Confused

I have no idea what I’m doing in my life. on a professional level, personal level, any level for that matter.

Professionally though, I’m so lost it’s not funny. I honestly have no idea what I want to do. I’m starting a new gig in a couple of weeks and initially I was super excited for it. It was a mix of teaching and techy stuff, I thought the perfect mix of my education and what I loved to do. When I got the interview for it I was over the moon. Literally. Now…I don’t even know if I should accept it.

I’m not sure what happened. Well actually I think it was the offer call. My soon to be manager called to offer me the position but it was really..weird. He was like do you actually want this job? And then he was basically like OK i’ll give you a chance, but you’ll be on probation for 9 months because I don’t feel like your technical skills are on par to what we’re looking for. I was like okay…[ and in my head I’m thinking then why are you offering me this job?!]. He then gave me my salary (which was almost $10,000 lower then what I started with at my last place), I was kind of appalled and negotiated so that it was only a $5,000 difference BUT it’s still a drop of $15,000 from where I ended at my last place.

I always thought money wasn’t an issue for me, that I was fine with any job as long as i enjoyed it. Now I’m confused. I guess it’s because I’m in a profession where people expect you to be getting paid a lot. And I’m not getting paid even close to that now. not even close.

And then on top of that, starting a job where they don’t even think you have the technical skills, what’s up with that?! I kind of think he played that to get me to sign to a lower salary. I’m not sure if that’s my ego but I dunno, it’s just weird. Because in reality no corporation would ever take on an employee if they didn’t think they’d perform the job. That’d be a hit for them in the long run.

So no confidence + lower salary = not excited for the start date.

Alas, I’ve accepted the position for now after doing Istighara. If something better comes along I’ll take it, if not I’ll try this out and see what happens.

But in the meantime I’ve started soulsearching to figure out WHAT THE HECK DO I REALLY WANT. I’ll keep you posted once I figure it out. InshAllah it happens within the next 30 years.

Marriage & Mulan

So you might have noticed I’ve added a new section to the blog. Take a look…I already have chapters written so I shall be uploading them periodically.

I think I’ll be taking a detour on the blog. I started it so I could discuss how I deal with work issues..but I’m currently taking a hiatus from work and to be honest I’m just not feeling it. But I still want to write so i’m just going to go with the flow.

What’s on my mind right now? Marriage. One question in particular…will I ever get married? I’m sure based on my last post you could have got that..but really that’s the one question that keeps going through my mind. I just finished watching Mulan (one of my all-time favourite movies) and I dunno…it just got me thinking, will I ever find my Shang. I feel like I’ve been going through this process for so long and sometimes I just feel tired and want to give up.

There’s this guy. Not the guy from my last post. Let’s call this one Bob. I’ve known him for ever. ages. Our parents are BFF’s so we’ve literally grown up together. I live in a conservative community though so we never were actual friends or anything. Anyways a couple of years back he basically called me up and asked if we could get to know each other for marriage. I was like umm okayyy…let me think about it. I brought it up with my parents and they were like hell bent set against it because apparently he wasn’t good enough for me. So I tried convincing him that it wouldn’t work out and he should just drop it but he wouldn’t so I agreed to ‘get to know him’. [Without my parents knowing I might add].

Anyways…things didn’t work out and we basically stopped all contact. Two weeks ago I get a missed what’s app call from him. I’m thinking he did that by mistake. [I hate that new what’s app feature]. So I don’t read into it. Then this afternoon I get another call from him..through the regular means, I missed it. Now I’m like wtf. Why are you calling me. I have no idea what its about..but I have a strong feeling that it’ll be about marriage. I was going to message and ask him what was up..but I think the safer option is to just ignore it and pretend I no longer have his number saved.

I hate him because up until today I was doing pretty good with my last fail of a relationship. I was feeling good about myself and my life. Now, all I can think about marriage and what a failure I am and how no one wants to marry me. It’s a vicious cycle. Never-ending vicious cycle.

On a better note…my favourite song from Mulan:

#singleLife

Note: This has nothing to do with my professional life. So feel free to skip it.

I just lied. To a boy that I thought I was marrying. Which I’m no longer marrying. Everything was going along fine and the parents were going to meet next month to discuss the details and now it’s over. Just like that. Literally I just skyped with him yesterday and now today I just sent him a msg saying yes what he heard was true. I was calling it off. But I lied as to why I was. I said it was because I didn’t want to move. I don’t think he’ll believe me. I feel awful. He’s a great guy and I was willing to move. That’s how great he was. And now because of a pretty shitty reason I can no longer marry him and he’ll never know.

I keep telling myself that Allah is the best of planners. He knows what is best for me. He’ll get me though this. And he only ever throws whatever I can handle. I got this. I can do it.

Please keep me in your duaas.

#singleLife #itsahardlife #backtosqure1

QUITTING

I QUIT.

Backstory: Over the summer I got accepted to a Masters program that I had impromptu applied for. I quit my job (I’ll do a post about that soon) and enjoyed a whole month of vacation. I traveled, planned events, went cottaging and enjoyed my summer. Then all of the sudden September hit. I started attending lectures and gearing up to go back to school. I hadn’t been in school for over 3 years. When I was in undergrad, for the most part I loved school. I studied hard, enjoyed what I was doing and got good grades. I assumed my masters journey would be the same. Boy, was I wrong.

The first week of lectures were fine. I sat in class, did some readings, it was relaxed. I didn’t have class 5 days a week, which was a huge change from undergrad, so maybe I didn’t really feel like I was in school. Whatever the reason, I started to let loose. My first assignment was due on EID and so I spent the day before writing it up. Something that should have taken me 2 hours max, took me over 8 because I couldn’t concentrate. I told myself it was fine. It was my first assignment, I’d get better at the other ones. I never found out.

October rolled around, and I was hit with weddings. back-to-back weddings. Close friends and family. Indian. Which meant days and days of events. With one of the weddings over-seas, I took a week off school to attend it. Throughout my 4 years of undergrad, I had NEVER gone on vacation during school. And here I was only 2 weeks into my masters and already taking time off.

Add to that, I started speaking to a guy. As in marriage talk. The more we spoke the more I realized that 1. I was getting old, 2. Where did the masters fit in with getting married? 3. What the hell was I doing. It started to dawn at me that I hadn’t really thought things out when I accepted this program. I had done it on a whim. I was going through a tough time and wanted a change. I saw it and took it.

Side-Note: The masters program is course based, takes about 12 months to complete full-time, I was doing it so that I could switch fields. Which meant that after completing it, I’d have to work a couple of years in that field.

If I was to get married this year, would I really want to spend a couple of years working in the field before starting a family? I wasn’t so sure. If I was 22 then yes of course. But that was the problem, I wasn’t.

My parents said, just do it. It’s only a year, you’ve already paid your tuition you have nothing to loose.

But I had no motivation. I saw the second assignment, just quickly glancing at it and I saw R-squared means, and I was like No. I havn’t done math in ages. I don’t want to start now. When I was in undergrad, I was naive. I had assumed that what you learn in school, you actually apply at work. After working for 3 years, I knew that wasn’t the case. Now being back in class….I didn’t want to put in so many hours in the library learning things that I was NEVER going to put into practise.

And then I got my first assignment back. I had received a 65%, the passing mark for the masters was 70%. I had graduated with a 3.85 GPA (out of 4) in undergrad. A 65%…that was not me.  I had planned that day to spend my 6 hour break starting on my second assignment. I saw that mark and instead spend 6 hours on my friends wedding slideshow/video.

That was it. I couldn’t do it. So I quit.

My parents are not happy. But for once I am going to do what makes me happy. Applying and accepting the program was my decision. Quitting, I decided was also mine.

Small Deviations

A lot of time you think that this small action you do, won’t make an impact in your life. It won’t effect your imman, it’s only one song. It won’t effect your prayers its only stepping into a pub. It won’t effect your character, it’s only one swear word. It won’t effect you, it just might contain alcohol. The list goes on.

But really, it’s these small things that make the biggest impact. Take a listen, it’s only 10 minutes but it has really made me think:

http://tune.pk/player/embed_player.php?vid=2616531&folder=2014/04/20/&width=600&height=350&autoplay=no

So each time before you make a decision. Think twice. I’m glad I spent 10 hours before I made my decision about the goodbye drinks. Although, it always seems like a small action, that will have no effect. It is these same actions, 10 years down the line that will have the biggest effect.