2016 : Confused with how I want to live my life
Posted 4th January 2017 at 16:02 by Amara 94
(This is the longest blog I've written, I was just writing my thoughts out didn't think too much of what I was writing)
So 2017 is here. How did I spend my christmas holidays?
In all honesty I didn't do much, the only social thing I did was attend one meetup. In fact, I think I have been the laziest I have been. I have geeked out with music production though, watched more in depth tutorials, and feel that I may be improving on my technical knowledge of production, it's literally like studying a school subject. It feels like if I were honest about how I spent my holidays it wouldn't sound good to most people.
I have felt that my recent laziness, worse anxiety from not going out much has felt quite unhealthy and like I am not working for anything that I want in life. I would never be more financially richer by being lazy.
However on the other hand I feel proud in a way of actually learning the things I care about to a deeper level than before daily. I have also been reading a book forever on Jony Ive (one of Apple's designers). Although I have taken long with reading it due to distractions I feel I have learnt far more about Apple products, concepts and design, not the specs though, than the typical apple hater online. I feel if I read more books on stuff that interests me it wouldn't be too hard to have lots of knowledge about the things that interest me.
At the same time I have decided to not send my application for the OU degree. This same thing has happened with a college course that I got the application for previously. The main reason was that I didn't feel keen on doing the financial loan applications and then wondered how much I wanted the course and of it would be too much to balance with hobbies I wanna learn and work. My hobbies I'm keen on learning are mainly calligraphy and music production, not the most variation but quality is better than quantity. Anyways as I said before learning certain aspects of music production feels like learning a school subject, I feel I have to be committed to actually learn stuff with it. I am generally interested in tech so the Computer Science degree appealed to me, but in all honesty I don't think it is my main interest which leads me to what I am confused about.
2016 had it's up and downs and was full of surprises, especially relating to programmes and work experiences that I took part in. Although mostly unemployed in 2016 I had work experience at Unilever which was much different to anything I had experienced. They had nice offices, so many toys and items inside from Oculus rift sets to expensive perfumes and dried fruits. Working from home was normal, in fact I even did on occasion where I had to do some mystery shopping. It was like a middle class office that had all the toys, the employers seemed richer, to have more of a voice and in a more comfortable work environment than an employer that would work as hard in a less attractive office by a less prestigious company. There was definitely some politics and fakery I felt there though and I didn't get the middle class style social interactions. The shocking thing though whilst doing work experience there I somehow felt successful, 3 weeks after not working at Unilever I am back to my old self. I guess it was a taste of how some success can taste although tbh idk if I would like to work there.
I also did Spear where the coaches were mostly positive that the 3 hours there left me feeling better about myself sometimes and just made me notice how my home environment made me feel. There was a lot of emphasis on communication though and one of the coaches constantly told me to relax to the point where I felt like "**** it, I don't care whether or not I am relaxed, nothing is wrong with being serious."
A few months after the Unilever course I found myself doing the shortest apprenticeship that I have done. The biggest career mistake that I have probably made fuelled by fear, my job centre coach expressing that I am not trying hard enough to get a job and saying I need to be more enthusiastic and other social pressures. The job only lasted one month. I was accepted to do a Warehouse apprenticeship that was about 90 minutes away from me on public transport. Apart from the commute I found the environment shitty or incompatible with me. It was a warehouse that supplies retail stock to Heathrow airport. The job was very basic, just loading stock onto conveyor belts and emptying portable fridges that came back, but exhausting due to having to move around and carry heavy items repeatedly. But it wasn't the job that was the most shitty. I just didn't mix with the group of people, it was the most macho environment I had been in and consisted mainly of immigrants or people that didn't seem to take school seriously and dropped out. It felt like it consisted of the school bullies, or kids that only cared about social status/street cred and on multiple occasions I would get negatively responded to for not knowing how to respond to someones actions, it felt like School. And then there were periods where there was nothing to do but we would stay in the warehouse being robots for Heathrow. No one there liked their jobs, I was actually complimented for leaving the job by my Line manager when I gave my resignation, that's how bad it was. The admin side that never communicated with us seemed much more pleasant, although I wouldn't want to join it, it feels a bit corrupt. And then I didn't feel safe in the area, not because of what I saw but because of what I read from local news articles, crime seemed to go on there a lot. The business park I was in was at least 10-15 mins away from any food store for lunch. However, 2 minutes away on bus, 15 minutes walking there was a much nicer business park that had its own Subway, had an afterwork exercise class as well. I particularly remember one day when I got the bus to work there were two Asian dudes, the same age as me, and they got off at the nicer business park. They talked about how commuting to work would be simpler when Crossrail is completed and then one dude spoke of different fonts and what font is modern, what isn't. I felt that talking about fonts was a weird subject, but it was also interesting I felt. Being in a workplace where it felt like some colleagues threw away their smartness for street cred, heavily conformed, weirdness appealed to me, conformity felt bland.
Currently, due to some future experiences from the warehouse one I just talked about I find it a bit confusing as to what job and life I would actually want. Job seems to equal a high percentage of life as most of our waking hours are spent there. I always seem to feel like escaping and going into a much more better work environment when doing a job I hate yet I haven't found a work environment I felt I fitted well in. So my current mentality needs some changing. I think my bouncy work experience of working in office which although not easy felt cushy to an extent and bouncing into multiple shitty warehouse jobs has given me expectations as to what to expect from a decent job.
So now it's October 2016, I find myself with in another programme that promises to get most people on the programme, I think about 85% or so into an IT apprenticeship. Right now I find this short course I did,Tech City Stars. and other programmes like Spear to not be bad, but seriously overhyped and over marketed. I feel they have changed my views on success and honestly social media as they, Tech City Star, in particular advertise themselves from a distorted view. I don't know if I feel this way cause I haven't had anything good directly come out of these programmes but they can definitely be improved.
(continued)
So 2017 is here. How did I spend my christmas holidays?
In all honesty I didn't do much, the only social thing I did was attend one meetup. In fact, I think I have been the laziest I have been. I have geeked out with music production though, watched more in depth tutorials, and feel that I may be improving on my technical knowledge of production, it's literally like studying a school subject. It feels like if I were honest about how I spent my holidays it wouldn't sound good to most people.
I have felt that my recent laziness, worse anxiety from not going out much has felt quite unhealthy and like I am not working for anything that I want in life. I would never be more financially richer by being lazy.
However on the other hand I feel proud in a way of actually learning the things I care about to a deeper level than before daily. I have also been reading a book forever on Jony Ive (one of Apple's designers). Although I have taken long with reading it due to distractions I feel I have learnt far more about Apple products, concepts and design, not the specs though, than the typical apple hater online. I feel if I read more books on stuff that interests me it wouldn't be too hard to have lots of knowledge about the things that interest me.
At the same time I have decided to not send my application for the OU degree. This same thing has happened with a college course that I got the application for previously. The main reason was that I didn't feel keen on doing the financial loan applications and then wondered how much I wanted the course and of it would be too much to balance with hobbies I wanna learn and work. My hobbies I'm keen on learning are mainly calligraphy and music production, not the most variation but quality is better than quantity. Anyways as I said before learning certain aspects of music production feels like learning a school subject, I feel I have to be committed to actually learn stuff with it. I am generally interested in tech so the Computer Science degree appealed to me, but in all honesty I don't think it is my main interest which leads me to what I am confused about.
2016 had it's up and downs and was full of surprises, especially relating to programmes and work experiences that I took part in. Although mostly unemployed in 2016 I had work experience at Unilever which was much different to anything I had experienced. They had nice offices, so many toys and items inside from Oculus rift sets to expensive perfumes and dried fruits. Working from home was normal, in fact I even did on occasion where I had to do some mystery shopping. It was like a middle class office that had all the toys, the employers seemed richer, to have more of a voice and in a more comfortable work environment than an employer that would work as hard in a less attractive office by a less prestigious company. There was definitely some politics and fakery I felt there though and I didn't get the middle class style social interactions. The shocking thing though whilst doing work experience there I somehow felt successful, 3 weeks after not working at Unilever I am back to my old self. I guess it was a taste of how some success can taste although tbh idk if I would like to work there.
I also did Spear where the coaches were mostly positive that the 3 hours there left me feeling better about myself sometimes and just made me notice how my home environment made me feel. There was a lot of emphasis on communication though and one of the coaches constantly told me to relax to the point where I felt like "**** it, I don't care whether or not I am relaxed, nothing is wrong with being serious."
A few months after the Unilever course I found myself doing the shortest apprenticeship that I have done. The biggest career mistake that I have probably made fuelled by fear, my job centre coach expressing that I am not trying hard enough to get a job and saying I need to be more enthusiastic and other social pressures. The job only lasted one month. I was accepted to do a Warehouse apprenticeship that was about 90 minutes away from me on public transport. Apart from the commute I found the environment shitty or incompatible with me. It was a warehouse that supplies retail stock to Heathrow airport. The job was very basic, just loading stock onto conveyor belts and emptying portable fridges that came back, but exhausting due to having to move around and carry heavy items repeatedly. But it wasn't the job that was the most shitty. I just didn't mix with the group of people, it was the most macho environment I had been in and consisted mainly of immigrants or people that didn't seem to take school seriously and dropped out. It felt like it consisted of the school bullies, or kids that only cared about social status/street cred and on multiple occasions I would get negatively responded to for not knowing how to respond to someones actions, it felt like School. And then there were periods where there was nothing to do but we would stay in the warehouse being robots for Heathrow. No one there liked their jobs, I was actually complimented for leaving the job by my Line manager when I gave my resignation, that's how bad it was. The admin side that never communicated with us seemed much more pleasant, although I wouldn't want to join it, it feels a bit corrupt. And then I didn't feel safe in the area, not because of what I saw but because of what I read from local news articles, crime seemed to go on there a lot. The business park I was in was at least 10-15 mins away from any food store for lunch. However, 2 minutes away on bus, 15 minutes walking there was a much nicer business park that had its own Subway, had an afterwork exercise class as well. I particularly remember one day when I got the bus to work there were two Asian dudes, the same age as me, and they got off at the nicer business park. They talked about how commuting to work would be simpler when Crossrail is completed and then one dude spoke of different fonts and what font is modern, what isn't. I felt that talking about fonts was a weird subject, but it was also interesting I felt. Being in a workplace where it felt like some colleagues threw away their smartness for street cred, heavily conformed, weirdness appealed to me, conformity felt bland.
Currently, due to some future experiences from the warehouse one I just talked about I find it a bit confusing as to what job and life I would actually want. Job seems to equal a high percentage of life as most of our waking hours are spent there. I always seem to feel like escaping and going into a much more better work environment when doing a job I hate yet I haven't found a work environment I felt I fitted well in. So my current mentality needs some changing. I think my bouncy work experience of working in office which although not easy felt cushy to an extent and bouncing into multiple shitty warehouse jobs has given me expectations as to what to expect from a decent job.
So now it's October 2016, I find myself with in another programme that promises to get most people on the programme, I think about 85% or so into an IT apprenticeship. Right now I find this short course I did,Tech City Stars. and other programmes like Spear to not be bad, but seriously overhyped and over marketed. I feel they have changed my views on success and honestly social media as they, Tech City Star, in particular advertise themselves from a distorted view. I don't know if I feel this way cause I haven't had anything good directly come out of these programmes but they can definitely be improved.
(continued)
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