idealism

Personality Disfunction

A conversation went something like this today…

Sunsun: If there is anything I’d like to improve about myself, I’d try to change blahblah*. You leh?**
Me: I’d want to be more conversational. I want to talk more. To speak my mind more so others will understand me better.
Sunsun: Thinks for a sec That’s not really something you can change. That’s your personality. You’re just someone who’s quiet. Nothing much you can do about that.
Me: Thinks to myself (Not necessarily. One can learn to speak up more.) Replies to Sunsun Yeah…

* Censored for discretion. Content unrelated.
** Added to dramatize conversation. Sunsun, of course, still doesn’t use this slang.

This usually happens in a normal day conversation. I noticed that I think to myself more than speaking my thoughts. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just lazy to think or there’s really something disfunctional with my personality. I just can’t put together words to correctly convey my thoughts. It’s actually such a chore. Sometimes when I speak in the language my mind thinks, I get stares at my face blankly and smiley, almost showing an array of “?” above the heads.

“Chim…”

Would you still listen to my repeat? Probably, for another round or two. Perhaps patience for another round of rephrase before the final nehmind smile.

“It’s ok…”

These words would teach me that any further attempt to help my audience understand what I’m trying to say…

Nevermind…

(See? I’ve given up trying already…)

Taking It Easy’ Friday

I’m learning to take it easy at work today.

Though the workload is still tons beyond humanly limits, I’m telling myself that doing 80% is good enough.

By saying this, I realize I’ve been stressing myself out by setting expectations of myself way too high… likewise, beyond humanly limits. So I had it. Today’s Friday! I can finally sit back, relax, and declare “TGIF!” after months of non-sensational Fridays.

So what’d I do? I’m spending the day in the office doing some brain-less work (notice it’s “brain” “less” as in less brain… not ‘brainless’) and at the same time hook my greatly deprived ears to the latest In Search Of Sunrise 5 by Tiesto. During lunch hour, I turned off my spreadsheet and walked out for some sun. Now at 6pm, I’m starting to close shop and go home for the day.

Sounding like “FINALLY”? Wish this kind of day will be a norm in the future
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Oh, did I also mention that despite my personal goals and expectations in my career, I’m actually really sick of the corporate environment. Nothing wrong with the people. They’re just behaving like they do just for their own survival. It’s the exaggerated superficiality I can’t stand sometimes. There are reactions I’m seeing in the office that seems almost surreal. (Think Stepfort Wives…) Sometimes I feel so out of place in the company of masked individuals at the office. Sometimes I feel

(If these superficial niceness I’m seeing in the office are genuine, then I’m really worried.)

Complain Pots

The last post brings me back to this thought so I might as well post a blog on it.

Does it help to complain?

The more I ask myself this, the more possible reasons I came up with to why people (esp. Singaporeans) like to complain.

Here’s the list:

1. Make displesure known: When someone does something that displeases you, there’s always this awkward worm that has to wriggle out to show itself. You’d just have to announce that you’re not happy.


2. Command for power: Slightly different from above. More extreme towards showing off one’s authority. Such complains usually is a demand for immediate attention.
   
3. Asking for solution: When out of your own wits to solve the issue, you complain to make known your problems to others so they might find a possible way out for you.


4. Make your problem known: ... so others can learn from it.


5. Crying out for help: Not necessarily the same as above. More of asking for empathy from others rather than help… AKA attention seeking method.


6. Lazy to think of solution: Also different from asking for solution. This is when one don’t even bother to think of his/her own solution.


7. Out of BL-ism: Simply nothing else better to do.

Out of the above reasons I could think of, the only ones that truly help solve the issue of the complain is ‘asking for solution’ reason. The others, though not entirely redundant, are less efficient and sometimes even lead to the expense of other’s time. Unfortunately, these are all evident in the norm of Singapore society today. Parents are teaching their kids to make themselves heard. Since not all of us are actively campaigning for politics, we are resorts to make ourselves heard by complaining on trivial things.

So what’s the line to the definition of ‘trivial’? There is no global standard to how much tolerance we should withstand to understand the word. I have, however, an exercise that can help one understand how much one is complaining and how much of that is really trivial.

Try this: Cut yourself off from the world for a day. Pretend your deaf and dumb. Don’t communicate with anyone verbally. Don’t ask for help in anyway. When you have something you don’t like, write it down. If something gets in your way, find your own way out. Record this.

Think you can do this? Yes? If so, then you don’t need to complain at all, do you?