Month: December 2018

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A Reflection On My One Year Blogging Journey

I meant to write something else but as 2018 is about to come to an end, I thought I’d just “cheat” a bit by writing about a reflection on my one year blogging journey. It’s like a year end review that kind of thing. I can’t find a better way to farewell 2018 and welcome 2019 than this.

This is how I see it, when people read my blog posts, whether it’s one or many, whether they spend only five minutes on it or longer, I’m actually taking them through a part of my journey that I hold dearly. Isn’t it wonderful when readers go venturing into the material you’ve written, then decide to give you a like or even follow you? It’s a big honour. I can’t say enough about how much I appreciate it. That’s why it’s ultra important for me to produce quality writing whenever I can. One year on, it still gives me the chills and I’m still like the new kid on the block. I keep reminding myself, stay grounded, don’t take anything for granted.

What can I say? It’s been amazing and daunting at the same time. Just like a roller coaster ride, ups and downs, ups and down, some days I thought my blog posts had done good deeds and added value to readers, some other days I thought not quite there yet, there were still many holes in my writing.

All in all, I’m here for the long-run. Not to dismiss the fact that at one stage I did quit. But two weeks later, I came back and re-launched a new website as you see now. I’ve been managing my blog like a small boutique store on a quiet corner – quality over quantity. We’re all here to “sell” something. So, what do I sell? To put it boldly: I’m here to sell the concept of “personal experiences”. Do I care about the stats? Of course I do. Traffic or readership can go both ways, either encouraging or discouraging. But I try not to get too hung up by that. They say you rather have 1 quality reader than 1000 non-quality ones. That’s so true. Even if my blog posts resonate with only one quality reader, that’d still be awesome and like someone giving me a pat on the back… Very rewarding!

Juggling between a full time job and my blogging “business” along with other commitments has been a challenge. I admit blogging isn’t a top priority in my life at the moment. After all, I have a day job that I enjoy. It helps pay my bills so I need to give it my 100% when I’m there. But outside that, the creative process begins in my head everywhere I go – when I’m out and about, catching a bus, doing house chores, walking my dog, taking a lunch break or having some me time in the evening etc. By the time I sit down and write, though tired and exhausted from all other activities, I still get a pretty good vibe about what I want to share with readers. As much as I’d love to finish writing in one go, the reality is it always takes more than one session to complete one blog post. It’s also not uncommon for me to go back and refine my writing even after I’ve published it.

2019, it’s only one more day or two more sleeps to go here in the southern hemisphere. How time has flown by so quickly this year. I won’t bore you with my New Year resolution in fact I haven’t got one. But now looking at the drafts box on my website, it shows 27 (including this one) blog posts waiting to be published. A light-bulb moment! I think I see the sign. I’ll make them my 2019 New Year resolution. Happy New Year!

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Mental Health Is An Issue That Won’t Go Out Of Print

We all know what number to call for emergencies. It’s 000 in Australia. In US it’s 911. In this day and age even when personal data security is everything, our mobile/cell phones are still designed to let us make emergency calls without needing a password. It goes to show how important it is to have quick access to assistance during a crisis. On that front, where can you go to if yourself or someone you care about is battling with mental health problems? Can you name at least three places on top of your head? Do you know their phone numbers by heart?

In Australia, there’re charities like Lifeline, Reach Out and Beyond Blue. They all have done a wonderful job on educating the public about the mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression which affect 20% of the population. To that effect, we can never say we’ve done enough as long as the stigma of mental illness is alive and well in all corners of our society. It’s true we’ve come a long way to raise public awareness and put the mental health topic on the table for discussion. The opportunities are all there, the challenge is to encourage more people to step up and speak freely about it.

Right now it’s December, a festive season, the happiness is in the air everywhere you go. What on earth am I bringing up the issue of mental health again? I don’t mean to drag you down. But here’s how it came about: Over a month ago, I bumped into a friend while taking a bus to work. He looked like he’d lost a big chunk of weight, just not the same person I used to know. I couldn’t help but ask him what had happened and if things were OK. In brief, he told me he’d gone through a tough time in his personal life. He was made redundant late last year as a result of the workforce restructuring. Thereafter, a series of unfortunate events such as not being able to find another job caused a whirlwind of emotions. It was hard to take. By his own admission, he suffered from depression – a condition he only kept to himself. Why so? He didn’t feel like bothering anyone especially his family in overseas. It was understandable but what stunned me most was when he talked about his suicidal thoughts. That was a real shock. On the surface and on paper, he was someone of a high calibre, who seemed to have his life figured out. As a young millennial, he already had amazing credentials under his belt – a certified chartered accountant, a master degree, have worked for one of the big four accounting firms in the world and other prominent employers alike. However, none of these achievements guaranteed a success he desperately needed. When people are out of job not by choice, life can be a brutal place and that’s exactly what happened to him. Being unemployed for too long is like being an outsider sitting on the sidelines, not participating in the game and just watching the days go by. His confidence was eroded, his mind played a dirty trick on him. He began to wonder: Is that it? Is that all what life is about? They say: All good things come to an end. Sure, so do bad things. At last, it took him a total of ten months to land a current job – even though it was only a fixed term six month contract with no possibility for extension. For now, life is back on track as he said but the uncertainty over what would happen after six months worried him. He feared that he’d relapse into old depression again. I took a deep breath, paused for a few seconds before asking him this question: When you were coping with those stresses, were you all alone by yourself? He replied with a straight yes. I wasn’t surprised by his answer. That’s the thing, behind a closed door, there can be a depressed person we never know existed.

I came up with this catchy headline “Mental Health Is An Issue That Won’t Go Out Of Print“, while drafting this post in my head. I’m a firm believer that you and I have the ability to write or re-write the next chapter and the next etc.. We can do so in a way that sees mental health as normal part of our lives and treats it with ultimate openness. It’s important to note that the stigma of mental illness wasn’t born out of nowhere. It was something we created right under our noses and passed it down year after year. So, what are we going to do about it? It’s all in the attitude – how do we act towards people (including ourselves) with the mental health conditions. In my friend’s case, what he said to me that day hasn’t changed a thing about how I see him as a person. If anything, it’s only more of him, not less of him…

Take care!

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Harness The Power Of Money

Money talks but does money walk? I don’t think there’s such a phrase in English but you get what I mean. We’ve seen money as a good motivator for some people. Let’s face it, when money is good, it’s hard to resist it, isn’t it? So, will you jump at an opportunity or an offer purely based on the money factor? What role does money play in your life?

A month ago, I went to a family dinner party that I was invited to by a friend whom I had just met. It was my first time to see the host family and their guests so I didn’t know what to expect. Fortunately, everyone was so welcoming and charitable, I began to mingle with them and make small talk very quickly. Among many topics, one that stood out a lot was career. I guess talking about ourselves especially what we do for a living is often deemed as a good ice breaker.

The host mother, a teacher and her teenage son, a recent high school graduate seemed to be very interested in what I had to say about my jobs, past and present. I could tell she wanted to hear my perspectives and apply to her son’s situation if any of my words was useful. I loved their curiosity. It really fired me up and made me want to share the practicality, the nuts and bolts of how I landed my jobs. For me, reviewing my career trajectory, all the ups and downs I went through and mistakes I made along the way, serves as a good reminder of how I got where I am today. It’s like taking a refresher course again. When I looked back on it, what I learned most was money was a wrong reason for leaving a current job or accepting a new job. Why? At one point, I went to take a job that looked more money and a nicer title on the outside but a few months down the track I discovered it didn’t bring me more fulfillment or happiness. In fact, I ended up working longer hours and even some weekends. Interestingly, when I saw it from an hourly rate point of view, I began to realize I wasn’t at all better off compared to the job I had before.

What do we get when we break things down into hourly rate pieces? Try this analogy: When walking through the aisles of major supermarkets here in Australia or perhaps your country too, you’ll see unit prices on almost all grocery items you come across. A unit price is a piece of information that tells shoppers exactly what they pay for per unit such as per item or per kilo. In turn, it helps shoppers see the real value of the goods they’re buying. An hourly rate works in the same way. I’m convinced that knowing how much we’re charged or paid for every hour worked, it’ll help us:

  • Rethink if the task at hand is worth paying attention to
  • Use our time more wisely and selectively when it comes to work-life balance
  • Say No more often to time-wasters (imagine how much it’ll cost us if we waste an hour on this)
  • Walk away from situations that no longer serve us

For what it’s worth, money is like a coin that has two sides, each with a distinctive character on its own. Together, money has the power to make or break our career, relationships and many more. Do you let money limit you or stretch you? To show who’s boss and make money work for you, why not start off by “charging” an hourly rate and see if money pay dividends in no time…