The Road to 40 Day 53/365: The end of an era

We kicked off July with a couple of expected changes, but I learned that we weren’t the only ones who had to deal with change.

We had an early flight out to the Philippines, where we wil be staying for the whole month. Our plane landed at around 11AM, and as soon as I turned on my signal, I got a call.

Over the past few years, I’ve been working with a recurring contract to write. The tasks have ranged from easy to insane, but I kept getting my contract renewed precisely because my team and I have delivered.

With moving to Vietnam and back to SG, my workload has gone down from insane to easy to medium. The pay was good, and the work was actually manageable but it takes a bit of my time, naturally.

Around April, there was a direction the company wanted to take that I didn’t exactly buy into.

I had a discussion with Che about the possibility of me letting go of the job to focus more at home and health, especially as this direction was not sparking joy or inspiration for me to move forward.

After a good heart-to-heart and a lot of recomputing on our family expense worksheet, she said we could manage. I began discussing my exit and my immediate superiors asked if I could stay until the end of June at the latest.

Last week, I was told that my access to Teams would be terminated by July 1st. So yesterday, I sent a message to the wider team that it was my last day to have access to my email and Teams chat.

Throughout my whole professional career, I’ve had an issue with belongingness. During my time in the call center industry, I was working a different shift from the people I made connections with. As a Korean tutor, I was the only new guy on my shift amidst the people who have worked for years.

When I moved to marketing, I was a contracted marketing assistant in an office with no actual marketing department. Later, I worked in sales and at least had a business card, but it was a really small team with just me and my uncle working sales.

Concurrent to all those, I wrote for various publications as a freelancer. So this gig that I had actually made me feel official-official. While I see memes of people getting PTSD about the Teams notification, I love it because it makes me feel that I’m actually a part of something.

Hence, while I never met more than half of the people in the chat, I have a good connection with them. When I said my goodbyes, a few people reached out, and I appreciated that their words of encouragement.

When I woke up on July 1, I was emotionally and mentally ready that I wasn’t going to have a job anymore. So getting the call from my boss was kinda weird because I said goodbye already.
He told me that they had to let a lot of people go, and that I should check on my boys. I was told I may have been included in the list, but I made life easier by quitting.

It was devastating, to say the least. From group chats to individual messages, it was not a good way to start the month.

We checked in to our hotel and Che went to work. Vino wanted to hang out for a bit, so we had lunch very late already. Not surprisingly, he wanted ramen.

We tried Ramen Don nearby for the convenience. Vino had the tonkotsu ramen, and I saw that they had a batchoy ramen, which I had to try. “Batchoy” is a word used to tease someone fat, but it also means a popular dish from the south of the Philippines. So no, I didn’t order it because I’m fat, but because of the flavor I wanted to expect.

After our lunch, we went to the supermarket for a few errands and a lot of snacks. We’re gonna be staying here for a bit, and we love just picking food from the pantry from time to time. Since we don’t have a pantry here, we had to make one of our own.

Che came home a bit late and hungry. She worked as soon as she landed and never really got the chance to eat. We had Andok’s for a quick fix, but even then, she wasn’t able to eat immediately.

I asked Vino to sleep already, and he crashed by 11PM. Che was still working then and only got done a little past 12 midnight.

Meanwhile, I was watching TV while also chatting with a couple of friends about the events that transpired this morning. I can’t say I saw this coming, but I feel like the realization that pushed me to quit was a blessing in the sense that I was emotionally equipped to deal with what happened because it doesn’t affect me as much.

It doesn’t change the fact that it stings. We were a great team that could get the impossible done because we worked together. If anything, the only thing that made me hold on to the job is the fact that we were such a machine already and I didn’t want to break the flow that we had.

Ultimately though, I had to choose me, and after weeks of wrestling with the reality that decision was going to bring, I was at peace.

I believe that God is really looking out for us, because I don’t think Che will have the bandwidth to share my pain if I wasn’t already at peace with myself. At least now, I can make myself available for whatever she needs and still be present with Vino.

I hope that my boys and my other friends can bounce back as well from this challenge, but I’m confident that we are all better today than when we first started working together.

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