Journey to inner ring
After working on and off as an engineer, be it mechanical or software, it all comes down to mental health.
2020, and 2021 have been a roller coaster ride. I was suffering from a toxic workspace in the midst of pandemic while surviving in a foreign country. Lucky enough the foreign country is still considered pretty close to my home country, Singapore — Malaysia. It was rather a dark moment of my life where I would constantly insulted by my employer, and being cooped up in a room working remotely unable to do any physical contact due to the pandemic. Eventually I broke down and cried for help. Seeing how I was unable to continue working in Singapore, I went back to Malaysia.
It was the scar that I knew that will never fully recover. It wasn’t the only scar to begin with too. Between mid 2020 and early 2021, I took a break from employment to improve my skills like coding. I’ve worked on some personal projects myself along with some helps from my friends. After working enough of my own project, I got my first IT intern as well as first Software Engineer full time!
Sadly my duration on both roles didn’t last me long. I was having the constant battle with my inner jerk, and imposters. Throughout my working time, I began to seek counseling help. I talked a lot about my family issues, some work issues, as well as my own. Eventually, it really boils down to my own because during my counseling it’s always discussed me as a person, an intellect.
They say the greatest enemy of all time is yourself, and that is not wrong at all. The worse thing is we view it as a “battle” instead of acceptance. Many have seen it wrongly to a point they just end up beating themselves even harder. Luckily in my counseling, my counselor helped me to open up my personal feelings and validate them. Essentially guiding myself to accept as normal simply because we are human, and never meant to be perfect.
While this is not the end of getting my mental health fixed, it’s still an interesting journey to get to know myself better, to sharpen the the skill of self-compassion providing myself love and compassion that no one ever given, not even my family.
Whoever is reading this, I hope you are doing well, and I hope you will be better. We will go through this together.
