My February Highlight: Work is Crazy

My February (financial) life updates only come in the third week of March, a late, late update. Because…

MAIN HIGHLIGHT

Work has been crazy! It’s taking up my days, AND NIGHTS, and I’m exhausted. Now allow me to briefly talk about this.

In this digital era, it’s nice when we can do work remotely but it’s no longer nice when we’re somehow expected to be online and reachable 24/7. Does not matter whether we work from home, or work at the office because either way, it’s become difficult to fully switch off from work these days. People can still email you or WhatsApp you (where they expect a faster response than email) any time of the day or night. And that’s annoying. Sometimes I just wish we’re back in the 90s and before, using big PC and desk phone at work that there’s no expectation for us to be working at home AFTER office hours. Now, we’re all like 7-Eleven.

So that’s what happened to me the whole of February. My workload was (and still is) crazy! It’s actually manageable if not because I was constantly bombarded by texts or emails that require responses. Now I’m not one that likes to brag about how busy I am because I never fancy that. Whenever I’m at that ‘busy’ phase, I would be questioning myself whether my busyness — oh my god, I just realized you don’t change messy to messyness because it should be messiness, but why busy is still busyness but not business, oh do you see the connection?! Business = busyness?! ok anyway — I would be questioning myself whether I’m busy because of the workload or because of my inefficiency at work.

Haih, I was drowned in work (starting to swim to the shore now) that I could barely take time to just rest, let alone doing my personal projects (such as this). I also missed the opportunity to try to write and submit my work for RoR’s new Money Stories book because I was mentally tired, and that’s such a bummer. And I didn’t post last Tuesday, oppsie.

SPENDING HIGHLIGHTS

Anyway, here are my spending highlights from last month. Okay my discretionary spendings went overboard a bit but they’re justified.

1. Paid RM258 for a facial package

I grabbed a deal for a routine facial package that should got me covered for half a year – for RM258. That’s after more than 50% off and so that’s a pretty great deal.

2. Spent RM191 on books

After I got my Kindle, I try to not buy physical books. But I did last month as I bought local books by our fellow Malaysians. And that feels pretty great. I have to admit I rarely read books by local authors and I wish to change that.

One of my favorite book purchases in February was Datuk Lat’s cartoons!! I watched Kampung Boy but I honestly never read Datuk Lat’s cartoons so I bought some of his cartoon books and oh boy was I hooked. I love how he depicts Malaysia and our Malaysian life so vividly.

3. Paid RM200 for Syed Saddiq’s class

Syed Saddiq, the youngest (ex) federal minister in Malaysian history and a world-class debater held a short online course on critical thinking, oratory, writing, and advocacy skills called #ThunderBOLD for a RM200 fee, and so I joined. Regardless of your political inclination, we have to applaud his fresh initiative to raise funds to purchase tablets for families in Muar and also, admit that he’s one with substance.

And I sure did learn a lot from his classes.

ALL IN ALL

I’m trying my best to stay sane. I’m not one that fancy working past office hours, so I’m now trying ways to improve my efficiency at work (most days, home #WFH), and to minimize my digital hours, i.e. no phone at night. I might not be able to stop people from working or emailing me at night, but I surely can stop myself from checking my work emails or responding to work after office hours. Kan?

And hopefully by doing that, I can continue doing my own personal things other than my main 9-5.

I’m trying to balance things out.

So let’s continue figuringgitout.