Disconnect and recharge

"To manage the storm around us, we need to quiet the storm inside ourselves". I've been quite a follower to Tony Schwartz's blog in the past year. A proponent of productivity and engagement at the workplace (and how the way we're working isn't working), his musings often touch on how to get the best from our daily tasks and actions without sapping ourselves of our precious energy.

At the same time, Tony's writings are also personal. The way he relates his theories to his day-to-day life and activities give me a strange comfort in knowing I'm not alone in experiencing detachment and burnouts in my workplace.

It took me a number of job applications made in haste and an interview with another prospective (but nonetheless incompatible) company to made me realise what I hate in my current job is not the job itself, but the mindless operating robot I've turned into. It took me a week spent among the project network stakeholders (not to mention the much needed time out of the office) and a night mulling over figures and numbers to remember again what actually inspires me about my work;

The satisfaction of completing one little project at a time, reading and writing about issues I believe in, understanding science behind everything, the enriching experience I get when I speak to everyday entrepreneurs and industrialists, the ability to see the big picture, picking apart drivers and barriers governing our decisions.

In the grand scheme of things, they might be futile. What I'm doing may account for only one single little dot in the gigantic map of global struggle, but they will drive me forward. They will be the crutch to keep my feet steady, to keep me walking until the end - limping or not.

Change is the only constant

These days my dinner consists of a single thing on a plate; a piece of toasted bread, one egg - sunny side up, and a sausage. A pack of instant noodle and one egg - sunny side up. Sometimes they are leftovers. Like last night; it was half a tandoori nan and few pieces of chicken curry from my lunch at the office.

After the merry housewarming party last weekend, the plates and bowls and glasses and the frying pan and pots seems too much for my consumption alone. I feel affluent; I've never owned so many things before.

It has been quite a change, coming home to a quiet house. As sun sets my feet shuffle around quietly, from bedroom to the kitchen and back to the living room where my books are sprawling on the floor. The only noise I get is from my loyal audio set where it sings its melancholic songs.

I'm still trying to make sense of these new found freedom and its inevitable silence; although sometimes I get struck with panic at its prickling quietness, mostly I cherish the time to get lost in the sea of my own thoughts and imagination, just like Emma Morley does;

"Sometimes she thinks how nice it would be to be woken by a call in the night: 'get in a taxi now' or 'Í need to see you, we need to talk'. But the best of times she feels like a character in a Muriel Spark novel - independent, bookish, sharp-minded, secretly romantic." - One Day by David Nicholls