Good job!

My work life and study life has been bordering on stressful in the last few days. Usually stress doesn't get to me, so if I'm feeling this way, I guess I am really stressed. The new responsibilities at work, my term papers and presentations at university, plus my dissertation (which my supervisor remarked was written in too 'interesting' a style to be an academic paper, so I am now actually working on making it 'less interesting'), my exams which are a few weeks away, are really bogging me down.

Last week, I had a term paper meeting after class. The class ended at 9:30 pm. The meeting ended at 10:30 pm. By the time I got from NTU to Paya Lebar station from where I was to take a bus home, it was almost midnight. The realisation that it was almost the next day, and that I was closer to work than to my home, almost made me cry. I felt like I'd have crashed at the train station if I had a sleeping bag or a tent with me.

As I waited for the bus that would take me home, I felt really miserable.

Bus stop. Misery.

Suddenly, I had a feeling of deja vu.

And I thought to myself - what am I complaining about? This was any day better than that.

So what was that? That was the last time I'd been so miserable.

I had quit my first crappy job and was on a job-hunt that seemed endless and futile. When I'd got the first job, I'd been so proud - I was one of the first people in my batch to bag a job. I was gonna graduate in July, and I already had a job in April. A high paying one at that. I patted myself on my back.

But then, the things we celebrate the most come back and head-butt us. So did this job. (You can read details here if you want). So I quit. Because self-respect certainly seemed bigger than income to me.

After applying for various kinds of jobs, I started to get really frustrated. I was down to 100 bucks. It was the first time I felt so jealous of Singaporeans. If I'd been in India, I could have just chilled at home for a while without any worries about rent and bills. My ego wouldn't let me borrow from Dad so I did not tell him about my situation. I don't think people who congratulated my Dad with a "Arre wah your daughter lives in Singapore!" had any idea of the irony in their statement.

To make ends meet, I decided to waitress at Pizza Hut while my job hunt was on. After getting kicked out of Pizza Hut for being over-qualified (the guy who interviewed me kept laughing while he was looking at my resume), I realised I really was in the lowest of the low.

And then that happened.

I was on my way back from an interview with an insurance company. They had offered me a job on condition that I study for an exam, pay a few hundred bucks for it, and if I flunked it, they would retract their job offer. As I walked out, I asked myself what the hell I was doing applying to an insurance company? I did not even want to be an insurance agent anyway!

As I crossed the road, I thought to myself - either I could take up this offer and study like mad and bag a job I did not really care about, or I could turn them down and continue the futile job hunt. I did not know which was worse.

And then suddenly out of nowhere, it started raining like crazy. It was a long crossing and I had forgotten my umbrella. I tried to run, but my high heels slowed me down. I found a bus shelter and dashed for it. I was soaking wet. It was raining really heavily by then, and I decided to wait at the bus stop. That stop did not have buses that would take me home, so I had no choice but to stay and wait there. I was too broke to take a cab. After a while, I got really hungry. I dug into my bag and found a little packet of bite-sized choc chip cookies. So I sat at the bus stop - a hungry unemployed 'foreign talent' in a country of no family, few friends and many strangers, drenched to the bones, nibbling at the cookies and wondering where the rent money for the next month was gonna come from.

I don't think I'd ever felt more miserable in my life. Ever. I wanted to get out there in the rain and cry till my tears became one with the rain. And I will always always remember myself sitting at that bus shelter and the way the rain and the situation seemed to be draining the life out of my body and mind.

I sat there thinking - this can't get worse.

(The next day, I was to be involved in a kitchen explosion that would peel half the skin off my face, making me unpresentable for at least three job interviews I got calls for. But let's not get into any more details, lest I faint of 'traumatising-memoritis'.)

And then a few weeks later, things started looking up. After much reluctance, a publisher decided to 'give me a chance to prove myself' with a two-week contract and a salary of $60 a day (yes, that actually was my salary!) way less than half of what I was getting at my first job.

Today, I'm good. I have a job I'm in love with, a decent salary, a decent (albeit rented) home, a couple of credit cards, money to spend on clothes and shoes, and fewer things to worry about.

And that night, standing there at Paya Lebar station close to midnight, alone and hungry and miserable, I realised something. That our jobs mean more to us than we think they do. If our jobs could talk, they would give us a piece of their minds. They would remind us that they do not ask for a lifelong commitment from us, and yet they bring us a sense of achievement and challenge. All they ask of us is sincerity at whatever we do.

And of course, they pay the rent.

And perhaps at times, we forget to give them the respect they deserve.

We don't take them up when we should.

We don't quit them when we should.

So today's special at the bar is a toast to jobs everywhere. To jobs of every kind. To jobs that mean so much to us.

To jobs that make us who we are.

*clink*