I used to think that transferring jobs is the solution to a toxic work life. So i tried my luck, shifted careers and landed a new job. Surprisingly, my new job is as toxic as the old one. So could the problem be me?

Well, according to my mother, yes i am the problem and not the job. She said that i can jump from 1 job to another but i will always have the same issues anywhere i go because there is no such thing as a dream job.

Work is work and it naturally comes with pressure, she says. It is up to you to adjust, and apparently in my case, downgrade a bit. According to her, i should slow down and realize that i am young and no matter how hard i work i will only be as much worth as my salary.

Wise, reality-biting words, huh? But it makes a lot of sense. I guess my dream job will be the one of my making. So instead of hitting the job market yet again, armed with my resume, i should rather be looking for something worth going to work for in the current one that i’ve got.

Cellphones are now a basic necessity. You bring it with you anytime, anywhere. Though it is generally a good thing that communication providers have been reliable most of the time, its just a bitch that you no longer have an excuse not to take a call, not to reply to a text message or an email.

Take the office and clients for instance. There is a reason why you report to the office and why you go home at night. When you’re in the office and you’re not reachable then you’re not a very good employee. But when you’re at home, you should have every right to peace and quiet right?!?

But no. Cellphones only made way for 5am calls about system configurations and ambush work related questions. It is also a way for clients to reach you at godforsaken hours of the night. It just makes you very accessible even if you’re in the middle of a supposedly serene and peaceful island in the heart of the Visayas. Your world basically just becomes your office where you’ve got a 24 hr work shift.

You can always not take the call, right? Yes. But then having a conscience somehow bars you from ignoring the rings and involuntarily makes you pickup the phone and say “hello”. Crap. Either you loose the conscience or you loose the phone.

As I said, technology works for you or against you – depends on whom you give you cellphone numbers to.

Some call this the quarter life crisis, and though it’s just about the right time for me for that stint, I would rather use a more plainfolk’s term for my situation now: LOST. All my life, I’ve always known what the next step would be for greatness. Thanks to a very systematic educational system preschool precedes gradeschool, then comes highschool, finally college (MBAs are optional, up to you to take it if you miss your life as a student after being burntout by work).

But then comes post-grad, all opportunities are open to you, tons of possible choices you can pick from but there are still so many questions you’ve got to answer before you get to pick which one you should go for. Errr..I think my generation is not quite used to that. So what happens then? You’ve got a generation of lost individuals echoing each other out when they have officially declared the quarter-life crisis status.

So what exactly is the crisis all about? A lot of things. But in my case, it’ s primarily career. At 25, how would you know what you’d want to be doing when you’re 45? You don’t even know what would interest you in the next hour or so! We have lived a life where multi-tasking is a virtue. The downside of it is that you get used to not putting your focus on a single matter – it is a need that you do several things at the same time in order to stimulate your interest. This habit does not exactly fit into the ideal straight-path, one-shot way to the top of the corporate ladder.

I had a phase when I wanted to become a pre-school teacher and/or a flight stewardess prior to establishing a corporate career. Why, you ask? I’ve no valid justification except for the fact that I want to. But then, it didn’t happen. I joined the corporate world early on before I can even apply to become any of the 2 that I’ve mentioned above. Now, after 2 years I’m not really sure if it was the right move or not.

Ask my parents, they’ll tell you that it is. It seems that I’m quite good with my current job, it’s got a decent pay and its quite promising in terms of career growth. So what’s wrong? It’s not something that I can quite put my finger on, but I just don’t feel happy doing it anymore. It’s (1) routinary; (2) stressful and (3) takes the fun out of working – trust me, I’ve lived in a world where work is supposed to be fun, meaning it just shows that you’re passionate about what you do and you’re willing to give your best at each and every shot.

It’s just not there anymore. So I’m out hunting. Job hunting, that is. For what? I’ve no idea. I’d just do what I’m good at doing – trying out everything, everytime, all at the same time. Who knows, I might end up encountering just about that thing that would help me get back on track – whatever that track may be.

But I don’t think so.

Time merely makes you numb – for a while. Time will merely offer you various things that would keep you preoccupied for a bit. But at the end of the day, the bruise remains. Give it a little poke and the depression will strike all over again.

So what of replacements to lost loves? I think that would only work if you’ve emptied out the space first. It would only work if you no longer yearn to get back what you’ve lost along the way. You’d only have space for someone new if you’ve already accepted the fact that you have got to replace the old one.  There in lies the problem. Heartaches prevail because you have afterall chosen to hold on and linger to a past you should have let go of some time back.

Letting go on its own is even a harder concept to grasp. How do you let go of the past and hold on to the sweet memories you’ve gained. Memories after all becomes all the more precious as time passes by. What is letting go in the first place? Acceptance and facing reality?

Maybe. It’s accepting that for a time you’ve been at you’re happiest with someone you’ve absolutely cherished – and that as times change, so does people’s will – and it just so happens that some people’s choice involves not being with you. Depressing as it all may seem, it’s also accepting that life goes on, and that you should continue to search for what will make you happy – sad as it is that you’ve got to know that the state you’re in at the moment is far from the ideal nirvana that you’ve been.

Moving on is facing tomorrow, with all your mustered strength. It’s also knowing that though the pangs of pain may attack you every now and then, you’d know that you’d manage to find your smile – again.

Trust me, I’ve only been working 2 years, but I’ve had my share. I’ve been angsty, mad, complacent, indifferent, repulsive (this list can go on and on so I better stop here) and guess what all those achieved for me: premature wrinkles and tons of white hair. As for my working environment and disposition: nothing.

So I’m trying this new approach. It’s really nothing new and is actually quite a conventional way of handling stress. It’s called SMILING. Funny that the simplest facial gesture seems to be the gravest task once you’re done with your daily 9-to-6 struggle with this thing called work. It’s actually a conscious effort to force yourself to smile through the stress – as opposed to the somewhat instinctive ranting and complaining.

Given the effort that smiling entails, I tried to look up the exact benefits that I would get should I choose to stick to this new modus-operandi. Amazingly, I found a lot!

From http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongbeauty/tp/smiling.htm:

1. 1. Smiling makes us attractive. (v: tell me about it!)
2. 2. Smiling changes our mood.
3. 3. Smiling is contagious. (v: hmm…won’t hurt if I start a happy workplace right?)
4. 4. Smiling relieves stress. (v: bullseye!)
5. 5. Smiling boosts your immune system.
6. 6. Smiling lowers blood pressure.
7. 7. Smiling releases endorphins, natural pain killers and serotonin. (v: I’m all for the natural high!)
8. 8. Smiling lifts the face and makes us look younger.
9. 9. Smiling makes you seem successful.
10. 10. Smiling helps you stay positive

 ..there’s more from http://odyb.net/discoveries/little-known-reasons-and-benefits-of-smiling/..

But just to highlight points that are good additions to the ones above:

1. 1. Smiles can stimulate the brain and the heart much like how 2000 chocolate bars would!
2. 2. A smile is a universal language. It’s perceived as a positive, lifting act of happiness that is recognized across cultures, across time (even cavemen use it to communicate that they’re not threats), and across all the stages of human life (fetuses even smile when happy when they’re in the womb!).

Ok, if I’m going to give you a round up of all the benefits of smiling which I managed to rummage out of the internet, this blog entry would go on forever. The bottom line does not change though, smiling might be a better alternative fight the negativity of the work place. It may be hard to do as of the moment, but who knows with a little practice, it won’t be so hard after all!

Blog. A few years back, the word wouldn’t even mean anything. But now, Wikipedia (this term wouldn’t have meant anything a decade ago either) has an entire article about it. For starters, it says:

“blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”

Imagine that. The term is now a noun and a verb on its own! And it comes in different forms, there are personal blogs, media blogs, video blogs, corporate blogs, and whatever-have-you type of blogs. It can be classified by genre, by content, by author, by device and by whatever-you-like categories.

Well to me, this blog is different. First of all, it’s mine, thus, it’s unique. There might be (as of 2007 at least) 112 million blogs in the world, but none of those are like this one. None of those other blogs can write about the world from my own personal perspective and nowhere else in the world can you see those thoughts posted but here.

So read on and watch out for more! I hope you’d enjoy the little time you might end up spending reading the pages of this high-tech journal of mine. This is me, signing on! =)