June 16, 2010

Baby talk

2

One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cially awk­ward. I never under­stood how to talk to some­one who didn’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pretty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how phony it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voices, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mally talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kitty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoopsy, and the pokey of the belly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­ity of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly doesn’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry seven years ago, specif­i­cally about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in monosyllables.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­pletely under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­ity, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in another human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↑]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↑]
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May 19, 2009

The Price Of Moving On

4

Remember this one, or even this one?

I wrote those entries four years ago1. Amazing how much they apply to the sit­u­a­tion I’m in now. Except this time, I’m stronger because I know that I sur­vived this once already. It’s sad that at the end, all my efforts turned into an attempt at mak­ing sure I wouldn’t regret any­thing by giv­ing more of myself than I should have. Because when all that you’ve given makes no dif­fer­ence, and you have noth­ing left, you know for sure that there’s noth­ing else you can do. You can always say that you took the chance, and it doesn’t mat­ter if you get hurt in the end, because often you can’t sep­a­rate the two.

That’s the price you pay to look back with­out any regrets. That’s the price of mov­ing on.

And I always pay it gladly.

  1. It’s quite a trip to see that I was mature or smart enough to fig­ure this out back then. [↑]
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March 19, 2009

Five Year Timestamp

12

People here say I’ve changed.

Me and grandma

It’s been five years, and my grandma used to describe me all the time as “seun”, a Cantonese word for “pure, clean, unmixed”. But when I arrived last week, she said she wouldn’t rec­og­nize me if she saw me on the street.

They used to say I looked like Leon Lai.

Leon Lai

Yeah, this guy. Now they’ll con­cede that I’m bet­ter look­ing than my dad.

People notice the white hair and say I used to have a baby face. That I’m older. Or more mature.

It’s true that I feel com­pletely dif­fer­ent than the per­son I was five years ago. I tend to reflect and eval­u­ate on a daily basis (which is far too often) so I never get a sense of any long term changes.

But now that I’m in Hong Kong again, and I look back on the per­son I was the last time I was here, I see the changes much more drastically.

It’s reflected in ways that I’m not accus­tomed to notic­ing. Not just in the way I see the world, but from the way I han­dle things. The way I speak with those older than me. My inter­ests in what they have to say. I didn’t even start work­ing yet the last time I visited.

But at the core, I’m still the same per­son. The same morals, the same logic, the same intel­lect. It seems like it’s only the way these core traits man­i­fest them­selves that has changed, most likely from the things I’ve been through.

Five years is a long time to be so blind to these changes.

It’s quite surprising.

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March 5, 2009

Sensitive To Sensitivity

17

I almost walked out of Tai Chi class the other night.

Someone asked me if I was going to “pass out again”, because I got light-headed the class before and had to leave early, most likely due to a side-effect of the new med­ica­tion I’m on, though I was far from pass­ing out.

I was flat-out offended, and began expe­ri­enc­ing what my ther­a­pist explained are “auto­matic thoughts” — irra­tional thoughts that affect mood neg­a­tively. I had to step back from the sit­u­a­tion, put the words out of my head, and calm myself down. If not, I would have over­re­acted, and prob­a­bly regret­ted it. But I couldn’t fig­ure out why I was so upset. After all, I’m far from one who gets offended easily.

Was I being pub­licly emas­cu­lated? Was I being judged with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of all the facts? Was my com­mit­ment to attend prac­tice after not eat­ing for two days being belit­tled? Was it the tone? Was it because I couldn’t speak back and defend myself, for fear of pol­lut­ing the sanc­tity of the class1 with my per­sonal pol­i­tics? Probably a bit of each.

I tend to have sim­i­larly bad reac­tions to peo­ple being sur­prised that I don’t know some­thing. It feels like I’m being judged, as if they pre­sume to know who I am. Even though it’s sup­posed to be a com­pli­ment, it’s a back-handed one, like say­ing “I thought you were smarter than that”. John used to be espe­cially guilty of this2, but he suc­cess­fully cor­rected the behav­iour years ago. It took a psy­chol­o­gist to point it out to him, and adverse reac­tions from sev­eral peo­ple, includ­ing me.

I know I’ve already come a long way. I’m not so sen­si­tive about my weight (for a guy) any more. I stopped car­ing what peo­ple think when I know the truth. But this inci­dent made me real­ize that I still har­bor a sen­si­tiv­ity to cer­tain things. I still have some grow­ing up to do. Still have to real­ize that peo­ple say things with­out think­ing, or don’t mean what they say, or that I may even take innocu­ous things the wrong way. Even though I feel that I had a right to be offended, I still don’t want to be.

And the fact that I was offended just makes me more upset.

  1. I approach my work with the same kind of reser­va­tion and detach­ment to remain pro­fes­sional. After all, these are sit­u­a­tions in which we can’t choose the peo­ple we work with, so there’s noth­ing to do but accept and any unpleas­ant­ness. [↑]
  2. And quite self-aware of it. As a per­son obliv­i­ous to pop-culture, he loved to hold it over peo­ple when he knew some­thing they didn’t. [↑]
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May 28, 2007

To Grow from Yielding

8

The most yield­ing thing in the world
  will over­come the most rigid
The most empty thing in the world
  will over­come the most full
From this comes a les­son —
  Stillness ben­e­fits more than action
  Silence ben­e­fits more than words

—Verse 43, Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, tem­per­ance is the great­est weapon.

When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you merely need acquiesce.

In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and significance.

Tai Chi, as the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Taoist philoso­phies, fol­lows the same idea.

Then you will under­stand the flow of inter­nal power, and, hav­ing repeat­edly prac­ticed and refined your tech­nique and explored your own aware­ness, you can use and con­trol your inter­nal power at will.

The T’ai Chi prin­ci­ple is as sim­ple as this: yield your­self and fol­low the exter­nal forces.

—Waysun Liao, The Essence of T’ai Chi

When your oppo­nent expands, con­tract. Create a void in your stance, and let them fill that void. By absorb­ing your opponent’s energy, you reduce it to nothing.

No one proves them­selves more inane than one who matches energy with energy, force with force.

I’ve finally come to fully under­stand such an idea. The the­ory made sense, but I never put it in prac­tice, and prac­tice is what makes the under­stand­ing com­plete. It was only recently that I had the chance to apply it. The old me was hot-headed with too much to prove. When faced with insult­ing, patron­iz­ing words, I would have reacted, instead of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of wu wei. The sit­u­a­tion was a test of myself, and I passed.

From this I’ve learned how much I’ve grown.

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April 25, 2007

Words From One Who Cannot Write

10

I used to fancy myself a poet. Then I read a series of poems by Susan Musgrave and real­ized how naïve I was to believe such a thing. So I stuck with writ­ing, and fan­cied myself a writer, until I read Aurora’s words, mys­te­ri­ous and res­onat­ing, still bit­ter from the breakup in January.

A while ago, it felt like I ran out of things to say. Now I real­ize that it’s not a lack of sub­ject mat­ter, but a lack of conviction.

The seren­ity, bal­ance, matu­rity I’ve gained has robbed me of the pas­sion that once fueled my writing.

Even as recent as January, Dave Seah, pro­lific cre­ator of the Printable CEO, Procrastinator’s Clock, and fel­low 9ruler, said that I wrote with “literate-yet-conversational inten­sity, the kind of writ­ing that sounds good when spo­ken aloud”. Now my entries are dry and tech­ni­cal, devoid of the inten­sity I used to feel, and I fear that it’s a reflec­tion of myself.

Maybe this is why I’m so quick to embrace my moods and emo­tions. They let me write the way I used to, with the lyri­cal qual­ity and style I once enjoyed.

So I sit here, with the lights out and Leonard Cohen on, the early folk stuff before he went synth in the 80s, songs of love and hate, win­dows open to the night, try­ing to recap­ture the pas­sion that drove me to write when I started this blog.

I’m not a writer. I can’t write.

I’m sim­ply a thinker, with the need to express himself.

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March 26, 2007

New Hampshire: Conclusion

4
Thumbnail: Three drinks
Thumbnail: My clam appetizer
Thumbnail: Jazz night
Thumbnail: Scallop entree
Thumbnail: Tuna sushi
Thumbnail: Chinese food
Thumbnail: Pecan pie
Thumbnail: Guinness in a bottle
Thumbnail: Bath feets
Thumbnail: Fire hydrant
Thumbnail: Frozen river
Thumbnail: Fungus
Thumbnail: Cosmo horoscope
Thumbnail: Live free or die license plate
Thumbnail: The bed in my room

What an over­whelm­ing experience.

There was barely any time to explore; we took one walk and pretty much stayed within a 10km radius. Too much read­ing, test­ing, and meet­ing to do any­thing else. It felt like the time went fly­ing by, yet dragged on, the longer I was from home.

There’s some­thing about being away. Being iso­lated from your rou­tine and every­thing that’s famil­iar. It’s a dif­fer­ent set of stimuli.

As an intro­vert, you fall back on mem­o­ries and past expe­ri­ences, and it dri­ves reflec­tion and re-evaluation.

I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t affect me. I learned more about myself in the last two weeks than I did in the last year, and I’ll be writ­ing about it for weeks, if not months.

Read the rest of this entry »

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December 18, 2006

Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend: Louise

11

The thrill is gone
The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you’ll be sorry someday

—BB King, The Thrill Is Gone

Our rela­tion­ship was a night­mare of ups and downs.

You had the amaz­ing abil­ity to make me feel good about myself, by say­ing the right thing with intel­li­gence and eloquence.

Yet every time I felt like I was mak­ing progress, progress that took tremen­dous effort and energy, progress for you, you would put me down. Every time I took a leap of faith and put myself out there, you would hurt me. It wasn’t even a case of bru­tal, tact­less hon­esty; you would insult my pride for no reason.

I think it betrayed a sub­con­scious inse­cu­rity. Something you would do to make your­self feel bet­ter. Like your con­stant need to prove that you’re busy and mov­ing on. It’s as if your life is empty, void, and you’re des­per­ate to fill it with something.

I had to end things when you went too far.

There were no regrets, because I did my absolute best to make things work. Even though I suf­fered, I ignored the pain, and tried work­ing through it. I only gave up when you proved too stub­born to change or understand.

The rela­tion­ship wasn’t a total loss. It was an inter­est­ing intro­duc­tion to the sub­cul­ture. It was pas­sion­ately sex­ual. It also made me more con­fi­dent, although I real­ize now that it wasn’t because of you. You barely gave me any trust, and every step for­ward I made, you pulled me back two. It was me who fought through all the inse­cu­ri­ties and rose to the occasion.

When you came back in January, with­out a word of apol­ogy or men­tion of the wrong you did, I had no inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the rela­tion­ship. After that, I thought of you when­ever I heard the song Buried Myself Alive by The Used.

Then, with all your let­ters and your apolo­gies and your tears, two years later, you asked “nicer than that”.

Unfortunately, it was at an unsta­ble time in my life, so I asked you to back off and wait. Your idea of back­ing off and wait­ing is leav­ing me creepy com­ments and dat­ing to fill the time. I just can’t under­stand how you keep mak­ing these mis­takes. It’s almost like you pur­posely sab­o­tage yourself.

I don’t want to be involved in the drama any­more. Nothing is ever sim­ple with you. Even though you say you’ve changed, it’s not worth the risk to me. You had your chance, and it was a damn good one.

You’ve wronged me too many times. The last time you left my house, not know­ing when or if you’d come back, I felt nothing.

I knew then that the thrill was gone.

A few other things:

  • On the phone, your voice could be so cute that it would make me weak and for­get every­thing you did.
  • Out of all my girl­friends, you were phys­i­cally the least attrac­tive, yet you were the most con­ceited about your looks.
  • It was very much appre­ci­ated when you brought me flow­ers at work, and the times you’ve dropped off food and other good­ies at my door. No one else has done this for me.
  • The way you would remem­ber events was often com­pletely wrong. It wouldn’t be so bad if you weren’t com­pletely con­vinced that your inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect. It made things rather scary, like dat­ing a schiz­o­phrenic. You could totally fab­ri­cate how things went, the way you wanted to remem­ber them. The root of an argu­ment would turn into my fault, instead of yours.
  • You were a knock­out in bed.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

  1. Introduction
  2. Ashley
  3. Michele
  4. Christie
  5. Jackie
  6. Louise
  7. Bronwen
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October 20, 2006

The Gerry Project

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Thumbnail: Gerry 1

Thumbnail: Gerry 2

This is Gerald, or Gerry as he prefers, an alum­nus of my high-school, Upper Canada College.

Gerry was born in Germany, but being a German-Jew, he soon moved to Holland in the years lead­ing up to the Second World War. “My father was rather pre­scient”, he put it. Eventually, he came to Canada. For four years, he attended UCC, grad­u­at­ing in 1940. I was in the class of ’99. After a year at uni­ver­sity, he vol­un­teered for mil­i­tary ser­vice at 19.

“19?”, I asked in dis­be­lief. With a smile on his face, he told me, “You grow up fast”.

He began as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer for an artillery unit. Responsibility of the lives of many men under his com­mand was some­thing he didn’t want, but his knowl­edge of German, Dutch, and English moved him to a more prefer­able posi­tion as an inter­ro­ga­tion offi­cer. His supe­ri­ors would send him co-ordinates of intel­li­gence to gather, some­times behind German lines, some­times in a downed tank, and a pri­vate would drive him in a jeep to obtain the information.

He sur­vived.

From left to right, his medals are:

His proud­est accom­plish­ment is the Maltese cross he wears on his chest — The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, pre­sented by the Governor General her­self. Even though he’s a com­man­der of the order, sec­ond only to knights or dames, he’s extremely mod­est about it. The framed award pre­sented to him lies in a pile of assorted things in his bedroom.

I first met Gerry a few days ago, after find­ing out about him from the bi-annual newslet­ter pub­lished by UCC. The newslet­ter, called Old Times, is a way for alumni, called Old Boys, to keep track of the goings’ on at the College. There was an arti­cle about the school’s prized Victoria Cross medal col­lec­tion being pre­sented to the new Canadian War Museum here in Ottawa. These were the same medals I walked by in the front hall dis­play case every day at school, too young to appre­ci­ate their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance. Gerry was one of the vet­er­ans invited to attend the pre­sen­ta­tion ceremony.

However, my inter­est in Gerry stemmed from a dif­fer­ent sec­tion in the same issue of the newslet­ter, announc­ing a photo con­test open to all past and present stu­dents. The con­test seemed like a great project, not only as a way to prac­tice my pho­to­graphic skills, but to test myself as well. I would have to find a sub­ject related to the school in some way. Gerry, being an Ottawa-area Old Boy, was my clos­est con­nec­tion. Taking pic­tures of some­one, let alone some­one I had never met before, was a daunt­ing idea, and I would have to step out of my com­fort zone to do it.

After look­ing up his name in the phone­book and gath­er­ing up the courage, I called Gerry. He was happy to meet.

I’ll be sub­mit­ting the sec­ond photo.

Update: Here are the results of the project.

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September 1, 2006

Musical Context

3

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suited for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spitting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was mostly elec­tronic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I needed to move. One for the par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of stoic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar purpose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fancy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and never stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cover while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, nearly chaotic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­real, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ceded and suc­ceeded by two equally sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song doesn’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ingly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­ity asso­ci­ated with grow­ing older, came the loss of emo­tional highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is harder.

And this has become my musi­cal context.

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August 11, 2006

What Can I Say?

3

Things have changed.

I don’t write the same any­more, or about the same things. I’ve lost my fer­vent ver­bosity. Every time I sit at my com­puter, my mind blanks. Writing has become a chore. Even this entry has taken me days to think through. I find myself writ­ing and rewrit­ing every point, every paragraph.

In the begin­ning, blog­ging was a form of cathar­sis. Developing cog­ni­tively beyond my ado­les­cence was an emo­tional period, filled with con­fu­sion and grow­ing pains. The only way I could make sense of it all was to write out my thoughts, forc­ing myself to reflect and learn from every challenge.

It was also a use­ful tool in fig­ur­ing myself out, as a part of my life where I could approach things with the con­vic­tion that I lacked in the rest of my life. Now that I’ve gained enough con­fi­dence, it doesn’t seem so nec­es­sary to prove myself with words any­more. It would seem that I’ve become a vic­tim of my own self-assuredness.

I could fill this blog with entries, find­ing solace in the writ­ten word, when I was going through some­thing as sim­ple as a bad day. As time has passed, I’ve elim­i­nated most of the things that bother me enough to turn to this medium. It was a slow and sys­tem­atic process, both inter­nal and exter­nal. My new-found seren­ity has left me with lit­tle rage. I’m hap­pier now, and hap­pi­ness is too hard to write.

It would seem that I’ve run out of things to say.

There have been few epipha­nies, and even less inspi­ra­tion, in the last while. Maybe it’s because I’m in the mid­dle of a tran­si­tion. It takes a foun­da­tion of sta­bil­ity, some­thing I haven’t had in months, to grow. My life hasn’t quite set­tled yet.

Writer’s block is a sign that I’ve stopped grow­ing, a tes­ta­ment to what and how much I’ve been through.

But more impor­tantly, it’s a sign that I’m approach­ing where I want to go in my life.

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September 17, 2005

Transitway Six

9

Thumbnail: Transitway

On days like this, it’s bet­ter to wear light cloth­ing, and throw on a hooded wind­breaker. The rain out­side is just a driz­zle, so it’s com­fort­ably cool. Pay no atten­tion to the hydraulic hiss of the wind­shield wipers, or you won’t be able to help hear­ing them through the quiet parts of every song. Window seats are prime. There are fewer dis­trac­tions from peo­ple walk­ing down the aisle.

The 95 goes from one end of the city to the other, straight through the heart of Ottawa. Every stop is a mem­ory. Old haunts. Past lives.

Here was your first apart­ment. Sometimes you’d find Christie wait­ing for you here on the benches between classes. How long ago those days seem, how imma­ture and rel­a­tively inno­cent. The next two stops are on the edge of the uni­ver­sity cam­pus, four years of scat­tered tru­ancy. Two stops later is where you use to buy a medium caramel cor­retto every morn­ing after an exhaust­ing night with Louise. Your old gov­ern­ment office is another two on. The con­crete build­ing looks so for­eign now, and you won­der if the same peo­ple are still inside. Another few stops is your last apart­ment, before buy­ing the house, the end of bus rides home every day.

Music never meant so much.

You pass by con­struc­tion sites, fin­ished build­ings, see the evo­lu­tion of the city.

Every stop can be traced to a dif­fer­ent point, a dif­fer­ent girl­friend, a dif­fer­ent path in your life.

Six years of expe­ri­ence, six years of shift­ing, ever-changing anima.

Six years passed.

Six years lived.

Six years grown.

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July 18, 2005

Trinary Maturity: (In)Conclusion

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I wasn’t plan­ning on writ­ing another part of this series until I asked John for his opin­ion. He was extremely hes­i­tant to com­mit but even­tu­ally opined, with earnest con­sid­er­a­tion of his words.

His most sig­nif­i­cant insight was that I may be hastily pass­ing judg­ment on some­thing that I’ve only begun to expe­ri­ence. “It’s time, not the aware­ness of our accom­plish­ments, that teaches us what’s sem­i­nal”, he put it. I find it dif­fi­cult to dis­agree. After all, I have no idea how impor­tant the last year will be. All I know is that it’s been impor­tant up until now.

I always trust what John says. Like a preacher, he speaks the truth. It’s good to have a friend who can keep me in check, who can give me some per­spec­tive. Perhaps I’ve been look­ing a lit­tle too hard for mean­ing. I want to believe that these things have changed me, made me a bet­ter person.

But only time will tell me for sure.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
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July 7, 2005

Trinary Maturity: The House

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In the last year of high school, I was called into the guid­ance office for some direc­tion in choos­ing a post-secondary insti­tu­tion. The coun­cilor, a very, very Caucasian man, went through the fea­tures of each uni­ver­sity, not­ing espe­cially the ones with nice cam­puses. In an effort to save his time, I explained that the esthet­ics of a uni­ver­sity were of no con­se­quence to me, because they wouldn’t affect my life. Apparently this was a dif­fer­ent approach from other stu­dents, whom he believed decided on the direc­tion of their edu­ca­tion through a desire for lush lawns and big dorm rooms.

I’d always believed that I’d feel the same way about a house as a cam­pus. Give me enough room for my com­puter with walls thick enough to crank my music and I’ll be happy, I used to say. While this may still hold true, I’ve dis­cov­ered that I’m even hap­pier with a nice place. I finally under­stood that coun­cilor, four years later, after chang­ing uni­ver­si­ties for a brief post-graduate stint. The new cam­pus was big, mod­ern, and inspir­ing; quite a dif­fer­ence from my pre­vi­ous uni­ver­sity with its brown build­ings and con­stant construction.

It’s the same when com­par­ing a rented place of res­i­dence and an actual house. A house begets secu­rity, and in turn, a sense of con­fi­dence. There’s a dis­tinct feel­ing, every day, wak­ing up in one’s own home. Knowing that every pay­cheque is going towards some equity, a lit­tle piece of prop­erty I call my own. Having a com­fort zone, a place that I don’t have to deal with any­one I don’t want to. A place where I make the rules, not hav­ing to answer to land­lords or security.

It was the process too, that helped me grow. Aside from the com­mon sense of own­ing a house as a long-term invest­ment, I was inspired (or should I say “dri­ven”) to move because of a room­mate. After one par­tic­u­larly child­ish con­flict, I decided more than four months before I actu­ally had time to look, to buy a house and take Trolley with me. We moved in before the lease was up on the apartment.

I went through the entire process myself, know­ing noth­ing at the start. I had never done any­thing on this scale before, and while it may seem triv­ial to those who have been ini­tia­tors their entire lives, this was a big step for me. It let me know that I could actu­ally accom­plish the things I want.

And that cast aside all the doubt that was hold­ing me back.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
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June 19, 2005

Trinary Maturity: The Job

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The first cat­a­lyst involved in my “trans­for­ma­tion” was my job. It could be said that the only rea­son this job was so sig­nif­i­cant is because I had never had such a job before. Perhaps things would be dif­fer­ent if I started my cur­rent career at a dif­fer­ent time, although the same could be said about the other two factors.

I was hired to work closely with one of two own­ers, a man with the drive, mind, wit, and per­son­al­ity to run one of the top com­pa­nies in the indus­try. I see myself as a tool, an exten­sion of his per­son, respon­si­ble for things that he doesn’t have time to do. By free­ing his time, the com­pany is able to grow faster, because his resources can then be put to bet­ter use.

My role is as a sort of sub­mis­sive. This works out well, because in (most of) the rest of my life I’m dom­i­nant. Like me, many sub­mis­sives at work are also dom­i­nants at home, and vice-versa. People want change from the every­day life of their career, and in fact, my sub­mis­sion in this role is what makes me a bet­ter dom­i­nant in oth­ers (more on this extremely sig­nif­i­cant point in the forth­com­ing part of this series).

I don’t have the per­son­al­ity to run a busi­ness, the way my boss doesn’t have the per­son­al­ity to work for some­one else. Our roles are clearly defined, and I’m much more pro­duc­tive as a sub­mis­sive in this sit­u­a­tion. It’s this pro­duc­tive­ness that has given me so much con­fi­dence. I know how good a worker I am, how inte­gral my role is in the com­pany, and how dif­fi­cult I would be to replace.

Relational roles aside, how­ever, there are sev­eral other fac­tors of my job that con­tributed to what I con­sider explo­sive growth. The respon­si­bil­ity I have was a big thing. As the only IT per­son there, I have to make sure that all our hard­ware and soft­ware is suf­fi­cient for what we’re doing. When the nature of the busi­ness changes, the upper ech­e­lon comes to me for a solu­tion, whether it’s upcom­ing VOIP imple­men­ta­tion to save on long dis­tance, wire­less track­ing of our pick-ups and deliv­er­ies, or some­thing as sim­ple as a server upgrade to han­dle the mar­ket growth.

Even things like mak­ing phone calls have changed me. I was never com­fort­able on the phone. Only a year ago, order­ing pizza was a dif­fi­cult thing to do, and Trolley can attest to this after get­ting him to call for me sev­eral times. The only expla­na­tion I could come up with for this behav­iour is that there are peo­ple on the other end, but I still can’t really make sense of this aside from poor self-confidence. All I knew was that my tele­phone shy­ness was a prob­lem. I got over it by forc­ing myself to make phone calls at work. After all, one does not stop a project at a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion when one’s boss wants some­thing done. I still have my off-days, of course, when I avoid mak­ing calls alto­gether, but those are few and far between.

Not only has my job sparked a change in me, it’s paved a way for other growth as well. Even finan­cially speak­ing, I now have the free­dom to pur­sue my other goals and hobbies.

Every day I work, I’m thankful.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
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