On April 14, 2005, my life changed forever. It was the day that I held in my hand a 3-page letter that told me, in no uncertain terms, that one of my dreams had come true. The letter said, “It is with great pleasure that I formalize our offer for employment with P&G Asia as a Process Owner in our A&FRS, GBS, effective May 15, 2005.”
The next three years were like none of the years I witnessed before. I met a lot of wonderful friends, the first batch of whom I met on my very first day in the company.
I underwent both inner and outward transformation. I not only learned how to navigate SAP and Excel and Moviemaker and Zapgrab, but I also learned how to use makeup and wear non-standard outfits and change my hairstyle almost everyday.
More than that, I discovered that I had talent for dancing and singing and hosting, and did all of those infront of huge live audiences notwithstanding the rapid beating of my heart.
I changed from the quiet new hire who did not speak to her teammates unless necessary to the gregarious “receptionist” once tagged by a new hire as one of “the most famous” persons in AP. Indeed, P&G proved true to its motto, “touching lives, improving life” when it came to my own.
So you can imagine what a difficult decision it was for me to leave this company, this place where I consider some of the best friends I had ever met in my life to be.
It was such a hard decision that I put off making it for a couple of years. So hard, that when I became absolutely sure that I wanted out, I cried for a couple of hours as I thought about everything that I had to leave behind. In accounting, they call it opportunity cost. The cost of finding myself was my friends.
It’s like wanting a pair of fashion boots. They look really pretty and expensive, so you dream of owning a pair.
Then one day, you finally have them, and you put them on and you proudly strut down the street and everyone casts admiring glances your way and compliments you on your beautiful boots. And you smile and pose for pictures and look at yourself in the mirror and think they’re really pretty and everything you imagined it to be except for one thing – those boots are freakin’ killing your feet!
So what do you do? Do you keep on wearing those boots because it was your dream and everyone loves them and think you’d be crazy to throw them away – yet suffer every excruciating step you take in them?
Or will you do what I did – throw away the damn boots and try on another pair of shoes that don’t look as good, but may just be the right fit that won’t make you wince each time you take a step?
During one of my interviews, a manager told me something that strikes me to this day: “You spend 8-12 hours of each day working, so that would be spending more than half of your waking life at work. If you don’t like your work, then you’d spend more than half of your life being unhappy. That’s why it’s important to love your work.”
And so here I am, on a quest to find the perfect shoes, the job that I will love. I hope I find it real soon because I can’t afford to whittle away more of my dwindling years on things that make me unhappy.
Life is too short to go walking through a city and not fully enjoy its beauty because your feet hurt.
Bye bye, boots. I sure will miss you.