07 Oct It's the small victories
Around two months ago, I started my first real job. I was fresh out of university, and it was with a pinch of reluctance that I entered the corporate life of 8-7, daily meetings, and sitting 10 hours a day. Within my first week, I made some much-needed changes to my schedule. Instead of the 8-7 workday imposed upon us, I would get to the office at 7AM and leave at 6PM, right in time for dinner at home. Instead of going to the gym 5 days a week, I changed it to Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and one day on the weekend. And finally, instead of waking up at 5:50, I relaxed my schedule and set my alarm to 6.
It turned out my typical day was still a bit too stressful, and in my second week on the job, I got sick and had to take two days off work. I knew I couldn't go on like this - something had to change, and if it wasn't physical, it had to be psychological.
At work, I found myself quite tense at times, and I realized that even after a month, the office still wasn't a familiar place to me. I couldn't really be myself there, and there wasn't enough personal space to create a comfortable work environment. I found myself having stomach issues - something I never had before. Every morning at 9, my stomach would sing its song loudly with no regard to the lack of ambient noise around me. During silences in meetings, I felt time pass a thousand times slower, and sometimes, my stomach would choose to make some noise during that lapse. It's a real source of stress - as silly as it sounds.
But then, I also started noticing the small victories. Like the days when my stomach was especially tame. Or going for afternoon breaks in the sun. Or the occasional mornings when there would be relaxing music playing in the underground tunnel from the MRT station to the office. Or making some unexpected friends in the midst of it all.
Yes, I would say work is tiring. Then again, why wouldn't it be? But try to find the small victories - there's a silver lining in every cloud.
Comments
My stomach also enjoys singing the song of its people. I find that carrying breakfast bars around with me helps a bit. Much respect for the 11 hour work days.
Hey Nish! Glad to hear you have a solution for this annoying problem. How's work in Tallinn? Still doing Java? 11 hour work days are really tough - I don't recommend it at all... (BTW, no HTML allowed in comments, but when I have time I might add markdown support)
Lol, i noticed. Markdown would be nice. Look into an edit button too and rss :) Same old, same old, java stuff. What's the general work culture like over there? Well, besides the long hours...
Yeah, I was thinking about an edit button, but that would mean some kind of account management. RSS sounds really nice - maybe I can do it by next weekend! Work culture is OK, people are nice. It's _really_ quiet though - not sure if it's like that in Tallinn?
Well an edit button would be nice, so i can remove the non functional HTML i put in my previous comment. And the RSS so i can keep up with your content. The work culture here is pretty good too. Nice coworkers, quiet office with flexible work hours. There is a surprising amount of work to do though. You'd think that the small nature of the city would mean less work and stress.
Got you covered there ;) Anyway, I just spent 15 minutes getting this rough idea of a feed up: https://www.michaelcheng.us/feed Let me know what you think! There may be bugs, but I'll get to those tomorrow (ha) Nice to hear you have flexible hours! Do you normally talk to coworkers in English? Or do they prefer Estonian?
Great! I've subscribed. We use english for pretty much everything. The do speak Estonian when explaining things to each other though. But all the code, comments, paper work and meetings are all in English. I'm guessing you work mostly in 中文 over there :)
Thanks for subscribing!! Yeah, we mostly work in Chinese, but since we have a NY team, there's also lots of 英文 ;)