2021 - My best year yet
Hi there, it’s me again. This post will be my little footprint in the online world to update on what I’ve been up to.
Well to begin with, this year is probably my best year yet. Wow typing that down and reading it in my head made me realise two things; (1) I made that assessment purely based on how I’ve been doing at work; and (2) point number (1) made me realise how much importance I attach to my career relative to the other aspects in my life. After some reflection, a more accurate statement would be; my professional life has been great this year but I can’t really say the same for my personal life.
Although I’ve been performing in my work life, it has been at the expense of my personal life. To give a snapshot of my year - Long hours, lack of sleep, and lack of exercise so that I could deliver all of my department work while working on special initiatives and organising events at work.
In order for me to grow and reach greater heights next year, I shouldn’t be repeating the same 'dance'. I'm often reminded of the quote by Albert Einstein which goes; "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". I first came across this quote while walking down the walkway at my high school. The quote was painted in white on brick walls and it has stayed with me ever since. So I’ve devised a new game plan for the upcoming year which the control-freak that I am is super nervous about. My target for next year is to; pace myself.
You have absolutely no idea how hard this is for me. I simply cannot ‘stay still’ and even while typing this Im still not fully convinced that Im able to pull through. Because pacing myself involves ‘doing less’ and that sounds wrong no matter how many times I read it i.e. how could doing less, be doing more for me?
Well it does make sense. Although the pace Im going at has quickly brought me to ‘places’, it is not sustainable. If I wanna be running long-term, I need to slow down my pace and catch my breath. Life is at its core a marathon and not a sprint. So this post is also an online pledge to myself and a reminder to my future self to stick to the plan.
My department's year end lunch and the theme was 'Flower Power'.Work should not equate to life
One thing which I realised a couple of months after I started working is that I don't want my career to define the entirety of my life. What this means is that I want to have a life outside of work. A life which is filled with my hobbies, experiences, and the things which I am passionate about. I don't want my career to dictate my life, I don't want it to be centre-stage, I want to have a presence in this world independent and significant enough from my work. I don't want to work on the weekdays only to use the weekends to rest and prepare for the next set of weekdays. The thought process I had which led to this is because surely life is so much more than our careers. Surely we weren't born just to work a 9 to 5 until our bones tire and we go into retirement. Surely life is more than that. Life has so much to offer and surely we ought to spend some if not most of our time to explore them all. With that said, I am still struggling to create an identity and a sense of self outside of work. I've started several exciting projects independent of work and I've found a new hobby. Both of which are something I will share about later when the time is right but I find myself struggling to be consistent in working on my 'passion projects' because when push comes to shove I always find myself prioritising my work over everything else including sleep and health. Because work should not equate to 'life', I need to pace myself at work to make space and energy for 'life'.
Document more
Another aim that I have for next year and the years to come is to document moments. This basically means buying a camera and bringing it with me most of the time so that I can ‘capture’ moments no matter how 'mundane'. I realised that a lot of moments in our lives go by undocumented and these moments will slowly be washed away by the tides of time and in turn be forgotten. OK you're probably thinking "Why not just use your phone?". And to this question I have three points (geez why do I always find the need to justify myself); firstly, I don't want my pictures next to random screenshots or random pictures which I have on my phone, I want to be able to scroll through the pictures in a chronological order so that by scrolling through I can relive my life and past experiences. My second point is that on top of my existing joy of taking pictures, I've developed an interest towards creating/editing videos so I want to have ample of pictures and videos to work with and I want them to be of superior quality - something a good camera with ample of memory space will give. Lastly, I came across this idea where there are certain things in life which will allow you to level-up. For instance, I recently got myself prescription goggles and they have helped me swim better, perhaps due to me being able to see underwater thus giving me more confidence to swim. I'm confident a camera is something which will help me level-up in capturing moments. So yes, I rest my case, future me will always have a camera in hand to take pictures of her everyday life and the people around her. Who knows maybe you’ll be in one of my pictures too?
Comments
Post a Comment