "It happens to me, too, every once in a while."
She stood and gave me a lovely smile. "Well, then, have a nice trip. Auf Wiedersehen."

Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

It was a kind of blue week. Is this the quarter life crisis already, at 7 months of work? No way, right??

I hate feeling like that, but at the same time, I didn't take any steps to make myself feel any better. Everyday was a routine. Sometimes, such blerch feelings feel strangely cathartic. Just look around your Facebook newsfeed, there are some people who seem to be the embodiment of blerch themselves.

But something had to give, I could not go on feeling like that. It's ridiculous, isn't it? If there was something wrong with where I am now, something I am dissatisfied with; I should fix it. If there was absolutely nothing, then why am I allowing myself to feel like this?

Sometimes (all the time), I live my life with so many blind spots, they would qualify as blind areas, heck. Blind radii, even. That's why I always hope I have friends who love me enough to be brutally honest and tell me what they really think about me. Had a WhatsApp chat with Fion at lunchtime, and it helped me iron out the thought process I should adopt when it comes to my career. It's nice having a senior who is patient and cares enough to talk to me about this.

Reading my earlier posts (the previous 3), I realise that nothing in the area of my work has gotten worse. If anything, everything's improved tremendously; I am able to manage my work, I love my colleagues and my clients and I think the people I work with have generally a good impression of my work. So what then, what changed? Me. Fickleness does that to me sometimes.

I'm not going to take myself out of this environment. I'm going to think about how I can excel in this environment even more. Work faster, be more responsive to my clients and deadlines, proactively manage my work.

I am going to be so damn good at what I do that if I ever leave, all of you are going to miss me.

Things are going pretty well now. Each new assignment I get is challenging as they are all different. Some more so, but even those with similarities have subtle differences that are easy to overlook and get careless over. Yet, I look forward to working on them. I think I'm at a very nice stage of my career where the full weight of the usual workload has not been dumped onto our shoulders... yet; I have time to explore, to make mistakes, to ask questions. If anything, I'd like to take on as much challenging work as I can now, when I can still make the excuse of being too fresh if I make mistakes. Better than doing it next time, when I may have to justify the experience that I got; which would instead impede me from moving forward and growing.

Looking back, I'm almost embarrassed at my previous 2 posts, on the verge of deleting them. They make me look bad and whiny. But it's a reminder of how fickle human emotions are. Memories don't last, experiences keep evolving. And above all, a reminder of God's faithfulness. I like my manager a lot, she's really patient and fair in her work. I wonder when I reach her stage if I could be as patient as her. Maybe I'd be a stuck-up jackass who things a world of myself and refuse to look out for those under me. I'm thankful to all my other colleagues too who take the time to answer questions that I feel are silly as soon as they leave my mouth.

If I were to state where would I like to be in X number of years... of course, it would be fashionable to be all high-achieving and say I would like to make manager/director/partner. To be honest, I always expect a lot of myself. In fact, I expect to achieve things that I don't even feel I deserve. Only by God's grace I have achieved what I have today. But moving forward, I decide that that should not underpin my direction. Instead of saying I would like X position in Y number of years, I just want to learn as much as I can; with all the variety of knowledge that the diverse companies can teach me, and to learn how to cope, and excel with the other associated things expected of us as professionals such as managing workflow and finding favour with our clients.

Money, of course is always nice, so is position and being beyond my peers. But at every point, I want to be somewhere where I have grown sufficiently to belong. I don't want to take shortcuts. If I have to wait, I pray for the patience and grace to. If I am to move on, I pray for humility and prudence.

It's the end of the first week and things haven't gone all that well. Work's a lot tougher than I imagined. More than being able to appreciate the tax concepts, I think the biggest challenge will be to manage the portfolio. I'm lucky to just have around a dozen companies but already I feel the management overwhelms my brain; being able to prioritize the cases, meeting all the deadlines when they do come, having a sufficient grasp of the case when I'm questioned about it in future.. It's all a bit much. I certainly underestimated it. To top it all off I'm working on something I feel is next to impossible. Even though I trust I'd get past this, things just seem really big right now. I can't see ahead of me anymore. Time to seek God and His favour as I move forward.

Hajime

Today is my first day of work at EY and it is the beginning of a new season of my life. For the past 10 years or so, I have worked towards my goal of being an accountant and am thankful for all the blessings I received in my life that got here today.

Over the past few months, certain events and experiences have also made me question what I want in my life. Admittedly, for the longest time, the goal of being an accountant was towards a career where I earn a decent income. Although it would be nice to make so much that I have to trouble my head over what to do with it all, I can also get by with much less, and hence I was just looking forward to having the ability to acquire things in my life that I want which I thought would provide me the fulfilment I was looking for.

Evaluating this perspective, I considered that I could be rather mistaken. Academic research and my own experiences have shown me that such satisfaction could only be temporal. It's interesting, and very tragic to see how fast we can get over the feeling of joy and satisfied longing so quickly after obtaining something.

What then, should my goal in life be? Should I chase experiences? I had a wonderful time travelling since my exams ended. Over the past 2 months since my exams ended I have been to Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Cambodia. It's funny how I used to think travelling is little but a real drag. It has really taught me a lot of things; how systems so different from ours here can still be entirely functional; a greater appreciation for cultures other than our own (which was never much to brag about in the first place); the ability to communicate using language etc.

What exactly do I want? I don't know, and I would like to find out. Something more concrete - I enjoyed the first day of training at EY, I'm happy how the firm thinks about how to make things better and come up with new ways of doing things. It makes me think about the position I want to be at next time, and whether I would be able to think of things like that and put it through with action. That's a still long way off and for now I should just focus on being extremely good at my craft.

Gotta keep my head up.

12/03/10

Yesterday's de-kit marked the end of my national service. I couldn't say I liked the job very much. Many a time I found myself in a state of introspection after making decisions and taking action. Was what I did right, was it legally sound, did it uphold the image of my organization? Sometimes these 3 things were at odds with each other and all the grey areas muddled my head. Sometimes the easy thing to do was to just stop thinking about it. One thing for sure is that I really enjoyed the company of my colleagues and even managed to find friends in different departments that we worked closely with. I'd say they're the most unaffected and honest bunch of people I've come across which is rare in a working environment but somehow there was awesome synergy in the team.

Hands down, the best 1.5 years of my life spent with all of you from Delta :)

Wabi-sabi

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.

I had interesting conversations with 2 people today. Just some small talk, really, since we were going to be stuck with each other for about an hour or so. Well, I thought that's what normal humans do when faced with such situations. Then, like most conversations you have (or at least I have) with people I don't really know, it somehow ends up becoming a session where we start to complain about something (misery sure likes company!). The weather was really really hot (FIRST BLOOD. boring, I know!) and that we work pretty long hours (so that easily drew a reaction, hey! see, I'm pretty good at this social thing).

It struck me, that both of them (actually they were bus drivers that I was assigned to follow) swelled with pride when they were describing their children and their achievements. You know, those drool-ey, pesky, noisy martians that grow up to rat-a-tat on their keyboards while you're trying to get some sleep at midnight typing silly things nobody bothers about, doing stupid dangerous things like cycling on roads, and turning across traffic without checking sufficiently to cause screeching of brakes, burning of rubber and scenes of your life flashing through your mind. I'd think they should talk about more important things! Like how many kms they cycle a week and the fastest downslope around.

Maybe I just have to learn to love more. After all, it says in the bible somewhere that we should love our neighbours. Not just the wonderful neighbours who give lifts to the bus stop, and the ones who give you a treat on your birthday even after moving out a decade ago, but everybody; people who I don't feel like caring about, people whom I'd never see again, people who I don't really have to talk to.

Perhaps the brutally practical side causes me to sometimes be unable to appreciate transience. And if I am unable to do something well, I'd be better off not doing it?

Dear God, please help me see that everything and everyone you've placed in my life is for a reason.

24/02/10

A thousand times I've failed
Still Your mercy remains
And should I stumble again
I'm caught in Your grace

The past week went by with me thinking that if I didn't mess up on each day, it would be considered a good day. It seemed like the waves of bad things wouldn't stop coming. Although I was with people I really enjoyed being with, my mind would be a million miles away. It got to the point that I could have gotten 9 hours of sleep a night and have someone tell me the next day that I looked tired.

Nobody told me that I'd get andropause when I hit 21.

I think while I was sleeping last night, some gnomes came by and plugged my battery into the wall socket. The work day ended with and I think that God must really go out of His way for me. Everything started to fall in place.

Sometimes (usually the better days) it feels to me that the only thing worthwhile doing is to make someone else's day better. To my family that really goes out of their way every time for me, to my friends who still care for me despite my mistakes and even the people I come across at work and would probably never see again. And then there are times that I find myself taking my family for granted, I have no time for friends who make space for me in their calenders, and I become endothermic. Thanks everyone for putting up with me.

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine

Dear God, please be the sunshine when it rains in my heart.