on struggling

 the primary reason why i’ve been posting sporadically is because i’m having a serious struggle with time, and the good (or bad?) thing about this is that it’s not because of work. with the coming of the new year, office has been so-so to the point that i’ve convinced myself to start looking for other better opportunities. i realize it won’t be easy because i signed a contract to stay for 2 years, and it’s only barely 4 months to date since joining the company. it was good initially as i learned a great deal of new things, especially with mainframe and lotus domino, but then work has been tidbits of unimportant, irrelevant tasks that i’m not sure if i’m going to be happy or not. added the fact that the last pay i got was last dec 24th, and now i still have to wait until the end of the month to make my wallet back in decent shape.

okay, the blame is not because i’m pathetically overloaded with work but more of because there’s not much work with the work. trust me, it’s even more difficult to pretend to be working on something than to work the work itself. having said that, it is with complete humiliation that i’m typing this entry during my paid office hours. if i’m not sitting on my chair making sure it’s warm, i’m waiting for amnesic employees to have their password reset, or busy arranging meeting rooms, setting up pcs and projectors, or lifting heavy servers like a power-lifting champ. it’s funny the first time i got this meeting invitation in my email not because i’m having a meeting but because i’m going to arrange a conference room. i don’t really look down at this kind of job, i even enjoyed it at some point because i roam around a lot and i’m the kind of person who would rather walk around than wait idly, just like when i distributed new IDs and wandered the whole 5th floor matching cubicle names, faces printed on the IDs and breathing faces in real life. perhaps, it’s with all things that sooner or later, you’ll get used to them and then it’s boring. to add that this is not the most intellectually challenging job i’ve had, and i just know (i know i would sound arrogant) that i can still make better use of my skills somewhere else. it’s just a reality that sticking with this job gives me a secured cash flow every end of the month, and that alone is worth staying put for now. i still even owe my sister some 15K pesos, and i’ve yet to start saving.

the bitter part with work is that it ate more than a third of my life each day, and i just enjoy more the things i do when i’m out of the office. at the tick of 5:58, i start going to my boss (he leaves at 5:30) to sign 6:00 for my time out. by 5:59, i’m shutting down computer. at 6:00pm, i’m gone. that’s 5 days a week without exception UNTIL this coming saturday when i’ll be working in the morning. working on weekends is rotation within our group, and so i’ll come for work, again, to provide warmth on my chair and wait for amnesic colleagues to reset their password that i can type the whole command with my eyes closed. but i’m not really complaining as working on saturday is really rare and it’ll give me some extra hours of time-off i can use in the future.

if you think about it, people struggle because they don’t like what they do but they have to because it gives them something they need or want. this is giving me something that i need.