Work, My Future and That Advice

Introduction

I think this is one of those few times I’m blogging about my working life. Frankly, it doesn’t bother me how many people from my office reads my blog. Although at first, it was kind of a little embarrassing when you suddenly caught someone reading your blog or they comment to you personally about what you just blogged. But as time goes by, you’ll practically be used to it. Even so, I still keep my working life at a minimum. It’s not that I wanted to keep it a secret or something. It’s just that, it’s not all that interesting. Aside from a few people that make working life more colorful, basically, a life in the office is just like a duty, much like going to school.

School: In a Common Student’s Point of View

When you go to school, you spend most of your time in classrooms on which the walls, ceilings, and doors all look the same and if you’re not used to it, it would seem like a big maze. The only thing different is that school security on which you often caught sleeping on duty.

When you enter the classrooms, you’ll find that there exist such astonishing beings called “professors” who seem to never run out of voice even when they talk non-stop from 7 am to 6 pm of every single day (excluding overtime). Adding the fact that in the same classroom, there also exist people like you whom you call “classmates” on which, in most cases, just doesn’t give a damn about school stuff. They spend most of their class hours burning their asses on the seats, doodling in a piece of paper and/or in the desk themselves, sleeping soundly at the nook or at the back, or even eating something to keep themselves awake from this another wondrous thing called “class discussion” that never fails to bore everyone to death. But what’s even more surprising to know is that even though sitting in class felt like sitting for an eternity, student still goes to class.

This way of thinking, is of course, in the point of view of students who are in the same classification as I do. These same students belong to the majority type — the common type. This does not include students who are active only during sports fests and/or special events in school and spends most of their time, skipping class; and/or dork type err… nerd type students.

Work: In an Unenthusiastic Employee’s View

Like school, work is the same. You go to work to spend 8 hours sitting in front of the computer doing your so-called “job.” This so-called “job” includes a lot of stages. There are pre-work, real work and post-work stages. Let me explain these stages of work.

In pre-work, usually you do this just as soon as you get to work. You do this to keep yourself in a mindset that you are going to start working. Pre-work activities include the checking of e-mails, answering of offline messages and browsing news websites, going to the pantry to get yourself a nice hot cup of coffee (in my case, its tea), going to other people’s workstations for a chat (in my case, messing up people’s stuff). After that, real work starts.

Real work begins with recalling where you stopped your work before and continuing on from that point. There are cases when you need to follow up stuff like CD from other division to continue your work. Therefore, pestering the UED, for example, for the CDs that they lack, are necessary. After the follow ups, you can now start with your work full-heartedly.

While in the stage of real work, make sure you take a break once in a while. You’ll die when you stare at a monitor for hours without taking a break. I’m serious about this and it’s medically proven. There were even a few people who died just because of it. I’ve always believed in the saying, “prevention is always better than cure” so it wont hurt to do just that right? While taking that few minutes break, you might want to grab a bite and/or fill your cup again with coffee. Since my desk is full of food, I don’t need to stand. (I’m simply lazy just like that. >_<)

And of course, the post-work stage. So, you decided to stop for the day and relax yourself as you prepare yourself to go home. So post-work includes a few minutes of blog hopping, browsing through social network sites such as Multiply, Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, shopping over CDJapan, Ebay.ph and Sulit.com.ph, reading manga, watching the next episode of your favorite series – Heros, Prison Break, Naruto, Bleach, etc. or simply going to other people’s tables to read news papers and such. And as the clock strikes 5:30, everyone stands up and leave.

Even though your so-called job has these busy working stages, in the end, it all end the same, just like that. After that, there’s nothing more and you go home.

Again, this is in the point of view of someone, who is very unenthusiastic about her work. This does not include everybody. There are always people who, no matter how boring I think it is, in their view, they still think that work life is fun.

It’s just like how students go to work just because their classmates and friends are there, there are also people who just enjoy going to work because there, they will see their friends and co-workers who they enjoy being with. Of course, just like school where evil witches exists, in work, there also exists people who puts you down. And they don’t necessarily limit to bosses too. Sometimes, bosses are even more considerate than some other people who are insecure and doesn’t have a life, who thinks they know everything. In a word, they are called, “Epal.”

Bato-bato sa langit, and tamaan, tamaan pa sana ulit. Heh. I wonder where my stone will hit and how many people whould be hit. I hope they hit hard. Nyahaha! >:)

The Meeting

So there, last Thursday, we had a one-on-one meeting with our CTO, Sir Max. Honestly, because I was having a flu at the time, my brain couldn’t really process that well. But when I realized that he was asking me about why I decided to transfer to PD (as a programmer) from UED (as a prototyper – don’t bother asking me what it is >_<), it was as if I was poured with a cold water while sleep walking. It’s not really surprising for him to ask that question. Everyone would be curious if someone willingly hand over a request to transfer to a division with a totally different working environment. Of course, I answered him like I answered Mngr. Jay, “I think I would help the company more as a developer over a designer/prototyper.”

Well, I was never really good with both deigning and developing. Both are fun, I suppose. When I design, I always learn new stuff from our designers. But to design, it takes me a half a day just to think of a concept. It is rare that I design something within a few hours. Coding them into HTML would of course take less time than designing, at least I think. And so my job composes most of coding HTML. And when I am developing, as I am now, I also learn new things and I never need to think of a concept, I could start right away. It’ll be quicker that way. So I chose to be a developer that way. Not because I’m the programming type, or whatever. You’ll get the idea.

That question Sir Max asked me isn’t all that much surprising. What really surprise me was when he gave me an advice. He told me, now, I can try doing this and that. If after a while, perhaps about a year, I did not gain anything from being a developer, it only means that developing is not for me then I could start again and try something else. Until such time that I find something that really is for me. I was like very moved that he understands this part even if there is this language barrier that took me a while to decode whatever he was trying to say. It took me about a few hours since I am sick and all and that my brain naturally process slower than most people. I am also not capable of multi-tasking.

Truthfully, even until this moment, I never really have any specific thing that I wanted to do. I said I wanted to be a clothing designer but it seems that I am starting to give up because I do not have the means, not even a starting point, and of course the courage to pursue it. I thought if I would stick to what I am doing right now, and keep it up my entire life, it would be too boring. So I thought of staying this way until such time that I could figure out what I really wanted to do. At least from this point, it will keep me busy. While at it, I will try other things too. Maybe from that I would be able to find something. I hope. What if I never found that something I really wanted to do? That, I will think of that when that time comes. Thinking of it at this point would be useless. It’s as if I could really do anything to change it, anyway. This, I learned the hard way.

So, that’s about all of it. It’s loooonnnggg, I know. Sorry. 🙁