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Does Your Work Matter?

Burrito Thoughts

I’m honestly at the point of wondering if my work matters at the end of it all. I say this with the backing of being a workaholic. What is a workaholic?

a person who works a lot of the time and finds it difficult not to work

Ask anyone, and that is me – not by nature, but by design. I STRIVED to be a workaholic and I wore the badge proudly – someone who comes in way too early, leaves late, and continues working at home. I know a lot of people call themselves workaholics, but I will be honest, I look at them and think ‘yea…no..you’re a kindergarten version of a workaholic’.

In the past, I didn’t take much vacations, and when I did, I often was working. I remember being on a train from one side of Japan to another with my laptop writing scripts with my team in Malaysia. I arrived at Kyoto and straight away opened the laptop to continue writing the said script.

DOES THE WORK MATTER?

Your boss will constantly say that it does matter, and you strive to reach a unified goal, whatever it is. I talked about being a manager and described my constant work and flying across the sea for work and so much more work. However, I also talked about how everything just stopped as the direction changed.

Recently even, my team and I worked night and day for 1 month and a half. We were trying to produce 10 videos for a client and we wanted to make them differently. So we above and beyond – spending more money than necessary, spending more time than needed. We rushed the production, had to deal with constant changes from the clients and last minute requirements – which also led to editing in a van from Kedah back to KL (not fun). And at the end, most of the videos have not been released and at this time, we still have not been paid. It’s been 5 months.

So does it actually matter? At the end, no.

WHERE HAS THE WORK GOTTEN ME?

No where but heartache. You would think that all the hard work would lead to more work and more opportunity. It’s true, if I stayed in my old job, I could have made it somewhere great at this point. I left and ventured out on my own, hoping that all my talent, experience and past work would lead to bigger and better things – but it hasn’t.

I have the skills, but no one is hiring me. I’ll be honest, finding work right now is not easy. My old job is not calling me in to do work, only 1 or 2 people I did work for have called me, but that’s it. So here I am, left with whatever comes my way, which is not a lot.

This brings me to a new topic that I want to talk about later – what’s more important, your work or your network? At this time, I think it is your network.

SO SHOULD I GO ALL OUT WITH THE JOBS I HAVE?

I want to say yes. That’s my nature. Do the work until it is perfect. But today, I decided that this had to stop. I am in the middle of a script writing job. 8 episodes have been delivered with only 1 left, which is great since I have other things to think about for the next coming weeks. I am happy to get it behind me so I can move on to the next task.

But suddenly, a message comes in saying that they can no longer shoot at one location in the first episode, so we need to change the script. I’m ok with this. We schedule a meeting on the same day (today).

When we meet, they inform me that besides the change in location, they’ve actually already changed 60% of the script without even informing me. And then they want me to fix it all…3 days before shoot,…over a holiday and a weekend.

And I’m thinking, why? The script was given 2 weeks ago, these changes couldn’t have been told to me 2 weeks ago, why do it now? I am here to amend the change in location with is an emergency, not the revise the shitty 60% changes you made without my consultation.

You think I have so much free time I can just give it up to undo the mess you did? I know that the person changing the script has been riding a lot – so he has been using all his free time to have fun instead of going through the script early and asking for changes in advance.

So I hung up from the meeting and decided that at 4.00pm on a second day of the holiday, I rather spend my time with my family. And I did. I spend my afternoon / evening with my family, and it felt good.

CONCLUSION

I have to realise that people are selfish, and they do things on their own time. So what’s the point of rushing when they themselves don’t rush?

This is a luxury, of course. Most clients will want everything really quickly, and then they will take their time when they get it. And I can’t keep saying no to everything that comes my way, because if I do, then what will I have to feed my home?

But I think I have come to a point where spending time being free and less stressed is more important than going through all this anxiety and annoyance. So when I can, I will say a big ‘FUCK YOU’, and do what I want.

DIY Studio Renovation

Manual Labour in Malaysia is Too Cheap!

222 thoughts on “Does Your Work Matter?”

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