Hi LS,
(An online diary entry a.k.a. blog post, but addressed to you;-) You need not reply. Nothing more than the same old musing, pain, and melancholy…
After a long week, today (Sunday) i spent a few minutes browsing a magazine “Parenting”. Beautiful baby/family photos of summer playtime. Looking at them, I felt … deprived of such simple joys. First reason — we don’t have a garden like yours in the surburb. (Actually we used to have a small backyard but I always dismiss that as a little dirty. Neither of us had the energy and time to clean it up, but i’m sure some people see it as achievable and a meaningful, wholesome pastime.)
The 2nd and deeper reason for the “deprived” feeling is the workload, which leaves me no time for such enjoyments. My managers keep mentioning work-life balance, family, danger of burnout…. My boss recently said he’s worried about me “having no more motivation”.
(Thank God I have a short commute — 40 minutes door-to-door, compared to 50-90 minutes for colleagues.)
If I change team or change company, maybe I can find the time (1 hour/day?) to spend with my baby boy. Why is my current job so family-unfriendly? My impulsive answer at this moment is — boss. An ambitious, hard-driving, micro-manager.
Recently, some relatively new comer to a nearby team (different boss) shared with me “For a given requirement, I have learnt to do exactly what my boss asks me to do, no more no less.” He said it because I often do quite a bit more than asked.
Now, you probably realize that in just about every phone call we would touch upon the workload issue, esp. our long chat about “breaking point”. For the past 12 months in every chat with any friend, I invariablly mention workload as the biggest load on my shoulder (the other being the crying baby). Some weeks I end up working till 11pm. Workload is also the biggest reason I consider Singapore my family’s long term base. This is rather paradoxical, because US != high workload.
Another friend who left this company said this company is “not good for our health, so 2 years are enough in this place.”
Workload seems to be the latest incarnation of the “American dream” or a little “American nightmare” for me since I came here in 2007. The little nightmare i’m talking about is stress. I recall a day during the beautiful Boston summer of 2007, probably May or June. Somehow i fell so low that I called my wife from office to suggest “as soon as you become pregnant, can I send you back to Singapore to have the baby?” I was overwhelmed by the challenges of living in US. We have since overcome those challenges. When I first got to know the expectations in this company, I told several colleagues “If I make 12 months, it would be a huge achievement.” Why do i need constant reminder that I actually made it?