Many months have flown by since the last post but I can give a summary and theme of what's been happening right after February.
- I left Great Eastern, my first ever job and many beloved colleagues and friends - almost 8 months on and I still miss them so much, and happy to still keep in touch with them and the drama that's been happening here and there. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I had stayed, I'm not so confident I would have risen to the challenge of my promotion and the expectations and responsibilities there, and not to mention absolutely dragging my feet through the parts of the job I hated. and I'm OFTEN reminded that certain things going on there would have continued to peeve me and kill my spirit with how little it can be changed - SO my takeaway is that I wish I could pack up alllll my favorite people and take them with me
- My life at Liberty so far - it has been AMAZING. Many people ask about how it's been and I'll never get tired of seeing surprised faces when I'm telling them how genuinely rewarding it's been, usually job moves are quite humbling if not average so I'm happy to break the norm. I'll tell you more later!
- The focus of my work here is very specialized and involved, compared to my previous role where I felt it was too much of a stretch and not being to excel at any one part - so here I truly get to grow and learn in new areas, such as continuing my charge into the insurance industry, now in General insurance, while also building technical and analytical understanding. For now since it's still new I'm kept on my toes in a good way, but still having flexibility and more control over my work life. I work with a much more diverse pool of stakeholders and the culture change is a breath of fresh air.
- For now, most things like even the tech, software platforms and office location etc etc is very much green green grass. Things like now having my Teams and Outlook on my phone makes things very convenient, and yes I realize many companies have this too but I'm really just comparing to GE.
- It's also just me revisiting my future in a HR related role because now I'm not attached to HR so I get to be external to that and tbh HR has it's own quirks and considerations but overall it's just a lot of being at the mercy of more stakeholders and having more expectations and responsibility set over you whereas my role now is really just meant for growing talent and helping the business. I try to remember my previous day-to-day of just fighting fires, helping to solve big and petty problems, being diplomatic to carefully, tactfully and professionally manage people both above and below, ugh, it's unnecessary drama.
- I also got to travel to Bangkok for two weeks in June for work, my first international work trip, and it felt great. Maybe some people are used to it or it's a normal thing, but let me celebrate this as a privilege. I should get to go at least once a year from now on, fingers crossed on visiting any other country especially to HQ in Boston, one day, even if not next year or the year after.
- For now I'm still feeling slightly lonely and like an outsider as I don't have a direct peer in my team here, they're all reporting to me. I'm working on my other peer connections, and of course get to continue on this path of working with fresh grads and seeing them grow and improve - just this time I'm almost on a similar learning path as them. My flexible arrangements do allow me to connect with people right after or between working hours like seeing my other friends during lunch and all so I'll hope to keep taking advantage of that.
- Things are never perfect though, there are difficult individuals here and there, I fear some of the more technical things might elude me forever and maybe after a couple of years, I can foresee some repetitive aspects but I don't worry about it too much. I need to be a lot more disciplined for sure - i just KNOW i would never be able to adjust to any future role which requires me to be in the office everyday. Crazy how most people still need to do this?
- OK done with that, sorry for the incorrect usage of bullet points. We move on!
- I also had an amazing friends trip to Korea and Phuket. I really, really, really, love my friends. Despite the usual differences of personalities and travel styles, I take it as a big blessing to be able to firstly, afford all this without a very strict budget, and get everyone's ability as people get busier and busier, and still generally enjoy growing friendships and memories together. I just am sad because I know it'll be harder and harder to get these again in the future.
- What else? My husband had quite a serious shoulder surgery and it's not easy to worry about his physical capability when he's been more than extremely reliable in this area in the past and what was hoped to be long in the future but pish posh in the end it seems recovery is going very well and honestly, his weakened state is still stronger than my strongest state -_-
- To which I've been making progress over my physical health and weight, not that there are major differences yet but i can feel a momentum building towards spending more time on exercise and eating more mindfully. I'm looking forward to being less weak (not just more strong haha)
- Supporting Arsenal has been extra rewarding and extra painful, what else can I say
I actually wanted to post about something else, but it's nice to recap the last few months and look back at the many positive things.
There are some difficult patches too, that's for another time.
TQTQTQTQ
