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Tuesday, June 17, 2014
[Drowning in an ocean of thoughts...]
Over the years, I’ve found that life has gotten more and more complicated. I’ve got more and more responsibilities, and things I need to oversee. I have less time for myself, less time to recharge, and less time to just sit and think about things. Hell, I can't even remember the last time I had an afternoon nap on a weekend.
What I’ve always found to be helpful, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, is to slow down and divide the things on my mind into three separate domains – personal, work, and NS.
Truthfully, the only thing that weighs heavily on my mind for NS was IPPT and IPT/RT. They take up a lot of time, and is always a source of stress when time rolls around for me to attend the training sessions. Now that I’m downgraded and no longer required to take IPPT, I’ve more or less forgotten about NS. While I still have NS liability and responsibilities (I think I’ve gotten arrowed to be Area IC for our next Ops Manning), they weigh much lighter on my mind now. More of an after-thought, than anything else.
Big changes are afoot in my personal life. Got the keys to our new flat, and we are planning the renovation now. A project like this tends to be unstructured and I think this is the main reason why I find it so stressful. I’m structured and methodical by nature, so I don’t like being in a chaotic or unstructured situation. Coupled with the fact that I have special requirements for my wired home network, taking into consideration the possible configurations needed for different service providers only adds to the stress. The last thing I want is to overlook some small detail and realise the home network I have in mind cannot happen because of it.
Renovations aside, we also need to look for furniture, appliances, and home fixtures/fittings. Costs are spiralling out of control a little bit. While we can afford it, I am a little concerned that we will probably burst our budget and spend more than we originally intend to. It would be easy to get the cheaper (or even cheapest) items now to keep the costs low, but it wouldn’t do if the items we purchased don’t last very long. This is especially important for some of the bigger ticket items, or items that cannot be easily replaced (like air-con, for example). While it is very sobering to look at the costs now, I am also concerned that we may look back on this, some years down the road, and wished that we bought things that cost perhaps a little more but saved us several headaches later on.
Work-wise, I took my current job mainly because I simply had to leave my previous one. I wasn’t too happy with the offered pay. After spending more than nine months here, I’m not happy with the pace neither. It’s too slow. The pace at my first job was slow, but it wasn’t as slow as this. My second and third jobs were very fast-paced, and while I’m not looking for something like that (I don’t think the pace at those places is sustainable; I tend to burn-out a lot), the pace here is just too slow.
I’ve started casually looking around. One of the jobs I thought was suitable for me was listed on a job site that shows the profile of other applicants. Clicking on it, I saw other applicants with much more experience than I and their asking pay. Without going into the details, it was a sobering sight. I felt that their asking pay was very low and did not commensurate with their experience.
Judging by the years of experience they’ve got, there may be a possibility that they’ve gotten retrenched. The job listing asked for someone with 3-years’ experience, and it attracted applicants with 5, 10, even 13-years’ experience. Something doesn’t seem right here.
Now I’m wondering whether should I just stay where I am. I’m in the civil service now and about to get confirmed. That’s pretty much an iron rice-bowl and the chances of me losing my job is very low. Maybe instead of looking for something more fulfilling and pays more, I should just stay where I am.
I might as well stay and just do enough to get by. Draw a steady pay-check, and pump as much as I can into my investments, and try to retire by 55. I don’t know what to do right now. I will probably keep looking for another job, and rethink my situation again when I get confirmed. Maybe with the increment I’m supposed to get then, my pay wouldn’t seem so bad.
^^^ by Locksley @ 4:24 PM.
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