Vagabond At Heart

Mum is home and I am glad.

It feels comforting to have her back where I can just look at her to assure myself that she is fine. That, definitely was not the sentiment when I approached my uncle for help. Then, I felt like I was on the verge of collapse, between bouts of helplessness about her condition and stress at work. When I am at work, I worried about mum all alone at home. When I am at home, I worried constantly about work and deadlines.

It is wonderful what 2 days of rest can do.

After sending her to my uncle place so that there is someone to take care of her when I am at work, my mind cleared enough for me to function again. I decided to be realistic and requested for extension of deadline on my report.  Being so new, there may not be the ideal thing to do. But, I figure, no point killing myself over the stress and still end up not being able to meet the deadline and gave boss a bigger headache to solve. I also decided to tell my boss about my situation at home. Not to ask for sympathy but because I think she has a right to know why I am leaving office on the dot while work is piling up and she is slogging away late into the night reviewing my report. She was really decent and nice about it.

Sometimes, I just have to accept that I cannot do everything alone. If I need help, then I should just accept the fact and ask for help. And when I cannot handle it, then, I should just be trueful and admit it, so that the problem can be solved. That applies both on the home front and work.

So now, mum is back. But, she is acting like she is preparing for her funeral which is really freaking me out, even though I tell her she is being absurd. Really really absurd. There is just this inkling of fear in me when she keeps giving me instructions on when things are kept, what is to be throw away and given to who, etc. Yes, I am being absurd too.

I have asked aunt to help take care of her on Monday but am unsure what to do after that. After all, I cannot possibly expect my aunt to take over my responsibility. She looks rather tired today when I went to fetch mum. Doctor wants her to stay at home for the next one week since he thinks forcing her to stay at the hospital is bad for her condition. Today, the thought to quit flashed across my mind since leave is not possible. After all, nothing is more important than family. But, I guess that option is abit too drastic for now. Maybe, can get my neighbour to just pop in occasionally in the day.

Guess will have to wait and see if her condition is better by Monday.

On the bus journey home, there is suddenly this overwhelming sense of relief that mum is sitting beside me, holding my hand. I suddenly remember this line from some movie, “He ain’t heavy. He is my brother.” Just at that moment, mum looked at me and said, “You are really tired out too, rite? It is my fault.” I wanted to tell her,”I ain’t tired. You are my mum.” But instead, all I did was to shake my head and tell her no. What I really wanted to tell her was, even though I grouse alot normally about her, she is the most important person in my life. I love you, mum. And it is really ok even if I am tired, you are my mum.

So, we went for a meeting at a client place today.

When all had been said and done. The client entertained us with an comical tale of our competitor A.

Together, we happily devoted 5 mins of full force laughter aimed at competitor A.

On our way out of the building, my boss told me, “They actually (Competitor A) handled that very well. We wanted to do the same but before we got around to it, the client happened (intentionally, maybe?) expressed their displeasure to us about Competitor A’s action.

So, if we had been more efficient, we could have been the joke that client shared with Competitor C. That 5 mins of entire gaiety could have been meant for us.

What a total bummer!

This blog is my refuge. My cousin has his too. I hope I will not be reading rude things about my mum on his refuge soon. Oops.

Was desperate. Too tired and stressed. Decide to send mum to hospital, only to be told no bed was available.

Upon hearing that, she insisted on coming home instead of going to suggested hospital.

My uncle kindly came to the rescue. Mum is now staying at his place for the night.

Came home relieved but just so tired. Need to do the fucking paper. If I can’t churn it out by this week, I am dead-meat. Brain not functioning. Think I am driving my boss crazy with my lack of memory and ceaseless slip-ups.

Just so tired. Not sure how much longer I can hang on. Am not thinking anymore. I just do,do,do,do and do work mindlessly.

I hour sleep first. Paper later.

Involves lots of balancing and coordination,

Patience in hopping along steps by steps,

Calls for great leaps ahead as you progress in the game,

Confidence aids performance and enjoyment of the game.

I am playing hopscotch at work too.

I need to learn the balancing and coordination acts,

Be patient with my own progress,

Work at preparing to take the leaps and challenges ahead,

Most of all, I need to build my confidence in the new environment and role.

And of course, building enjoyment to add meaning to my work.

When I signed on the dotted line, I was aware that I have lost the right to take my vacations as and when I like to, which is perfectly fine and completely reasonable to me.

What I missed out was that I have lost the right to fall sick as and when my body decided that it is high time to rebel and completely screwed up my body system so that it can finally get some badly needed rest. It was unfortunate but my body has decided to strike at a most inappropriate timing. How inconsiderate of it to break down the very day that my dear colleague has decided to take a day off to support our very own GSS and boost the economy.

tsk..tsk…tsk…how very inconsiderate of me to fall sick and deprive GSS of making some very important sales. And really, to make up for the very audacity of falling sick at all, I really should be making calls to the office every hour to prevent the inconveniences of having my colleagues make the calls. tsk…tsk…tsk…And really, how could I bring work home and neglect to make some sense of the string of words floating dizzily around in my head? That is so critical for timely submission.

Now that I have wilfully given in to my body’s signal to call in sick and spend the day at home popping pills and texting colleagues. Maybe, I can now successfully convince my body that it is really really unacceptable to breakdown. With all that reports due and colleagues all desperately needing to clear leave, it is a bloody inconsiderate & selfish act to fall sick now. While I am at it, maybe I can convince my body that falling sick is rather pointless since it is rather impossible to get proper rest with all that texting anyway. And really, getting sick is such an outdated act cos we are all too bloody busy. Worse when you are new and fumbling all over the place. From now on, please throw out all pathetic excuses of sickness. If there is a need to, then, be sick in office. Then at least, we can save some of that needless texting time and use it to clear some work.  

Well, I have a little confession here. I will probably have dragged my body to work and floated around the office doing the wrong things if not for 2 things.

Incident One: I sent out a very stupid email last week. An email that announced this person has obviously stopped functioning and is currently in need of a thorough brain examination. Or, in short, the sender is an idiot! It was fortunate that the recipent, despite being someone in a position to tell me off as I deserved, was nice enough to shrugged it off good-naturedly by telling me, “When I read it, I thought that you must have been really tired when you sent this out.” 

Incident Two: P declared to me when we had dinner the night before, “J! You look like shit! Are you even functioning anymore? You look really tired and brain dead. Are you sure this is what you want?” I could only shrugged cos she was right. I had reached a point where my brain was too overloaded. I have to admit that I barely knew what I was doing anymore. Somehow, my ability to adapt seem to have paled significantly. Not to mention the memory lapses that I am suffering from. I am not just forgetting things at work, I am forgetting things in all aspects of my life. She followed up the point with her msg later that night, “Hey! It is just work, you know. Get your priorities right!”

With the email incident and P’s comments ringing in my mind, I decided to concede that I am barely functioning. I do need rest badly and I need to get well first before I make even dumber mistakes at work. Or send even dumber emails. I may not be so fortunate the next time. It is probably hard for my colleagues to understand but only I can know my own boundaries. When I need rest, I need rest. And, that is all there is to it. I can only try my best and not give myself too much undue stress. I do need time to adapt and learn. And I need to set up my own system cos only then can I function better.

Meanwhile, I still have P’s question of “Is this what you really want?” to contest with. That will to be for another time when I can get myself to function and have cleared enough backlog to stay on top of work. The hastily formed reply to myself now is to think long time. Yes, the opportunity to acquire experience and skills for long term is worth this mind numbing transition period.

Although, looking at my boss, I doubt things are going to get better in the form of working hours and stress as I go along. Somewhere in my mind, there is already a nagging doubt of how am I going to find my worklife balance? The little dreams of picking up a new language, photography, continuing with my course, even travels. When am I ever going to find the time to fit them in? In a couple of months, work seem to have taken over my life so completely that I sometimes wake up in the mornings wondering if my sole purpose in life is to work. And how meaningless is that? Then,” I will whisper to myself that it is only for now. Just bear with it for now and it will be worth it eventually. This is a necessary phrase to moving on.” 

P.S. I can barely believe that, this time, last year, I was in Europe doing absolutely nothing except to eat, sleep and romp to my heart’s content. How I miss the joy of freedom.

I am truly blessed to have a friend like CH This is the friend who listened to me sobbing over the phone countless times. This is the friend who let me stay at her place without question when I wanted to stay away from home on a nite of disaster. This is the friend who brought health supplements to the hospital for me when I was keeping watch over my dad in hospital. She was with me through numerous trials and tiny misadventures, through happy moments and laughters. She is the one I constantly turn to whenever I feel in need of a blunt ticking off. She never fails to give me the tongue lashing that I truly deserved.

In spite of all my weaknesses and idiotic antics, she has been my friend and pillar of support for 15 years. For her unwavering friendship, I give thanks. Thank you, CH, for being my friend & always being there.

Hope that our friendship will continue to be steady as a rock till we are little old ladies drinking tea together to celebrate our 50, 60, 70 birthdays!

posted @

10:53 PM
 

“The issue with you is that you need to recognise that not all problem needs to be solved.

You have to evaluate the problem and recognise that some problems cannot be solved or at least, not immediately. If you think that after doing what you can, the problem will still stay, then don’t waste your time on it. Some problem will always float around until the circumstance changes. In time to come, it will take care of itself.

Then, there are problems that you can’t solve on your own or the onus is not on you. So, you either ask for help or you leave it to the right person to handle it.

Then, there are problems that you can solve and it’s up to you to solve them. That is what you should be focusing on.

Don’t try to take on everything by yourself and over-complicate things. It could backfire. You end up feeling frustrated and nothing is settled.”

Good advice. The problem with me is I am a worrier from way back. It’s hard to move ahead when I am worry about left, right, back and front. That’s why I am in the rut. I need to learn to leap ahead.

posted @ 12:28 AM

Our initial conversations were conducted while you were in States. I was struggling through a difficult period at work, in a period of high emotional stress. It’s funny, we have never met face to face but amazingly,you were the one who got me through. Thank you.

Somehow, from the long distance conversations, a tentative bond was established. We saw glimpses of similarity between us. Or was it because unconsciously, we were searching for similarities to build common ground on? Bit by bit, we build our own perception of each other personalities and expectations were formed.

We met when you came back and perception clashes with reality. We have both professed to being judgemental before we met. True to our words, we both formed some rather unfair judgements of the other party after that initial meeting. On hindsight, we were probably feeling let down that our expectations were not met. To be fair, I was the one who kept my distance.

Somehow, in a day of self reflection, after having reach my goals last year, I suddenly thought of this person. I suddenly striked me that without this person to comfort, encourage and pull me through, I might not have reached my goals. A wave of shame hits me.

I decided to write him a card to apologize for my awful attitude and to express my gratitude for getting me through a rough patch. He was working in Shanghai then and only received the card much later. But, he msg me amiably when he was back in town. We maintained casual contact since then.

Recently, I shifted office again. I needed some help desperately with my printer setup. He kindly volunteer his help since he is back on home leave. He came down with his best friend to help me fix it. I am touched by how nice he is. In his position, I probably will not have bother for someone I met only once and who rather mean to him.

We had a good chat yesterday. It feels like the days when we were chatting animatedly when he was in States. We catch up on family, lovelife and work. He even happily send over some pictures of his new girlfriend, found and captured in Shanghai. I was comfortable enough to share my disappointment with R. I guess, I can say that I have found a comfortable friendship with him. Have to give him credit for his graciousness.

We did not live up to our friends well meaning intention. But, I am happy to have found a friend in him. Hopefully, a friendship that will lasts a long time to come.

Meeting up with T again has once again makes me realised that I have problem appreciating people for the moment. I seem to have problem realising how nice the person is to me and only miss it after we move on.

Shared this thought with WY yesterday. This is what she told me. ” I don’t think your problem is you can’t appreciate the things they do for you. It’s just that when you are in it, you automatically shutdown and all your emergency defences come up. It is hard to anyone to get to you when you are in that stage. You know like all the emergency drills where all the lights are off and it’s too dark for you to see anything.” Wow, so you mean, I am like a power plant, my system will automatically shutdown and all the alarm measures will come up when I feel invaded. My state of being feels too threatened to think logically. Hmm…maybe, it’s true cos I do automatically keep a distance when someone trys to get too close.

posted @ 2:55 AM

Actually, I am not ready to talk about it yet, at least not in details. Just want to jot down my thoughts and feelings for now.

Was feeling really bad the whole of yesterday. Met P over coffee to get it off my chest yestersday.

The conclusions:
1. I should not be too trusting of people even if I have known them for a few years.
2. I was too gullible and DUMB.

It’s one of those incident that makes you realise that you have grown too arrogance for your own good, that you are not as capable of taking good care of yourself as you thought,and not as deft at handling unexpected situation as you thought, (actually, in this case, I should have expected it if I have been more vilgant or exercise more cow sense), that bad things can still happens to you even as you feel a false sense of security, that it is not such a good idea to give everyone the benefit of doubt, not at the expense of getting hurt yourself. Learn to say NO before danger, not at the tip of danger.

It’s also one of those incident that you walked out of it, a wiser person after receiving a hard knock, where things could have gotten really much worse and you are so relieved that it did not, and you are ever so thankful for that, and you promised yourself to learn a grave and important lesson never to put yourself in such a situation ever again…till the next time lesson of course.

And of course, the reproach that you subject yourself to on the aftermath. The accusations of stupidity and gullibility. Or just plain dumb and stupid. You can’t believe how incredibily dumb and stupid you were. The refrain just keeps going over and over in your head and you still can’t quite believe it.

The whole chain of events just seem to lead from one thing to another and you are not quite sure how you let yourself arrive in such a precarious situation. But, you are well aware that at any one point if you choose to put your foot down, you could have avoid this situation. You are hoping that at any time, you will wake up and it will just be a bad dream that you can leave behind.

I guess it an important lesson that I need to learn. And it is a good thing that I did not come to any harm. It is also a good thing that this happens before my trip to San Diego to serve as a reminder for me to be more careful.

Now, if only the images in my mind will go away and the refrains of self accusations will cease. I just need time to get over it emotionally, I guess.

posted @ 6:46 PM