The Burnout

Hi readers! Somehow, I've managed to write at least a post every month so far this year! Not that I promise myself to do that, but it is still quite a feat, I think...

So there's a few things going on in my head right now. Let's start with the good things first: so I just went to this singles' meet-up that a financial consultancy company organize. Now, before you guys say anything, I know it's weird. It's weird that a financial consultancy company organize a singles' meet-up. The probably weirder thing is that I actually go for the event. In all honesty I also don't know what came into me; I guess it was a combination of things; my financial advisor has been persistently inviting me to these events (that wasn't the first of such events) and I feel bad for always making excuses not to come. I also wanted to find another avenue to meet new people (ok, I really meant potential partners) since lately I haven't really had the energy to be more active in using them dating apps after work (this is going to be the second part of this post). I also remembered a resolution I made a long long time ago about taking up majority of the opportunities that come my way.... You get the point. So I did.

The event itself was not very memorable; people are generally keeping to their group of friends (some went to the previous events and kept coming back) and the rather worst part of it is that because majority of the people in the room were Indonesians, of course they start to talk in Indonesian soon enough. It's good and all as it facilitates better communication, but I feel bad for the non-Indonesians as they're being left out and start to talk among themselves too. The "interaction games" they came up with didn't involve much interaction (it was just a poor man's version of family feud, and kahoot) so at the end of the games, I still have no idea how to start conversation with most of the people there. But anyway, I ended up winning a pair of GV Golden Class movie tickets because I won one of the game so it wasn't all bad. It expires one year from now so it acts like some sort of a motivation for me to date someone within the time frame so it doesn't go to waste lol.

The other thing I feel like writing about is about how I realize that my work has actually been affecting my life too much (shortly, bad work-life balance). I realized that most of the time, even though I tried (and did!) leave office not-too-late (8 pm is not too late right? Considering I have dinner there), I always go home exhausted and I don't have the mind-space/energy to chat with matches in the apps I use. Then I realized another thing about my work; the work culture is actually rather unhealthy. We the engineers are kept being pushed around to meet deadlines set by the execs with features set by PMs, and we have little bargaining powers to negotiate those. And then comes the planning. Based on the features set by PMs, we engineers come with estimates that obviously will not meet the deadlines, and then we are asked to cut corners to meet the deadlines. And of course being Google, the engineers are expected to produce quality work, so it's either fight with PM to reduce feature or work more to meet the deadline. Most of the time, I choose to do the latter and it's taking the toll on me. It's been going on ever since I joined. I always thought that maybe this is just temporary, that this might be the last push, but there's always the next big push, and I'm starting to feel that this is not a healthy thing for me. I have no idea how to solve this, but I realize that this is why I'm always tired and I don't have the mind-space to focus on my life (OK I really just meant dating).

Turned out to be not too long of a post. Maybe because I'm too tired to write more.

In any case, wish me luck in this endeavor, and I wish you good luck on yours!