Three years
“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once” - The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
Halloween, three years ago
It was the last day at my previous job; I had hated most of the days I worked there. I had also learnt more in one year I did work there compared to any other year previously. I was sick of bureaucracy, of empty promises, of treating human beings like animals and about feeling punished for crimes I hadn’t committed. There is nothing worse than indifference, Kerry Logistics taught me that very quickly. Being indifferent to your job, to your team, to your own personal values was the only way to thrive in that environment. The only reason I had survived over a year there was my team and so, I left when that broke.
On that day, I felt many things. A little fury, a little relief and a little misgiving about the next chapter of my life. The best chapter of my life as it turned out, but I didn’t know it then. The thing I often like to tell people is that I accepted my current job because it made a good life story. Only for the story. I had deliberated, consulted, pros and coned it and through all my confusion it was clear: this was a good story. Even if I failed miserably, I would still have done something different. Something new. I would learn something about myself.
Halloween, 2019
Three years later, it occurred to me that I still had the job I was so unsure about accepting. For me, it was giving up easy and do something challenging. All this, while walking back at 9pm from my co-working space in Almería on Halloween, the biggest shopping night in Spain. It is like Black Friday. Streets full of people, and little space to move around. Very unlike Almería.
“The universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things happen and we call them miracles.” - 11th Doctor, Doctor Who
This whole thing to me has been ridiculous. Sometimes, I need to pinch myself to remember that this is my reality. A lot of what I wanted in the past few months / years had somehow become my life. This was a gift and I shouldn’t take it lightly.
Anyone who has known me in the last two years, knows the extent of my love for my work. I work when I am not supposed to: on holidays, weekends, late nights, early mornings. Once, I’ve remoted to my work laptop from a terrible phone connection (while being inside an MTR) to write a SQL query while being only 15 minutes away from the office. Some may call it madness, I call it passion. There is little difference.
I’ll be honest: there is a little hint of brag here but, I don’t do it for the recognition or money or glory. Those would be nice rewards but the process.. that has my heart. Trying to solve a problem, getting lost in whatever I have to do for hours at end, not realising when it turned midnight. The person afraid of committing to anything is committed to a job (that in the end others may say, is just another job) is weird. It scares me to be this committed but I couldn’t pull if I wanted.
I now know what Steve Jobs was talking about; that passion and the fire. I feel it course through me every day when I start work and when I go to sleep. There’s a reason why I desperately have been trying to write this post and been failing to do it too. This is a not a story or a reflection. It is almost like someone justifying workaholism. But I am not. Other workaholics are driven and ambitious people. People who since their first job out of college gave 60 hours per week to their work. Those people who took steps to move up in their career towards heights that would make me dizzy. Such people have great, well-paying jobs with crazy hours but the satisfaction that they’ve made it. They had an end goal.
I have my end goal too, mine though is the process. I like the middle. Not unlike Oreo, it is the best part.
Tomorrow, they may fire me and I would be hurt but I wouldn’t regret the hours I have put in. That’s the thing I’ve been trying to write about actually. People keep telling me: you should go out and do something while you’re abroad. You should enjoy life more. You should explore new things. Find what you love. They don’t get that this is my enjoyment. This is my commitment. This is my love affair. If others don’t want to stop spending time with their partners, why would I want to stop working?
It’s a strange thing to admit to myself even. I had all these fantasies about ways I would spend my “free" time when I am not in Hong Kong. I’ll find out what else I love other than my work. Maybe I would read a lot more, exercise and become fitter, cook and rediscover baking. But with each passing day, I only fall deeper in love instead. So, maybe I am giving up a lot of my life and what is around me but I won’t have it any other way.
“I do what needs to be done.”
“Men say that so easily,” Beldre said. “Yet, everybody seems to have a different opinion of what ‘needs’ to be done.”- Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson