Irony

The things you hate having done to you is somehow what you end up doing to others. The person you hate the most is somehow a reflection of yourself. Just when you let go, it all comes back to you.

I used to think that life is full of irony…but then I realized that as humans, we tend to see patterns and connections everywhere. Incongruous events are seen as ironic, and congruous ones are seen as fated. The ones that are neither completely congruous nor incongruous are either forgotten or unnoticed.

Is life actually filled of irony, or are humans just pathetic to extrapolate the importance and meanings of our lives?

Goodbye auditing

I'm the oldest child in my family and I've always felt pressure to graduate fast, to be successful in my career rapidly...so that my parents wouldn't have to work so hard anymore. The problem is...I wasn't smart at school. All my life, I've felt like I needed to work much harder than other people just to reach the same level. I've felt like I needed to ask questions a certain way, to get answers...use some kind of tactics to reach my goals...and because of that, I've never really had a stable career.

I chose auditing because I wanted to work in various industries, to know about them inside out, and to learn and much as I could in the shortest amount of time possible. When I first started working in public practice, I used to hate interacting with clients, especially confronting them, which can happen quite often. I wasn't very confident because I didn't know what I was doing half of the time...which caused me to ask irrelevant questions sometimes, to look quite confused maybe. It required me to step out of my comfort zone on a daily basis.

However, after a few years of practicing, I've become better at it, gained some confidence and I've come to love the social life associated with it. I like meeting clients now, I look forward to working with them, learning about their businesses, and sometimes confronting them too. I'm definitely not an expert at what I do, but I've seen quite a lot by working in various industries and people of different levels in the organisations.

Nonetheless, I can't change the fact that I am an introvert and it drains me so much that I sleep my weekends away sometimes. I've asked myself...is this a life that I want to live? Of course I want to climb higher in the corporate ladder, but at what cost? The day I get there, I will have realized that I've wasted years slaving my life away. I guess I'm looking for some middle ground, and a better balance? I would like to use the knowledge I've gained to do something more useful, and to invest my energy somewhere that would match my personality a little bit better.

...and I can't deny the fact that I'm stressed about running into him at work. Every morning, I pray that I will not get into the same elevator as him. When I go to the washroom, I hope that he will not be in the hallway. We haven't seen into each other in months...but even knowing that there are chances that I run into him makes it difficult. Of course, it doesn't mean I regret what I've done...because I know that if I could go back in time, I wouldn't have done anything differently.

All this to say that...I've quit auditing!