Starting Over Again

In most parts of the world, they experience four seasons. When flowers and trees wither and animals hibernate in winter, they come and bloom back in spring. Life resets in springtime, and the cycle continues.

This is somehow relevant to my latest pin on this blog and to my current situation where I regretted being idle for months without doing something to fix it. I felt like things went for the worst since I ‘stopped’.

My third sister is currently looking for a new job after her contract ended, while my youngest sister was tested positive for COVID-19 and was taken to an isolation facility to recover. Literally, I’m the only one working at this moment — well, you can count me out as I’m currently on a home quarantine with my aunt after my sister was tested positive. My line of work doesn’t support work-from-home setup due to security issues, so basically, no work, no pay, and I don’t have any other means of income aside from my current job.

Realizing these, it made me decide to start over by revisiting all the things I have already learned from trainings, and rather than waiting for our boss’ approval to let me take a masterclass for incoming QAs (which, for me, is already impossible to happen now that I’ve ruined my perfect attendance as this is a requirement to be part of the class), I thought I have to take action. Again.

Needless to say, I’m getting impatient and scared.

Someone, however, said that reaching a goal is not a competition. It never is. The reason why most people, including me, take it as a competition is because of lack of time, especially at this time. Time in the sense of losing their own energy and interest in other things that occupy what is supposed to be their own time to grow and relax. I then understood that to learn new things and skills half-heartedly is as dangerous as entering a rat race, where fun is gradually taken away from you while earning just for you and your family to survive. It is like our world right now, especially at this time, fights hard every second to survive and totally forgetting that we have to live.

In all honesty, I’ve been swallowed by the system which promotes rat race — ever since my first job. The fun that I had during my first year has been replaced by monotone habits, that I have to wake up every morning, eat breakfast, go to work, go back home, eat dinner and sleep at night because I have to earn. This is a mindset that I want to remove completely from my life, that’s why I have to start over. It may sound like there is desperation, but for me, this made my power of WHY grow stronger than before.

This is, for me, a wake up call.

To reach one’s goal is not a competition. It’s up for the person how and when to start over, and how big their power of WHY is. How ambitious they are and how determined they are to get that goal in a short time. There is no such thing as a shortcut to success, everything is paid with hard work and the outcome will depend on how much effort one has put into it. For me being idle for a long time and instead letting myself swallowed by an unhealthy system just because ‘I’m earning anyway’ is the most regrettable thing I’ve done. Starting over isn’t that bad, because we’ll never know that taking a second chance — or third, or fourth, may be better than the last one.