June 10 2018

I always thought I am good at perceiving a situation. Apparently, I can be wrong, or I just haven't been observant enough all the time.

Today is June 10. Back in late March, I thought it was smart to have a second option, and I was naive enough to not keep my plan private. I told my supporting staff that I will have a job so they immediately pulled their support off.

Within days the new job turned out to be a terrible idea. It happened so fast that I was shocked at why I took the position and why I told my supporting staff about it. I lost my 4-month training spot as if it was never supposed to be mine, and struggled to transit to the new job.

It wasn't pleasant all the time but I did have some meaningful and not-so-terrible time spent at the new company. I found working hard is quite uplifting. I demonstrate to myself that how creative I can be and how capable I truly am. The job sucked, but I do find the experience and lessons I obtained to be rewarding.

In less than 3 months, I went through loads of poor management related issues: was pressed on a lot, and for a while, frequently found myself to be in either an argument or a disagreement with people of the company. Micromanaging, false urgency, the plain lack of emotional control of the leader took a toll on me. I was demoted to half of the working time after only 1.5 months and today I think it'll be the end of it (and yeah it was).

I feel it's a correction overdue. At the beginning I was surprised but I expected it at the same time. Then I was emotional for the fact that nevertheless people rejected me and it hurts. It's very strange. Even if I basically can't wait to get rid of it from my life but when it unexpectedly removes itself, I am still shocked. I honestly don't welcome it as I'm going to lose some income, but it also means that I can work more for other jobs. I definitely need to be more pragmatic on other posts.

To be rejected always hurts. Was I mistreated? Yeah. But it wasn't an abuse. I didn't allow them to do anything that is too mean to me anyway. Was it quite absurd? Absolutely. It doesn't make any sense to me that people can be so lack of judgment and yet arrogant in their decision-making ability. Don't they ever question themselves?

Speaking of decision making, let's take a look at how my decision-making worked out so far. I lost my training spot because I told my supporting staff that I was going to take the job. I didn't know labour law that well and the rules of government-funded training. Quitting definitely isn't a good idea once you signed the paper. Better planning and sufficient investigation into a company before signing up on board are definitely vital. I learned that in a painful way. Could I pursue other options when they offered me the job? Absolutely! If only I knew better and was smart enough to ask for alternative options. There shouldn't be only one way for you to figure out if a company is a trap by signing on board. I could have been doing my government funded training right now. But I guess the extra income this job provided in the past two months did give me some perks. I wasn't too wrong after all.

I learned useful lessons from it by being involved in a dysfunctional organization, by working with people of all kinds, by making mistakes and suffering the heartache afterward. But right now I am also proud of myself. I didn't lose anything. I gained so many insights, strengths and confidence in myself. I AM able and capable, which I didn't know.

What did I learn from this experience? First is to smarten up. Don't ever be so dumb to sleepwalk into a shitty company and work your ass off for somebody else's money and dream, and my subsequent employment attempts were equally reckless I gotta admit. Second is to remain chill. Yup, I miscalculated and screwed up here and there. But hey nobody was born with all the life wisdom. Mistakes teach you more than successes do. Third is to know what you want, ideally. If I knew what I wanted to do, I probably wouldn't give up my training spot so easily by taking this job opportunity. Another thing I learned is we can be so forgetful that we quickly left behind our bad feelings and the reasons behind them after only a slight improvement of our situation. As soon as we stop feeling stress and pain or simply less of each, we start to mislead ourselves that dangers are gone.

Don't be embarrassed that life is messy and you don't look graceful and elegant. Bloody Jesus, we can't remain graceful all the time. It's not that at this moment I stop trying to make it as smooth as possible. God knows how much I value my grace and composure. The good news is they have been part of me all along and I'm calm enough to keep them in me.

What a journey! Luck is important. But it won't beat real strength