Surviving New Assignment

Change is painful, very cliche but true. This is the second week into my new assignment and the pain seems almost unbearable. It comes from all directions.

Number one pain comes from less time with family. Having been home based for the last year, and despite some heavy traveling, there were big chunks of time with kids and wife. Time was flexible. Work can start from 4am when I needed to talk to colleagues in New Zealand or have some quiet time to think. Work can end at 11pm to clear emails after the kids had gone to bed. Family time can be 8am going marketing with wife or 9am at the gynecologist with wife (going to be father third time, yipee!) or 4pm going for a swim with kids.

Number two pain comes from dealing with the dynamics in the new function, a.k.a. politics. I will admit I'm suicidal in politics. Usually, I will unconsciously stick my neck out and get myself killed many times over. Worse of all, I get lots of heartache from the comments by others. I was labeled stubborn before, and now I can add threatening to the list. At the same time, my supervisors are saying I need to be more assertive. These seems to be extreme characters for the same person. It is not so extreme if put into the context of communication. I am non assertive. And is something I need to work to improve. But how to reconcile this with the "stubborn" and "threatening" label? It depends on the listener. There will and always be people out there that will turn good or neutral to bad (white to black). A lot of them are what we typically call "friends" too. They will hear what they want to hear (remember the Gold 90.5 FM advertisement?). So how to deal with it? Wish I have the "always" correct answer.

Number three pain comes from learning new technicalities of the new job. It helps if I have super memory. Unfortunately, I am just a normal guy. I figure only time can resolve this.

In the end, I will survive. I am not worry about the outcome, i.e. what people thinks of me (yeah yeah). My focus and priority is still the family and gaining financial security outside of the "full time" work place.

The Beginning...

This is it. Something I never thought of doing till today. I was inspired after reading a friend's blog. TLK showed me what seemed to be a great way to let out my thoughts could not escape my mouth. At the same time, I can now understand the bloggers' vanity in showing the world their inner-self.

I'll have to stop here for the first blog. I'll have to get ready to send my daughter to art class.

Hmmmm, wonder if I will ever find time to keep this up. Only time will tell.