TGIF

A lot has happened since my last post. Exactly one week has passed since I joined my new job and I decided to use the off they fixed for me on Fridays, to reflect on the week gone by. Not that I finally did much reflecting. I was more caught up in meeting friends whom I had been cut off from for some time owing to work. But I did do my thinking every now and then, an act which does not actually do me much harm as well-meaning loved ones and I myself might once have feared.

Coming to my new job. It is definitely a much better organisation, and highly professional, which is one of the primary aspects I had looked out for in a new employer. What I had failed to factor in, however, was the fact that in a more professional set-up, I should also expect things to become a lot tougher and challenging. Of course, to be honest, I did think about this in a rather vague sort of way, but never really concretely. The errors of my ways are being borne in on me in a very real, necessary and, importantly, painful way. I have now learnt an important lesson - always be prepared when stepping into something new.

Therefore, where in my previous job I might have acquired something of the glamour of an experienced hand, who was looked up to in some ways merely because I had spent three whole years there, I stepped into the new job and received my first shock. Most of them were my age, a few were older, but most were just too competent for me. Then it hit me and I started getting something of a complex. I was a junior again and all the difficulties that I had experienced when as a fresher in the profession came back to haunt me.

I had a few days of bliss, while I was being introduced around and given the importance experienced by a new face who gets a lot of stares from all the rest, who are used to seeing each other's faces all year long and hence welcome any change. You see, my new office was, as I had expected, the sort of place where satisfied employees, the older ones with potbellies and the younger with a lot of artificial lines of experience on their faces, stay for a long time, sometimes even till retirement.

Soon enough, though, I was pushed with all the harshness and venom of my stressed profession into the grind. Everything was new over here. Even all the editing experience I had gained at the previous office was kicked rather rudely in the butt, and rightly so. I soon realised the harsh and bitter truth. I had learnt but little in my profession - not because of any fault of mine but more because of the vast field that it is - and that the road ahead stretched endlessly into the horizon. With every sarcastic bite that my boss took at me, which I endured as best I could in the manner of my role model Jesus Christ, I determined more and more that I would put my nose to the ground, after the manner of my proud (the opposite of falsely humble, that is) stock, and take the challenges before me head-on.

I recall the situation was similar when I first joined my previous job. Of course, I have a bit of experience behind me now, but any new place, I figure, requires new strategies for dealing with situations. The whole software here is rather complicated, and while I had mastered many of the tricks of the previous one, here I'm having to work the old system out of me and learn the new one. That is to be expected. So now, at the end of my first Friday, I grit my teeth and gear up to face the next challenging week, at the end of which I shall be confident enough to say - TGIF (Thank God it's Friday)!!!