Marley and Me serves as reminder to me that life is too short to stress myself with people who do not even deserve to be issues in my life. Work hasn’t been very easy for me as of late – all the fire-fighting, low emotions, difficult clients, long hours, rushing deadlines, and in the midst of all, I managed to gain new reflections on my job and life. Looking at how John and Jenny Grogan deal with parenthood, postpartum depression and enormously work stress reinforce my thoughts of not having kids in the next two years.
As a newly wed couple, one of the new adjustments that we had to do was to include planning for our combined finances. Baby and I were doing some calculations and we decided to aim for $20,000 by the end of 2009. Over lunch yesterday, we talked about family and financial planning and interestingly, we noticed a trend among Singaporean couples. Generally, there will be three depletions of your savings in your married life. First depletion usually goes to the wedding, the second one on the down-payment/renovation of the house and the third one sets in when you have kids. Unfortunately, there are so many things that we want to do but we are now moving to stage 2. Besides that, we need to save for our backpacking and regular dive trips. With the pressing milestones in place, sometimes I question the feasibility of our plans. Baby hates kids so maybe we should not even have any kids. I suddenly realised that I have planned my life so well such that every stage of my life seems to deliver as planned. Baby said that we should let go this time and slowly unveil the possibilities that are hiding behind the corners. My wife is never a planner. But she may be right this time.
Watching Marley and Me also causes me to reflect on my job and it seems like a reminder to reestablish my priorities in my life at the perfect time. I remembered I entered the workforce as a designer full of excitement and enthusiasm, and I was happy enough to earn a decent paycheck that gives me a whole lot more to provide for a girlfriend after coming out from the army. Then with a twist of fate, I got myself an absolutely dream job that allows me to design and travel but I rejected the offer because money meant more than anything else to me at that time. Shortly after, I was influenced by a few people, decided to take a broad step forward and switched to project management.
What began as an exciting and promising career switch progressively leads to sleep deprivation, worries, fall of adrenalin surges, stress, frustration over work issues, and the negativity eventually wears down my energy, my spirit, my body, and my morale. Because I can’t let go. Because the negativity keeps festering in my mind every day. Because I’m wasting my energy in anger, stress, or worries over things that I can’t change. I chose my career and I think I can also choose to integrate more positiveness into my job that may have been overshadowed by all the negatives. But I realised I am a prisoner of my job and the things that I’m doing are no longer for any reasons. What am I working for?
I was talking to a friend yesterday. She is a business graduate but settled for an Attractions Supervisor position at Universal Studios (Sg) with a measly pay because she loves what she is doing. I think she’s brave. How many people can do that? I do not want to believe that I have no power or control over anything but I think I do not have the courage. I was reading my wedding photographer’s blog and he said this.
“I am a wedding photographer. I take photographs during a wedding. I always feel like I’m part of it, part of the celebrations. It feels really nice there and then. I liken it to drinking alcohol. Don’t you just love that feeling of being high and carefree? That’s exactly the same kind of feeling I get everything I’m on the job. That is perhaps the reason why it’s impossible to stop me from shooting once I start. And that is where I get all drunk in that ’love is all around’ atmosphere.
He is a brilliant award-winning photographer. I’m sure this is not part of his plan and he did not expect this when he gave up his engineer job to be a wedding photographer. I suppose we need to ask ourselves periodically if we love what we are doing and if we have found meaning to our jobs. If you do not have any answers to it, then it’s time to stop and reflect.
The next step for me is to overcome this and find the burning passion back again. And even if I can’t find it within my current situation now, I still need to work hard because it’s my only way out of this current situation. So, I’ll do it the way that I have always done it – plan and do whatever it takes, the strategy that has brought me so far in my journey in life. I will make it. Come on, Terry!
