It is done ... I have handed in my two-months notice ... 30 May 2014, the date of which this post will be published, is my last day ... Did I feel as if some sort of dead weight having been lifted off of me when I handed in my resignation letter? More like a tremour of trepidation ... Truth be told, up to now, I still have no idea whether I did the right thing or not by deciding to quit this business news monitoring job ... The only reason why I went forward with the decision was because I had prayed to God to give me the insight and perspective to do the right thing ...
Okay, everybody must bear in mind that God does not speak to anyone ... The only human God has ever spoken to directly was Prophet Musa, or Moses if you like ... Even with Prophet Muhammad, God did not speak directly to him ... He used His intermediary, Malaikat Jibrail, or the Angel Gabriel, if you wish ... So, I did not, like, have this direct conversation with God asking Him whether I should quit my job or not ... I performed a special kind of prayer, hoping to God that some kind of answer would arrive in a dream, or in the form of intuition ...
Alright, I do believe, and I think I am correct to believe so, that a lot of people out there, some who actually read this shabby blog, are still not sure about what their stand in Faith is, or maybe they just simply do not want to believe for reasons that only they could answer ... I am not here to preach, and in fact, I do not want any of my blogs to become some sort of platform for a cause ... I am just here to tell stories about my life, and so here is one story ...
Like I've said in a previous post, the job that I have, or rather had up to 30 May 2014, is or was the most comfortable job the whole wide world ... Why is it a comfortable job? One, I can eat at my workstation ... Eating, or rather stuffing my face with in-between-meal snacks, is a very important facet of Brainjuice's sad existence ... So, being able to stuff myself with junk food almost the whole day brings something of a joy to what would otherwise be a dreary sort of life ... Really .... Alright, so junk food does not define me, but what I'm trying to say is that I can eat whatever I like while I'm doing work ... Not a lot of workplaces would allow you to eat all sorts of food, especially when it is in an air-conditioned room ...
Seriously, people would be having their mixed rice with sweet 'n' sour fish, or sauteed beef with lots of cili padi, in English known as bird's eye chilli (This chilli is pretty hot, but apparently the hottest chilli in the world is the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion ... Hmmm, must try that one), or chicken curry with lots of cili padi and potatoes, yum yum, and so on ... I mean, seriously, does any workplace allow you to have lunches like that at the workstation? No, right ...
But, it's pretty difficult to have a meal at the desk in my office when we have a roach problem ... Yup, those little buggers like to come out when they sense piping hot food at the table, which more often than not happens to be the case where my workstation is concerned ... But, I love doing desk work while I'm eating, and I like to eat while I'm watching TV ... It is a habit since young that I cannot get rid off ... So, bugger or no bugger, I will eat at my desk ... I start off the day pretty healthy actually ... I will have papaya ... I must have papaya every morning and almost every night before bed ... Then after papaya, I will have yoghurt with an apple thrown in, and nowadays, yoghurt with apple and muesli and honey, or yoghurt with apple or banana ... Muesli is optional as it's not really that cheap ... This, so far, thank God, has ensured that my dietary system is pretty clean and bowel movement active ... Then, of course, I clog it all back with greasy Malaysian food and sodium-high snacks ... Okay, okay, where the hell am I going? I'm supposed to be talking about the most comfortable job in the world and why I have decided to leave it ... My favourite foods will be in a whole Blogger post of its own at another time ...
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that this job allows me to maintain this eating-while-doing-work habit of mine ... There are quite a number of jobs out there that do not allow you to do this, I think ... Can you eat while dancing up and down on the strip pole? I don't think so ...
Two, I can come in really early and therefore go back really early ... Of course, because I do my work pretty slowly, I don't always go back that early ... But there was a time when I was able to reach the production target for the day and finish quite early, actually ... Alas, that time has long gone ... My ambition for more abstracts by putting in more hours just dissipated at the appraisal in early 2013 when I discovered that I was only getting a measly RM100 increment for all the extra hours I put in, even during the weekends ... This was when everything gradually went south ...
However, having said this, I realize that I am not actually the world's most dedicated worker ... For one, I refuse to take on more responsibility ... There was this time when they kept handing me articles from this site called Japan Chemical Web (JCW), which I think is a subscription-only website ... Anyway, the articles on this site are very, very technical, so most of the time when I abstract them into my own words, I'm not too sure whether I'm getting the meaning across ... Thus, I was very reluctant in doing abstracts taken from this source ... Now, I don't think my team leader understands why I don't like to do abstracts on articles taken from JCW ... I believe, and I think I am right to believe so, that the way my team leader saw it, I was simply shirking responsibility ... He pointed out that there are others who took on the assignment, and one of them, who came into the firm after me, is already coding on her own ... I cannot explain what coding is because then I would have to describe what the whole job is about ... Let's just say that when you start to code on your own, that means you are truly independent and therefore no longer under supervision ... Another reason why I didn't want to do the JCW articles was because I felt that it was taking my time away from my main queue ...
Anyway, my refusal to do the JCW articles was the beginning of my falling out with my team leader, and although now I think it is far too late to ask the reason why I only had the RM100 increment, instead of maybe, RM200, I should have asked my team leader during the appraisal in early 2013 why was my increment so, well, not satisfactory? ... Was it because I did not have the initiative to take on more responsibility? ... I think it's only fair to ask, right? ... I mean, if you think you put in a lot of work, but you're not getting the increment you wanted, then obviously you won't feel motivated to do the work, which is what was happening to me gradually throughout the rest of 2013 until early March 2014 when I decided that I should quit ... But, I think I should have had that word with my team leader ... I mean, even if I had to leave the job because of my own stubborn-ass way of not wanting to shoulder more responsibility, take the initiative and all that, at least let that be said to my face so that I do not make the same mistake should I start working at another place, instead of me moping about and thinking, "What the hell did I do wrong?" ....
Three, and the most important aspect of why the job at this business news monitoring firm is THE MOST COMFORTABLE JOB IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, is because everyone at the firm pretty much mind their own business ... Of course, people being people, there are bound to be those you eventually grow to dislike more than like .... But, despite the fact that I may not like very much my editor, or that girl who gives me the heebie jeebies, most of the people there are affable and more importantly, they don't busy themselves finding out every single detail about you ... When I was a government school teacher, this was the one thing that I hated most about being at that particular school ... People were always trying to dig up on your personal life when I was teaching at that semi-rural school ... Why you're not married? Do you have a boyfriend? When are you getting married? ... Don't you just hate those sort of questions ... So what, it's none of your bloody business what I do with my personal life ... Although their intentions may be noble, they went the ass-way about it ... But, of course, that's not actually the main reason why I opted out of the teaching profession ...
Four, I get to write at the firm ... Although it's not the kind of writing that I would like to do, until I can discipline myself and maintain a constant habit of putting aside a certain number of hours every day to write that dream novel, or that dream screenplay, I will not stop looking and doing writing jobs that pay the bills and not let me worry whether I would have enough cash at the end of the month ...
And so we come back to the beginning of this post when I found myself thinking whether I should quit this job and praying to God whether I should do so ... So, where the heck is the story, huh, you ask ... Well, the story is that because I was unsure of my decision to quit or not to quit, I performed this special prayer called Solat Sunat Istikharah ...
This is not one of the five prayers that a Muslim performs throughout the day ... The five prayers must be performed no matter what ... Even if bombs fall all around you, when the call to prayer is heard, you must find a place to pray ... It is even said in the Qur'an that you must pray the five prayers even when you are running away from danger ... Because as a Muslim, we must pray to God and trust that He will protect us, and should we die while we are performing the Solat Subuh, Zuhur, Asar, Maghrib or Isya', we have, God-willing, ensured ourselves a place in Heaven ...
Alright, alright, now I'm starting to sound like I'm preaching ... Anyway, the Solat Sunat, I supposed if you want to look it that way, is an added bonus kind of prayer, where if you do more of this type of prayer, the scale that tips towards life in Heaven will grow heavier ... There are many, many types of Solat Sunat ... There is even a Solat Sunat for you to pray for a partner ... Well, it is said that if you perform it seven nights in a row, your prayer for some kind of sign will be answered ... The Solat Sunat Istikharah is performed when you come to that proverbial fork in the road ... What should I do? Should I go this way or that? ... This Solat Sunat is also performed when you are deciding whether you should marry so-and-so or not ... But, I'm not here to talk about potential partners and all that ... I believe I have already talked about that in a previous post ...
I would be honest here and say that in my heart, I had doubts whether I would get some kind of sign ... Although I am beginning to grow nearer to my Faith and build my life around God, I am still plagued by the more rational aspect of the human psyche - that is, to question everything ... Although there is nothing wrong with asking questions, as a Muslim, it is wrong for me to question ... What happens or does not happen is the will of Allah ... Now, I know when I say this, immediately red flags will go up in some people's heads ... They're probably saying, "What, so you're trying to say that hundreds of thousands of people die just because it's the will of God? That is just fundamental thinking and people like you should be banned from saying things like that" ... Yes, to a certain extent it sounds extremist, but before I start sounding too preachy, let me just say that my Faith is very important to me, so let me just continue by saying that once I have this mindset that everything is not within my power, that eventually, everything rests in the powers of God, I feel this heavy weight of guilt or overburdening responsibility being lifted off of me ... People die, people grow filthy rich, people get screwed up, people kill each other, people get married and then get divorced and end up hating each other, people living a happy life even ... All that, I don't have to concern myself with any longer because all that is happening simply because God wants it to happen that way ...
And just before you decide to slam me for being too Godly-preachy, know this ... We the human race have the one thing that no other creature in this world has - Free Will ... We have the freedom to choose the life that we want, the things that we want in our lives, the people we want in our lives, the kinds of opinions we want our children to grow up with, well at least we hope they would have ... Look at amoeba, for example ... Do you think it just stops one day and decides, "No, I don't want to be an amoeba anymore. My conscience is just simply overridden with guilt by being this parasite that infects people and killing them for no reason."? ... So just think about that for a moment and how God plays into Free Will ....
Goodness, I've gone further and further away from my story ... Yes, I was talking about the Solat Sunat Istikharah, and yes, I was having doubts about whether or not it would work for me ... But, like I said, it is not for me to question, it is just simply for me to do and have absolute Faith ... So, I performed the Solat Sunat Istikharah ... No dream came to me on the first night, at least not the kind that I wanted ... I was beginning to think whether I was doing it properly ... It was about this time that I was really getting to know my work colleague C ... So, on one of those days that I was performing the Solat Sunat Istikharah as a night routine, C and I had a coffee after work ... Well, no, of course I didn't have coffee 'coz caffeine makes me stay awake and does funny things to me ... But, yeah, we went to a coffee shop and had really good chat and I was talking about my frustrations over work ... At this point, I should tell you that my heart was already heavy with the thought of quitting the job ... Though I, of course, cannot for certain tell whether this was some sort of epiphany that I had hoped for, I can for sure tell you that my heart was leaning towards quitting the job ... At the same time, there was this niggling doubt at the back of my head ... Just a thought, rather than intuition, of uncertainty ... So, I told C that I was gonna quit ... It was my heart that said so, 'coz as you now know, my mind was still in two ...
After we had coffee and parted our own way, I walked towards the train station feeling lighter ... Again, I stress, I don't know whether this was because I was performing the Solat Sunat Istikharah or because I had a really good chat with C about quitting or both ... It could be any of these or it could be none of them at all ... So, I boarded the train feeling lighter, but unsure what it all meant ... The station at KLCC is underground, as some of you are aware ... So there I was, standing by the door, in a world of my own, like the rest onboard, and then the train came out from underground and onto to above-the-road track ... Behold, it was raining ... The kind of rain that soaks to the bones and drenches the whole city ... Rain as it had never rained for the past two months at least ... The whole of the Klang Valley was suffering with this wretched form of arid dryness since at least November of last year ... The kind of dry that makes you stay awake at nights with discomfort ... Extremely dry heat, like in the desert .... And there it was, rain so heavy that I, who have lived in this country that is supposed to be in the tropical rainforest climate zone almost my entire life, was shocked to see ... Yes, I was shocked to see heavy rain like that after what was a really long period of near drought .... And there and then, I took it as a sign ... As a Muslim, I believe that rain is a form of blessing ... Yes, it was a sign that I should quit ... Yes, you can roll your eyes and snort in cynical disgust if you like, but this is what I believe ...
And so here I am ... On to the next Great Adventure in the quest for the ever elusive Dream Job ... Actually, my dream job is just to dream ... I can dream up whole lives ... Is just that I'm too lazy to write it all down ... So, don't blame God, or other people, for putting me in this situation ... Just blame me ...
Update
... once I have this mindset that everything is not within my power, that eventually, everything rests in the powers of God, I feel this heavy weight of guilt or overburdening responsibility being lifted off of me ... People die, people grow filthy rich, people get screwed up, people kill each other, people get married and then get divorced and end up hating each other, people living a happy life even ... All that, I don't have to concern myself with any longer because all that is happening simply because God wants it to happen that way - Brainjuice, 30 May 2014
And I would say God has a very dark sense of humour ... He continually tests my faith of Him, and He will never tire in doing so ... Everything, EVERYTHING, I wrote above is complete and utter disillusion on my part ... Maybe to an extent I am still naive about everything, but in the last few years, I have learned the very hard way that nothing is certain ... Things have a way of f**king up ... The reason I put my own words in quotation is to remind myself how incredibly naive I had been looking at life ...
Firstly, I miss that business news monitoring job ... It is indeed THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD ... I miss coming in early and going home early ... I miss eating at my workstation ... I miss the people, but maybe not that editor ... I can't even remember which girl gave me the heebie jeebies ... Oh wait, I think she came in a few months before I left ... The point is, I miss that job ... But, you know, God had other plans ... Apparently I was to have another relapse because that happened about a month after I left ... SHAKING MY HEAD ...
Up to today, I still can't believe that I had a third psychotic episode ... "It had to happen" ... "There was no other way about it" ... "Just accept it, Brainjuice, your brain is no longer normal" ... These are the thoughts that sometimes run through my head ... I try to console myself that perhaps that is God's intention ... But, what do I know about intentions, of anyone, much more God's? ... I can't see past the words that people utter ... I can't see what their mind is thinking ... And I, like everyone else in this world, will never be able to see what is God's Grand Design ... Dear readers, if you don't believe in God, I am not here to make you believe ... If you do believe in God, then you came to my blog because ... God wanted you to ... More than anything else in this world, each and everyone of us wants to believe that we are all connected to each other in one way or another ... It is the human condition ... But I digress ... What I really wanted to say was that I just cannot accept the fact that I had a third psychotic episode ...
But, I have learned something about myself along the way, most of which I consider as fallibilities ... I tend to follow my heart rather than my head ... I can be a little too impulsive ... Sure, perhaps God showed me a sign on that fateful rainy day when I was in two about leaving that job, but of all the inept decisions I have made in my life, leaving that job prove to be one of the few regrets I have ... I worry too much and I get stressed out too easily ... I am impatient and I tend to get overly emotional ... I think the worst of everything and everyone ... I hate to fail, yet I always seem to be asking for it ... I lack foresight and regret that it happens and then blaming myself for lacking the foresight ... I am impatient (this is an inherent trait and thus, cannot be fixed) ... Are all these shortcomings good for me to know? ... Well, they give me room to grow ...
I'll tell why shortly ...
I have also learned another powerful lesson in these last few years ... Move On ... Move on, no matter what, Brainjuice ... Continue to plough through life's inequities even though you feel like throwing in the towel more often than not ... But, rather than say that this is due to my faith, I'd rather say it's because I have just gotten used to life's challenges ... For goodness' sake, I survive THREE PSYCHOTIC EPISODES, all in the space of ten years ... Perhaps this is God's plan for me, but I don't want Him to take all the credit ... I can't see His Grand Design, but I sure as hell don't have to like it ...
Like how I don't like the fact how my patience is tested when I was out of work for more than a year and a half and that I have this huge government debt to pay ... But, I tried to make it work ... I wrote a letter to the government agency in charge of the debt asking for a reduction, if not a total write-off ... The reason I gave was because I was out of a job and that I am a schizophrenic ... That's a very valid reason, isn't it? ... No, the Malaysian government doesn't care ... After all, we're in a MYR 1 trillion sinkhole, so they need to suck all money from every orifice if they have to ... So, I tried looking for a job, and God knows how I have tried ...
And once I landed a steady job, I find to my displeasure that that I am working with the Devil's spawn ... Let's just leave it at that ... And for the last two months, my sleep has been irregular; my diet, apart from the usual snack-smacking, is disrupted; my general sense of well-being (meaning I just don't do anything on the weekends) has turned to checking the phone every five minutes over every Saturday, and sometimes Sunday, to see if that Devil's spawn asked about some stupid thing we have to do for the sake of her precious clients ... After everything I have gone through, I have decided that talking bad about other people isn't doing anything productive ... So, I'm not going to talk about her and how she makes me feel ... But of course I am just human, so I have to rant ...
So, I come to the only solution that I can think of ... The only solution that I have been taking for the last twenty years ... I decided to quit ... Only after three months ... And I did ... But, something happened ... All those things I have learned in the last twenty years came rolling over me ... "How long are you gonna keep quitting?" ... "Haven't you learned anything?" ... "Don't you think it's about time you grow up and face your problems head-on?" ... The thing is, I am extremely uncomfortable with confrontations ... I don't know how to deal with it since a young age, and I have been running away ever since ...
Something happened, like I said ... The day I told my mother that I quit and explained to her for the umpteenth time why I quit, she, like any mother, did what all mothers do ... She paid a large sum of money to pay off my government debt ... Let's just say it's a very large sum, but still just a small fraction of what I still owe ... So large that the option of me declaring bankruptcy is out of the question ...
So, I'm stumped ... My tail's in a crack and I don't know what to do ... Then the only solution I could see was staring in my face ... I had to eat humble pie and asked back for my job ... It's not as if I wasn't looking for another job ... Tried as I may, I knew that in order to be a responsible adult is to continue doing the job I have now, even though I thoroughly dislike the employer ...
The week that I was in limbo, meaning I handed in my resignation and was waiting for my final day, the Devil's spawn behaved rather pleasantly towards to me ... Then, of course everything went back to shit after I said I cannot quit because I couldn't find another job and I have to pay a debt ... Well, not to her, but to her right-hand person ... In the days that followed, I wondered again about God's intention ... Is He purposely trying to torture me again and again? ... I mean, I tried looking for other jobs ... It wasn't as if I was just going to quit and not have a back-up plan ... But, for some reason, I feel like God intentionally wanted me to stay on and deal with this woman ... The same thing she's said to my face in front of everyone, that I'm annoying and I'm purposely doing it to her ...
One day, I was involved in this project, which I will not go into details, and I was doing it with another girl ... Well, the girl started opening up about how the Devil's spawn had been treating her and all ... After she told me her sob story, in which she did cry on more than one occasion, for some strange reason, I felt ... better ... After work and on the way to the station, all the tiredness that I had been feeling inexplicably evaporated ... I felt a sense of lightness of being ... Do I take pleasure in other people's misery? I sure hope not ... Then of course it dawned on me ... Like everything just fell into place ...
The Devil's Spawn, well, she's a bully ... She makes everyone feel small and incapable and inadequate because it makes her feel good ... To me, leadership is when you value everyone who works for you and makes sure to tell them their worth ... Leadership is when people aspire to be you ... That is not the Devil's Spawn ... She does have one thing right, that I have no respect for her ... That is true, but how can I when she clearly thinks I'm beneath her ...
All of a sudden, it makes sense why I am working at that place ... Not to feel miserable, but to know that I have self-worth, that I do not need to be subjected to vile remarks about myself in order to make me feel any less important, to know that I am better than her ... So, even though I may screw up again and again and get her all riled up and spew nasty remarks about me in front of others, I know I am the better person for not lowering myself to her level ... Of course I will try my best not to screw up, but when you deal with people who have no patience at all to deal with the likes of me, there will always be collision ...
And so we come to the part about me and my fallibilities and how they give me room to grow ... Basically, they give me perspective ... To the outsider, I am the pessimist who always finds fault with herself and never seem able to find her strengths ... But, what if my fallibilities were my strengths? I'm not exactly sure what I mean here, after all, I'm still improving my learning curve ... But, I think, after all that I have been through, if it weren't for my so-called weaknesses, I may have never been able to learn some of Life's crucial lessons, some of which I have mentioned above ...
So, I guess I'm just going to stick with that stupid job ... At this stage, I'm still thinking of switching to a new one, but I realize that I have come to the point where I am tired of running away ...
via GIPHY
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