The people I've previously worked with have always put my realities in check and challenged me to achieve my fullest potential (eventually) -- especially the most difficult and painful people I had to work with!
Now, I'm not one of the lucky ones who was able to snag my dream job the first time I tried. My working life was a complete season of Outsource where my function was half-expendable and any achievement would be accredited to my first-world counterpart. On the onset of my career, I was knocked to the ground hearing this comment: You think your skills and abilities are above everyone else's in the team. Firstly, I didn't realize that I was working with a psychic that my thoughts could easily be read. Secondly, I've sincerely never had any such feelings toward the [other] people I worked with then. That stuck to me. Since then, I've made sure that I respect other people's capabilities and limits; any insecurity I might have instilled will be purely derived from one's own inferiority complex (and that is beyond my powers). I could vainly say that to date, I am the third most considerate colleague you might ever have in your entire lifetime.
As outsourced work didn't consume all of my energy, I wandered down a professional social networking site and decided to give my two-cents on a mundane recruiter-bashing topic. Here was where I found a carrot on a stick or vice-versa. I blindly followed, going against my own reason, without any desire to progress, but rather to escape "The Greater Depression"'s grab on the neck of my third-world mother country and a badly-drawn pseudo relationship. This brought me to Lala-land, albeit short-changed compared to what was expected of me. My concept of work and working relationships at that time were perhaps too bucolic (relative to Singapore) but I did my best to be the best elephant that peanuts can buy. And then the carrot on a stick told me: Maybe you should rethink about being in the people business. For a while, I did. But then I thought to myself: "why should I be listening to a carrot on a stick?" (early onset of dementia/schizophrenia?). Afterwards however, I found myself having the audience of an esoteric water vessel --- when I screamed in it: "Now what?" it echoed back: "Keep your head down, and keep trying."
What followed was the necessary detour to the spider's lair. The reality was that it was what I had to do to survive, alongside my new-found domestic responsibilities. I tried to mimic the behavior and the vivre of the people who surrounded me. When my brain finally started working after some weeks, I got the ball rolling. By the time I understood my area, the ball turned into a boulder and everything it ran over nailed the peg to the ground. And by pegs, I mean some freakin' huge expensive pegs. Of course, all of this would not have been possible if not for my mentor who worked equally hard and trusted in me enough to let me grow on my own accord. (To this day I still have an inexplicable gratitude to him, although I admit that he needs to mature a little bit. Nonetheless, I have an inkling that he is someone who manages to stay true to himself and still keeps a bit of humanity and consideration despite the industry we were in.) Being in the spider's lair perhaps the most testing environment I've gotten myself into. Nevertheless, I took everything as a learning opportunity. Even the last words from the CEO to me, I've taken with a pinch of salt: "No one is going to baby you forever." Although I found it a little inconsiderate and out of context from where I was in my career, I've made sure that I'm doing something so that no one else can say that to me within the next three years. I'll even put in my resume: No baby-ing required.
Looking back, I reckon all that chaos had me bound for reform. A little bit of chaos and making mistakes kicked out majority of my idealism. I guess with all that friction, I was growing callouses to keep me numb from superficial hardship while keeping me true to my core.
This is not a graduation speech nor a eulogy to the death of my work-life. I'm actually happy that all these are behind me with hopes that perhaps future lessons will be gentler and easier to learn. I am now 14 years away from my retirement from corporate, unless of course somewhere in between now and then, I win the lottery or find a rich husband who will never run out of money nor affection for me (as if!).
Not everyone is required to be passionate about the industries they work in, but everyone should be passionate about doing a great job with whatever job they're in. Never mind that your a tiny cog in a big wheel for as long as you are THE awesome tiny cog in the shop. (Read: Structural Functionalism).
Work exists to compliment what really matters in life. Mastering a profession takes years of experience. But if we start to put things into perspective, mastering life would appear a much bigger feat. Following that logic, shouldn't we be more afraid of not doing a good job at life? I think I've understood almost half of what I need to know about working... but living, now that's another story.
**some references would make better sense with my CV in hand. I thought "The Greater Depression" would be an interesting euphemism for the GFC of 2008.
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