Emerging from the coronavirus cocoon

While the whole world begins to hyperventilate about the coronavirus, Hong Kong is cautiously limping back to normalcy. Friends and family who had sort of rolled their eyes at the measures Hong Kong had taken are now actively discussing the coronavirus as if this problem had not been ongoing three months ago.

I finally got a diagnosis on the persistent sore throat I’ve been experiencing. Tonsil stones. Not the coronavirus and nothing to do done, except surgery the pain is too bad. I have been drinking some ginger-haldi-pepper-honey concoction my mother recommended that has done the wonders that the three courses of antibiotics (!) I was cavalierly (and pointlessly) prescribed failed to.  It’s not contagious and so I was clear to go back to work.

To see the ENT, I had to go to Central, requiring me to walk through the (empty) posh Landmark mall, reinvigorating my senses with the bouquet of designer perfume. The stylish mask clad people walking the streets restored my faith in humanity, even as I wondered when I might sit down in a cafe next.

Despite new Covid-19 cases being reported in Hong Kong, my office decided it’s time for everyone to come back to work. After some wrangling, I managed to negotiate two days a week work from home so I can help the kids with their work.

Last Saturday, we noticed the new restaurants lining the waterfront and V consented to taking the kids for a meal, provided we could eat outdoors. We headed there pretty early, but turns out, we had missed some memo and the place was packed. We ended up seated indoors, though in an empty restaurant with hopefully fewer germs.

At work, the sheer size and brightness of my screen blinded me for about an hour until I managed to adjust it to “comfort view” and fell in love with my two screens once again. I also enjoyed not being interrupted every now and then by the kids. I did not enjoy having to listen to the stream-of-consciousness rants of the guy two desks away.

One of my big dilemmas was whether I would go out to lunch. The office was recommending that we didn’t. In the end, the temptation proved too much and I went out with my usual lunch buddy, who had clearly been waiting for this, although we chose a larger restaurant so we didn’t have to touch elbows with our fellow diners while we ate, as is the usual practice in our fair city.

I went one further on Friday and met up with two friends at one of their homes on Friday. V was not pleased – the whole coronavirus has played perfectly into his antisocial tendencies. I knew I was taking a risk, but I’ve also sort of had it with the isolation.

It was nice to catch up with people other than my immediate family. Not sure when it’s going to happen again, but a girl does need her girls.

I took a tram to my friend’s place, which always brings out my love for Hong Kong. There is nothing like the view of the city from a tram when the weather is cool. It’s been too long.

 

 

Whirlwind Christmas

We weren’t supposed to be in India for Christmas. For one, my boss grumbled about giving me leave during the Christmas week again this year (which frankly was really petty because the Chinese people seem to get leave during CNY every year. This is the problem with Christmas becoming a universal holiday).

But also, we needed the kids to do school interviews in Bangalore and that could not happen during Christmas week because everything shuts down. So, the plan was to go to India in October.

Then it turned out that we would need to be in Bangalore during Christmas week for my V’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebrations. I wasn’t sure how I was going to swing that, but I did a solo trip to Mumbai in October.

Finally, I told my boss, I’d work from India that week. I managed to take the same flight as V and the kids who were going for a longer stint. We flew in the day on Singapore Airlines, which was very nice, avoiding the midnight arrival in Bangalore.

Christmas in India is always hectic but worth it. Every alternate night was some sort of party. My sis-in-law who had broken her leg still organised a carol singing route. We went to V’s friend’s new house. There was a big Christmas lunch, by which time Mimi was exhausted and had multiple meltdowns, but we also had a fun big game of housie. My other sister-in-law had a dinner and had us stay over.

I had been rather skeptical about the big event – my in-laws’ golden wedding – because they don’t have the best marriage. It seemed like the epitome of hypocrisy for everyone to be doing this hoopla over an essentially toxic relationship. But my mother-in-law once said that it takes something to last this long. I dunno, I’m a quality over quantity kind of person.

But in the end, it was fun. There was a mass, at which I did a reading and then regretted it because a) I had to cover up by sari with this massive poncho b) the regular reader insisted on doing the first reading so I had to scramble with the second c) the second reading ended up being one that told wives to be subject to their husbands and even perhaps surprisingly husbands to love their wives.

There was party after with lots of dancing. Surprisingly, the chosen entertainment was a Bollywood dancer leading the crowd. Apparently, the south no longer hates Hindi music, though we did have a couple of Malayalam songs.

My one wishlist was to get some grooming done, and I managed to get my pedicure, waxing and blow dry done before the big event and receive lots of compliments on my transformation. I have not mastered the art of walking, leaving alone dancing, in a sari though.

Every year, my in-laws urge my parents to come down for Christmas. This year, being a big anniversary, they decided to, so we had everyone under one roof, something I’ve always been apprehensive about, but it was fine.

Amid all this madness, I worked four days, two in one sister-in-law’s house where I made the mistake of trying to work in the living room amid games of Taboo and general chit chat and two in the other’s where I learnt my lesson and set up my workspace on the terrace bar (closest to the router).

I went into this holiday feeling somewhat judgy and resentful but I came out of it feeling generally positive about my husband’s family. My sisters-in-law and their husbands not only went out of the way to accommodate me, but also my parents. They are gregarious and generous people who think it is perfectly normal to stretch themselves to the limit throwing massive parties and welcoming extended family into their homes. While this is not to be taken for granted, I have seen and benefited from it time and again. They are also full of drama and emotion, which I do my best to stay on the sidelines of.

I have been feeling this for a couple of years – and I touch wood while saying this – but V’s parents are pretty peaceful. They are very tolerant about whatever we do in their house, and I am not expected to rush around working. It took me over a decade to get to this place, and this is not to say that I have not been the recipient of MIL snark or that having two children, including the coveted male grandchild, did not help, but I am not anxious around them anymore and have realised that much of my earlier angst was the result of insecurity – on both sides.

Also, V and I managed to be on good, even great terms, over Christmas for the first time in a couple of years. I hate to say it but Bangalore suits V. He is among people he wants to be around and he is involved in stuff that doesn’t include me. We achieve the right balance of separate-and-together when we are there.

I managed not to fall sick this time, despite the long hours and party food, for which I am super grateful.

I was happy to fly back to Hong Kong a few days before V and the kids and get some recovery time in though. I spent New Year’s Eve catching up on sleep, taking a long walk and watching the Downton Abbey movie before crawling into bed at 10 pm. I went to office on New Year’s Day, even though there was a massive protest planned, only to find everyone else had decided to work from home. I was super excited to log into my two big screens after a week of swotting over a tiny laptop though. I treat myself to a greasy Shake Shack lunch, came home early and binged on the second season of Big Little Lies.

V and the kids came home a day later than they were supposed to, having missed their connecting flight and been put up in a hotel in Singapore. This was the high point of the trip for the kids, who totally loved the hotel room and three hotel meals, so we can’t complain. I spent the extra day writing a column, having lunch with friends and watching Little Women in the cinema, the kind of day I have not had in a long time.

The end of 2019 was all I could have asked for. 2020 promises to be interesting.

 

 

 

Flying the coop

On Tuesday, I took a mental health day and went to office.

I felt guilty, of course, for abandoning my children at home to two helpers and a husband, but after eight days of being a stay at home mom – albeit one with the full load of office work – I was ready to bolt.

I feel like those famous Japanese men who are bereft when they have to retire. I need to go to the office as silly as it sounds. I need to space out on the MTR. I need my two screens and desk and office coffee mug. I need to make polite chatter with my colleagues and go out to lunch. I need to need to dress up.

Two things I learnt this week:

1. Apropos the above, I’m not an extended work from home person

2. Homeschooling is better than school:

After disappointing results of an entrance tests in Bangalore and a not-so-great parent-teacher meeting, we realised we have to take matters into our own hands. I’ve been functioning under the illusion that having carefully selected a school, paying quite a steep price, I would leave the teachers to do what they presumably know best. So if this means, no homework, so be it. Heck, no homework is what I think education should be, in an ideal world.

The problem, I discovered, is that no homework and no textbooks coming home on  weekends means that you have no idea what your kid is up to at school, what they are learning and how they are doing, until two months into the term when you meet their teacher and he says, “er, not so great.”

And you realise you need to do something, and again the teachers are not much help. For example, I have known for a while that Mimi is atrocious at spelling but all of last year her teacher told me not to worry. Now, her teacher says, worry, but not how I can help her.

Thankfully, the internet exists, though it turns out there are a lot more resources for teaching pre-schoolers spelling than kids in grade three. So I’m having to invent my own method and I’m actually having some success.

It feels a bit like groundhog month because I went through this in their final year of kindergarten when I realised the much vaunted Jolly Phonics was quite ineffective in teaching my kids to read (and now I recall that epiphany was prompted by the need to do primary school entrance interviews, so I guess I never learn). Finally, the internet, common sense and some kind people here who suggested Starfall helped me get them on the right track, and now I’m wondering again, what the point of expensive schooling is when I end up doing the groundwork?

But so it is. This episode has taught me that I need to tiger parent it up a bit and teach my kids at home. My ideal would be reinforcing what they’re doing at school, but that’s only possible if the teachers cooperate and send their books home on weekends (Mimi’s teacher has agreed to, I’m still waiting for a response from Nene’s).

In the meantime, we took the opportunity of the kids being home a whole week to print out worksheets and basically drill them. Again I knew this, but they forget everything over the holidays, so there was a lot of refreshing of basics to do.

Thankfully, there’s a fair bit of free material available online, but it needs to be sifted through and because I’m not a professional teacher, I’m not sure what to teach when.

Unfortunately, V and I have sort of fallen into the gendered daddy is the math person, mommy is the English person and even more unfortunately both my kids prefer maths but it is what it is.

Onwards and upwards.

But by day eight of this I was exhausted (and the kids insisted they don’t do this much work at school, even though they were essentially doing just three hours or so put together, while they spend six hours at school) and after losing it on Mimi for refusing to take a bath, I decided I needed to get out and “adult” again.

So I fled, took the MTR, schlepped to my own desk and breathed a sigh of relief.

The next day, there was transport chaos again, and I found myself working from home, but sometimes all you need for your mental health is a day at the office.

Unexpected thing I find myself doing at work #6448

As part of a fact-checking exercise I find myself going through the list of cancer drugs that patients in public hospitals technically have to find their own funds to pay for but which are also covered under a funding scheme. I need to cross check two lists and root out repeat drugs to figure out the exact number of drugs covered.

I find myself repeating the names of these exotic chemicals:

ANAGRELIDE (AGRYLIN / THROMBOREDUCTIN)

2. ANASTROZOLE

3. ATEZOLIZUMAB (TECENTRIQ)

4. BICALUTAMIDE

5. BLEOMYCIN HCl

6. BUSERELIN ACETATE

7. BUSULPHAN….

While tearing up because I know what they do. I have a close friend whose had two cancer bouts and a double mastectomy all before the age of 40.

I grew up reading these medical novels, one of which was about a child with leukemia and so I was on familiar terms with the ravages of chemotherapy in my early teens. The drugs have got better, if you can afford the better ones.

As I grew older and realised that I cannot properly handled antibiotics, I have become convinced that I would be a very bad candidate for chemo. I’ve always thought that I would rather die than go through it. Now that I have kids though, I suppose I’m obliged to try.

Was talking to nice work colleague and she was saying how her cousin has pancreatic cancer and I was talking about how chemo sucks and she was like, “yeah but you don’t have to do it” and then she was like “oh you have kids I guess you do”. And this is why we are friends.

2018 – a retrospective

Tags

retrospective, year end

Or the highlights that stick in the mind.

1. I started the year with the new job, that was the biggest – and best – source of change in my life. Actually, the start was rather ignominious. On my second day, I ate something that had me puking the entire night. I dragged myself to work the next day because it would be too embarrassing to call a sickie on day 3. In fact, I haven’t taken a single day of sick leave this entire year – which is some sort of record. The fact is that our deadlines are daily and our team is just about holding head above water so one person off can throw things out of whack. I do thing I should take more sick leave next year, well at least a couple, but I have been fortunate that after that one crazy episode I have not been terribly ill.

I love the job and I’m going well at it. My office is lovely, the people are fine. My honeymoon period is over – I managed to piss off my boss pushing him to approve my leave in December (when I realised like many senior journalists, his management style needs work. Nice guy who struggles with people management) and I have my very own frenemy, sadly the only other Indian in my team whose very presence triggers a stress reaction.

But overall, I’m happy where I am. This has been a good thing and after all my career angst last year, I’m grateful.

2. The PhD is well and truly over. I passed my exam – and did well enough to be urged by one of the examiners to apply for a job at her institution, which I turned down! I swotted over revisions, some warranted and some not (insert Hegel, boo!). They were approved without issue. I even attended a graduation ceremony in a cap and gown for the first time in my life and took a (very beautiful if I may say so myself) photo in a studio.

3. My marriage has calmed down. I have concluded that much of his behaviour is his own problem and that took a load off my back. It annoys me, but I don’t worry as much about what I could be doing. I could have sex with him more and solve a lot of this but I don’t feel terribly guilty anymore about not wanting to. We are far from perfect but at least we get along with less eruptions.

4. My kids continue to be awesome and my biggest joy. This is the year I lost my son a little (see here) and gained my daughter more (post on that coming up).

5. I read a lot. I’m going to start chronicling my reading in mini bites because well, some people might appreciate the recommendations and also to keep track of the sheer breath of my reading. I’ve ventured into areas I never thought I would – physics, for example. I’ve read feminist work I always wanted to but didn’t find time for during my PhD. And of course lots of fiction, literary and not. My rule is one fiction, one serious non fiction or academic work.

6. Time is what I ran out off this year. My job is full on in the week, and I feel the need to maximise time with kids on the weekends. I’m at risk of turning into V as I want to meet friends less. I even run away from colleagues wanting to have lunch together. I realise (and V had this ‘I told you so’ expression when I told him) that I get more interaction than I’m used to in office (after three years of PhD solitude) and too much people time leaves me frazzled. My idea of a holiday is to be alone.

It is happening

For the longest time, I refused to talk about the impending PhD because I didn’t want to jinx it. I was traumatized with my tryst with bureaucracy and I refused to believe that there would be no spanner in the wheels and I would actually be allowed to pursue my studies without being asked to furnish another document.

This fear of bureaucracy is a particularly Indian one. I wonder if people from countries where rules and regulations and paper pushing are not weapons used to terrorise the masses (and these countries do exist, Hong Kong being one of them) have this ball of dread in the bottom of their stomachs when they are asked to produce a document. It has taken me years in Hong Kong to unlearn this fear, to go to the counter of a government organization and not steel myself for the apathy and the inevitable runaround. And just one setback was all it took for me to be back down the panic-stricken path again.

But here I am, just shy of a month away from full-time studies. I have begun to look into courses I might do – and god, it’s so exciting. Even the prospect of a run-of-the-mill Gender Studies course excites me. I met my supervisor and she seems nice – despite one slightly snarky comment – if strangely clueless about admin stuff. She quickly asked me to scratch the very basic Gender Studies course from my list, but was supportive of others. On the positive side, she remembered my topic which surprised me. I also received an email about tutoring duties and the teacher I’ll be helping for the semester is young and seems friendly.

I am confused and a bit stressed out about courses, because I’m not yet a student but I need to register for some classes or I might not get them. Unfortunately, because I’m not a student, I don’t have all the information on how to do that and I had to resort to asking my supervisor the stupid questions. Fortunately, because I’m a staff member of the same university I have the advantage of accessing the course list with my staff ID and can actually meet my supervisor before I start. Because I’m bad with numbers, I thought I’d need to take more courses than I actually have to. Now I’m tempted to just coast for the first semester.

Apart from rereading my proposal before meeting my supervisor, I refuse to read any stuff related to my topic. I just finished Diana Vreeland’s memoir and will move onto a biography of her. I’m going to squeeze in as much frivolous reading that is unconnected to my PhD in the next two weeks. Then, I’ll look at my notes again. I have good intentions of summarizing everything I’ve read so far into a paper of sorts (I know, I know, go ahead and laugh).

In the interim, I’ve received quite a few requests for freelance work, which is flattering. I might not end up as broke as I thought. But I might end up busier than ever, which is terrifying.

I have started carting home personal stuff since I gallantly offered to give up my desk to the new girl who will be joining during our overlap period. Also because I know from experience that unless you have a car or a friend with a car willing to be your caddy, leaving it till the last day is not a good strategy.

My plants almost died during the last long weekend break and I put them out in the terrace garden hoping they’d revive with natural sunlight and rain but they’re pretty much goners methinks. I’m seeing them as a symbol that my time here is done. I need a symbol because a part of me is really sad (and scared) to be leaving this job which has all things considered been so nice to me for more than five years. And two months before leaving I got a raise due to civil service adjustment so the salary I’m not going to be getting anymore is even higher than I earlier imagined and that makes me feel like an utter fool.

But deep breaths. I’m at the finishing line or the starting line. Limbo really. And it’s not a bad place to be.

Going back to work

Note: At the bottom of this post, I’ll be linking to other mums who’ve written on this topic. So if this post pops up incessantly in your Reader, that’s why.

Indimommy surveyed readers on going back to work after having a baby and did a nice article summing up the responses. Since I responded to their initial questions, I got emailed in a few more and while answering those I realised I had a fair bit to say on the subject. So I decided to do a post here.

Why did I decide to go back to work?

Before my baby was born, I don’t think it really occurred to me that not going to work was something that I might do. Because although I wasn’t passionate about my job, I liked working and I liked drawing a paycheck and I was fairly sure I wouldn’t like being around a baby 24/7 and all the allied chores that get thrown your way when you’re ‘not working’.

At some point, V made his preference clear which was that I continue to work. He has never cherished being the only breadwinner, and all the women he knows well worked outside the home after giving birth. I did once sharply tell him that had I wanted to stay home, he should support that (since he could financially, though it would mean saving less) but since I myself didn’t really want to stay home, I didn’t pursue that.

In Hong Kong, most middle-class women go back to work. There is a large number of highly educated women and if the choice was between their jobs or having a baby, they’d choose the former. Hell, many couples forgo having kids anyway because they believe a baby is a cost they cannot afford, even if they can drum up the interest. To push along the declining birth rate and keep women in the workforce, the Government instituted the foreign domestic helper policy, allowing Hongkongers to employ women from other countries at a set minimum wage. This did enable large numbers of middle-class women to go to work, though the birth rate is still on the low side. Basically, it’s the norm for women in Hong Kong to go back to work after having a baby, because few can afford not to.

This makes it easier to decide to go back to work. In the office, I had three other women on my floor who had just given birth and we traded stories. All of us felt we were better off back at work.

Doubts

If I had any twinges of doubt, they were when interviewing a helper. This was when I was in my second trimester so the baby was a reality and the 10 weeks maternity leave seemed to be incredibly paltry once I met the strangers I was supposed to be leaving my infant with. I just could not figure out how to pick one for the task. If I had to pick a helper for just the husband and me, easy peasy. But a not-quite-three-month-old baby is a bit different.

Thankfully, our part-time helper who we loved and trusted offered to come on board if we could pay her for the gap period when she was between employers waiting for her visa. We decided the extra expense was worth it, and in the end, immigration came through with the visa quicker than expected so we didn’t pay as much as we had thought. Several people who I’ve told we paid this amount are surprised, but for us it was money well spent.

Then Benji had reflux and I began to worry about going to work again. When I voiced these doubts to my mother, she said she would look after him but I must go back to work. When my sister had doubts after her baby, my mom told her the same. My mother is a stay-at-home mom who has completely changed her views on being one. She believes in the security of a paycheck now.

When I went back to work, it turned out to be the best decision I ever made. Immediately, the haze of anxiety that had enveloped me after Benji’s birth dissipated as I was forced to think about other things than whether his milk was coming up and burning his throat or how he was napping. My helper seemed perfectly capable of managing him and the household chores (though we told her she could skip the latter if it was getting too much) and she did so without the excessive worry that characterised me as a caregiver.

Did having a good domestic help sway your decision in continuing working after the baby?

Yes and no. It was never that much of a decision to make. I just assumed I’d go back to work. But having a good helper gave me immense peace of mind.

There’s a small chance that the helper wouldn’t have worked out. Most people I know in Hong Kong do find satisfactory help to look after their children. But if I really couldn’t find someone I was comfortable with, then I would have had to stay at home at least initially. Although my husband would have naturally been a better caretaker, I have the smaller paycheck coupled with the fact that I was trying to breastfeed. This is the sad truth for most households and a reason why its mostly the woman that gives up her job (though also, most people just don’t consider dad staying home as an option, even though bottle feeding exists). Honestly, I don’t see how I could have continued that indefinitely because I would have struggled mentally and emotionally.

The availability of help swayed my decision to have another child. I would not have done it without because after the first child I knew what a child would demand of me.

My second helper also showed me what it would be like to have a helper you don’t trust implicitly. While she loves my child, she can’t be trusted to make decisions. I would have had to micromanage a lot more and I can imagine a lot of stress.

Right now, I have two helpers who work well together in looking after our children and our when we’re at work and I feel super blessed.

 Flexible hours

I don’t have flexible hours but I have reasonable and fixed hours. I also have understanding bosses who would understand if I needed to take a bit time off for something family-related. But it’s not the norm, so I’ve only done this once so far.

My husband also makes it a point to leave on time. We’re fortunate that we have jobs that allow this, but I think we’re also the kind of people who seek out these jobs even at the expense of money/career advancement. Thankfully, we do have enough money/reasonable career advancement anyway.

In cases of crisis, both of us are willing to work overtime (hell, I’ve edited stuff for my office a week after my baby was born, typing with one hand and holding my baby and breastfeeding on the other, because they called me in a crisis). I used to have to work the odd Saturday and the husband would back me up, I backed him up when he’s on business travel.

I think the reasonable working hours do help in keeping me from feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. I can switch off from work when at home and just spend time with my kids. Even so, as they grew older, I’ve felt the need to be there for them more, and hence the choice to do a PhD now (it was always on the cards, just a question of timing) which I think will give me more flexibility.

Policies

In Hong Kong, because of the helper situation, workplaces generally assume that parents don’t need to take time off for most kids’ stuff. Helpers serve the function that stay-at-home moms do in other places. Hence people are usually expected to work long hours, which kind of sucks.

Maternity leave in Hong Kong is 10 weeks which is far from ideal because babies are very vulnerable and need a lot of care in the first three to six months and it’s logical that parents would want to be involved at this delicate stage. Not to mention that it’s hard to sustain breastfeeding remotely, especially breastfeeding rooms are pretty much non-existent and one is reduced to pumping in the toilet or what you hope are deserted areas. I have a colleague whose child has severe allergies and she found with her second one that breastfeeding helped, but she couldn’t sustain it when she returned to work and her child is suffering but she has just accepted it. It pisses me off that such an affluent society that claims to want to tackle the birth rate cannot invest in the wellbeing of newborns by giving mums at least four months off.  Paternity leave was instituted only last year and is all of FIVE days and that’s supposed to be some great thing. While I have a stellar helper, not everyone does or feels up to trusting someone else with such a small child. So at the policy level, much needs to be done.

Also read

Anna’s Mom’s take on her experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch yoga

That’s what the class is called because it’s slotted during the time we’re contracted to take our lunch hour. Yes, our contract specifies when we lunch, but luckily our office is a tad flexible on this.

I resisted signing up for this class even though it has a large following from our office because 1) it’s in Cantonese 2) it’s embarrassing being Indian in Hong Kong and so inept at yoga. When an Indian walks into a yoga class here, everyone assumes you’re the teacher first and then after the real teacher makes herself known, everyone including the teacher assumes you’re an expert and the reality is then more shocking.

Nevertheless, because so many friends were going and I figured they’d babysit me a bit in terms of language, I decided to go. Yesterday was the first class. I surprised myself at actually being able to sustain some of the poses and not being the utter worst in class. A much younger and slimmer girl was to my eternal gratitude. Nevertheless, it was hard. There were parts that were good and I realised I’m old enough to enjoy yoga because I like the steady breathing and am not that concerned about weight loss, although that would be a bonus.

Halfway through the class, I was thinking that if I could do this twice a week, I’d be good in terms of exercise, but by the end of the class, I thought once a week was enough. It’s quite a workout and you end up feeling quite sleeping after.

For some reason, the people in my office don’t take a shower after. Okay the reason is that they’re adhering as strictly as possible to the office timings. Can you imagine, we did a kickboxing class and didn’t shower after? It’s ridiculous, though admittedly Chinese people don’t sweat as much I think. After V made fun of me, I was determined to try to sneak in a shower. It helps that my boss who was in the class is on leave and summer is a slow time anyway. So I raced off to the showers, and I landed up catching up with everyone else on the way back anyway. I don’t think five minutes of running water over our body is going to kill anyone.

As the day progressed, I was dead tired though. This may have been exacerbated by PMS but I am just not one of those persons whose endorphins make themselves known in a tangible way after a workout. Instead I usually feel in dire need of a nap. And this was when I was regularly running in school as well.

I have always been in awe of people who go to the gym during their lunch hour (my sister was one of those people). In my case, in addition to the sleepiness, it screws up my eating timings, and then once I drag my ass home, I don’t have the luxury of vegetating on the couch or hitting the sack right away. So this is not an ideal routine for me, but for now, I’m sticking with it.

 

Reflections on 100 Happy Days – 2

Yesterday, I posted some general thoughts on the 100 Happy Days challenge. One of the most interesting things about the challenge is looking back on all the posts and seeing patterns in what made me happy during that period. I created a chart online (which in itself could go down as my happy moment of the day had I still been doing the challenge). Here it is (but boo, the resolution is not high enough for you to read the categories and I can’t be arsed to figure out how to fix that. Ive listed them at the end for those who care):

 

Anyhoo. Here’s my analysis:

1. As you can see, the kids really dominated my happy and if you add in the excursions, which always involved them, it’s even more. Kids help me combine two things I enjoy – being with them and getting out into the great outdoors.

2. Food was the next big winner, which kind of goes to show how a good meal can help one’s mood (much as we are told to avoid this dependence).

3. Interestingly, friends and fashion came in for a tied third. If you add in the part about Benji’s school (which I know is a funny category but there was a whole bit of happy related to resolving that one) to the friends category, as some of that is due to conversations with friends and family about the school and being grateful for their support, the friends category could get higher. But it’s interesting to note that fashion (shopping, what I chose to wear and being happy with my appearance, looking at magazines) figures quite high.

4. I’m surprised books didn’t figure more, but I think I made a conscious decision to not have the challenge dominated by Just Read posts, and I managed to suppress this more successfully than the kids posts. On the other hand, I wasn’t watching out for food enough (and maybe I’m influenced by the idea that people like looking at pictures of food), so that sneaked in there more heavily.

5. I’m surprised that exercise figures at all, clearly it’s an upcoming category. Also, the appearance of work leaves me with a bittersweet feeling.

Apart from kids, the champions of this challenge, the absolute high points, which I didn’t include in the chart, were winning the PhD fellowship and the week I spent in Bombay catching up with friends and family.

Categories:

Kids
Technology
Excursions
Exercise
Benji’s school
Art
Marriage
Music/Movies
Friends
Fashion
Books
Food
Work
Health
Misc

Update: Since many people have commented on my doing a pie-chart analysis, I must mention that I got the idea from this blogger. I remember thinking a chart was an interesting way to process the challenge, but didn’t actually think I would one…until I did.

 

 

Peaceful easy feeling

A friend and I were discussing the other day how we’re not particularly ambitious. We don’t want to be at the forefront of our careers. We don’t want to be in positions of great responsibility. We want to be worker bees, respected for executing tasks week and compensated accordingly. In my case, I like being second-in-command, consulted but not necessarily the person-in-charge. Occasionally I like been given a project to head/work on, but generally something that I can work on myself creatively, not something that requires coordination with 500 people.

There was a time when I wanted to be a career achiever, but now I just want to do things that interest me, and these may not be things that compensate well monetarily or be particularly prestigious. Moreover, I want to hang out with my kids and that doesn’t correlate well with long hours.

In terms of a job, I like stability, low stress and fixed working hours. That’s the reason my current job has suited me, despite not being particularly glamorous. I sometimes miss the prestige of my previous jobs but I don’t miss the stress, and while I have finessed the art of making the right corporate noises, I don’t think I’d cherish the extra hassle that comes with a management role. Unfortunately, in the corporate sector, the idea that someone might not want to be a leader is anathema and it’s better to keep this dirty secret to oneself. Treading water in the corporate sector is a fine art that needs to be practiced clandestinely lest one is outed as less than leaning in.

After the conversation with my friend, I realised I’m surrounded by such people. She joked that there must have been something in the water at our school because of how we turned out. But there are plenty of people in our school who are aggressive in their careers (I think, going by Facebook). Just that I’m not particularly close to any of them. Even in college, I could never get close to the Type-A people and the go-getters despite being peripherally associated with them in a number of ways. Normally these people take themselves and everything they do quite seriously while I have a hard time keeping a straight face around busyness and self-importance.

A job like my current one is hard to come by (which makes it kind of idiotic for me to be throwing if away for postgraduate studies but let’s not dwell on that). I’ve had stressful periods in my past jobs – these are always made worse if you have a toxic manager – and I’ve kept at them while I’ve needed to, but I was never able to stick it out long-term. If I job looked like it was going to be high-stress or the kind that cuts into my downtime indefinitely, I would look to make a switch. I think the husband is the same.

However, I look around me and see people working long hours in unhappy environments (it’s possible to work long hours and love it because you’re passionate about what you’re working on), constantly fatigued by the demands of their jobs and I wonder why and how they do it. I know there are only a fortunate few who can afford to change but I think many people with our social and educational background can do it if they allowed themselves to consider stepping out of the career path they committed to. Sometimes this involves taking a pay-cut or a pay break, but the pay-off in terms of peace of mind and time to breathe can be worth the lifestyle cuts. Normally, these people say “it’s not that bad” and “it could be worse” which I understand is a very real concern, but from where I’m standing it looks pretty bad. I also think that many people in our generation are imprisoned by the idea of being successful, of living up to their qualifications and of not being able to face that they may not have what it takes to excel at the chosen path without working themselves into the ground.

Jobs aren’t the only sources of stress. Right now, one of the biggest stressors of recent times in my life, my marriage, seems to be sorting itself out (touch wood). And the difference it makes to my quality of life is amazing.

I realise I’m very fortunate to have a fairly sorted life. I don’t have financial worries. I have great household help so things run smoothly at that end. My kids are fairly peaceful and I have help with them. My loved ones are mostly doing okay.

But when stressful situations arise, I can’t live with them for very long. This is probably a failing, but I seek to do something about it. Apparently, one has to work on oneself to manage the stress better, but I’ve found that that can only be a coping mechanism and changing or removing oneself from the stressful situation if possible has better results. You lose some but constantly tense shoulders and a churning stomach are just not worth it, no matter how much deep breathing you do in the meantime.

Related reading:

1) This post

2) This article by Zosia Mamet (though I disagree that feminism is to blame for pushing the money-and-power path).