Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Thankful for the balance

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you’ve all had a very nice Thanksgiving holiday. I most certainly did. I accomplished the one task I set out at the start: vacuum and clean the interior of my BMW M2. Job done, the rest of the time is pure rest and relaxation.

Cleaning the inside of my car is an annual tradition (unlike any other). Because I drive the BMW so seldomly - and typically it’s just me inside - the interior never gets too grimy. The few people I’ve chauffeured around have all remarked in amazement how clean it is. I would sheepishly reply that it is not due to any sort of cleaning diligence on my part. Granted, I probably would vacuum more often if the M2 needed it.

I am thankful I live close enough to work for me to walk (instead of drive). Furthermore, what I am most grateful for this Thanksgiving is happy employment, one that allows for taking an entire holiday week off with zero issues. There was no stress at all in going back to work today. I slept quite soundly the previous night; the dreaded “Sunday scaries” are fortunately not a thing for me.

You absolutely cannot pay me enough (more) to break this peace of mind.

The contrast of seeing people working during Thanksgiving week (shoutout to the folks keeping Whole Foods open for half a day that Thursday), while I am freely hanging out on vacation, fills me with immense gratitude. Sure, I’ve hustled tremendously to be where I am at, but it would be naive to think there weren’t some lucky levers that got pushed by some sky deity along the way. My original staff position - some 10 years ago - only opened up because someone left.

No amount of agency on my part could have control that!

Government work

Last week I wrote about the aim to not spend any money on Black Friday. I am happy to say: mission accomplished. Going away somewhere during Black Friday helped tremendously. I’m not tempted to click on the latest slickdeals tweet if I’m nowhere near a computer! Today is Cyber Monday, yet another black hole of potential spending. I’m doing my best to avoid Amazon right now.

During Black Friday we ran into a friend whilst getting lunch at Costco. Say what you want about inflation, but Costco food court prices have remained consistently low. A hot dog, a soda, and a slice of pizza can still be had for less than four dollars. If gas prices weren’t so enormously inflated, I’d drive to Costco more often for lunch. If the price of a hot dog ever increases from $1.50, surely the American economy have gone to the toilet. Hasn’t happened yet in my lifetime!

Right, the friend. He works at a credit union slinging loans to people looking for a lower interest rate than the big banks (credit unions are great). He said he’s looking to switch to a government job, perhaps with the city of San Francisco. The allure of excellent benefits and a pension at the end is rather tempting for a person in his mid thirties wanting long term stability. Especially during these uncertain times: we’ve all read about big tech massively laying off employees. Companies not doing layoffs are freezing hiring.

I guess I should consider myself lucky to be employed by the State of California. I didn’t realize a government job can be so desirous by those on the outside looking in. The conventional wisdom is that the private sector pays substantially more than the public sector. Everybody wants a solid rock to climb onto during times of uncertainty and recession. Public sector jobs also typically offer excellent work-life balance, something I cherish greatly.

Thankful for the gig

With the enhanced federal unemployment benefits having expired earlier this month, my brother - who was laid off at the beginning of this pandemic - had no choice but to look for work again. Due to personal extenuating circumstances and other factors, my brother can’t exactly return to the retail automotive sector he was working in prior to the lockdowns. Indeed, it would be quite a difficult time for him right now on the job hunt if not for the saving grace of a recent invention: the gig economy.

For the many discussed ills of the gig economy, the existence of it has really saved my brother’s bacon in terms of providing a source of income during these coronavirus times. The sheer ease of access - all you need is a mobile phone and a car - to begin working for these apps is incredible, and the ability to set your own schedule means my brother can still keep his preferred mode of sleeping in (not that DoorDash is really popping during those morning hours anyways). I am happy and grateful for the gig economy in helping people like my brother to easily keep earning money. I can’t imagine the scenario otherwise, honestly.

Of course, it has to be said that my brother only has to make enough money for his own spending: he is in a privileged position of not having to pay rent or carry a household with the income earned. I think those situations are where the gig economy garners its negative reputation: it’s tremendously hard work, with super long hours, in order to make an adequate amount of money to support a family while driving for UBER or delivering groceries for Instacart. We’ve all read the new articles: it’s really tough work, with zero health benefits because these gig workers are treated as independent contractors.

All things considered, my brother is lucky to not be in such a position, and that the gig economy exist to help him make some money and go through this rough period before his personal issues get completely settled.

Showering thoughts

What is it about showers that induce me to start thinking ahead to the next day? Why can’t I simply enjoy the shower itself and not really think about anything at all?

Is this caused by the particular time I take showers? I do so at night right before I go to bed, so perhaps it triggers a sort of preparedness protocol and I start to get ready for the next work day. Best to not let any time go to waste, right? Get ready for tomorrow while I lather myself with suds.

This is a bad habit of mine that I prefer to get rid of, because thinking about the future takes me away from the present, and that’s always a dangerous game, not the least of which I don’t get to have the peace that the present is giving me (a shower should be a calming experience). How short-sighted is it to be thinking about tomorrow’s work when there’s still a whole night’s sleep to go; what usually happens is I carry those worries and simulations of what the next day will bring right into bedtime, which affects how quickly I can fall into slumber.

I need to just let it be.

Perhaps it’s a sign of the current situation that those of us with employment are slightly worried about how permanent it will remain. The coronavirus is still raging through this country, so there’s absolutely no predictability to the future; security one day can be gone the next. What do humans do when they feel like they don’t have control? They cling, and I reckon stressing over doing the job for the next day whilst in the shower the previous night is a form of clinging. The false impression that if I try extra hard at work, that will somehow save me from the layoff axe, should that come to be.

Even if there may be some truth to that, and that one should always strive to do the best regardless, stressing over work during off the clock hours is never a good thing. Unless that work is your life’s passion project, which my current employment definitely is not. In these times of COVID-19, having balance is crucial; those of us lucky enough to have the option, anyways.

Take care.

Survivor's guilt

With the world having turned upside down for so many Americans in losing their jobs and the massive amount of uncertainty that brings, it’s a somewhat awkward feeling from where I am standing in comparison. I’m immensely lucky to have kept my employment through this COVID-19 pandemic, and the rest of my family is doing alright as well. News of millions of people filing for unemployment brings me slight pangs of unease, that I am somehow undeserving to not be amongst the unfortunate. I am not all that special, so why has the lady of luck chose me?

That sense of guilt regarding my relative prosperity during this coronavirus situation gets turn into anxiety over if and when the pendulum of hurt will swing towards me, that the wheel of fortune will surely begin a downward fall from its heights. So then I overdo and overthink it when it comes to work, on the silly belief that I have to work extra hard to be deserving of me being okay while so many others are not. That’s when I start to become careless about details, and worrying about things that I have no control over. If another team is particularly busy with tasks, I would feel bad about not contributing, even though it’s decidedly not my area of expertise and focus.

This sort of useless grasping is super tiring, and not productive at all from a work standpoint and that of mental health. But I cannot help to be sucked into that line of thought from time to time, especially when I’ve just read on the news about companies laying off employees, or State budgets getting obliterated due to the shutdown. There must be something I have to do to keep my positive situation static, so I extend myself in fretting over things I have absolutely no control over.

And that’s a fraught path to go down. The fact that I have a job that the pandemic have not adversely affected is by pure chance. I am entirely grateful for it, obviously, and the only thing I can do is to continue execute tasks at work to the best I can. It’s not helpful to feel bad about being fine during this quarantine, and that I’m greatly looking forward to the end of sheltering-in-place. I shall deal with events as they arrived, rather than being anxious about potentialities. As of right now, everything is okay.

Pocari Sweat: the best non-alcoholic drink!

Bad news good news

It’s been a tough few days for the tech world: yesterday, AirBnb announced it’s cutting a massive 25% of its workforce, and today, UBER said it will be eliminating over 3,700 positions. It appears the tech sector won’t be immune to the job crunch caused by the coronavirus, especially if the business relies on people being out and about, and traveling to places. It's tough seeing other people lose their jobs, because it seeps in some doubt and anxiety about my own job security. You think you’ll safely weather through this and then suddenly, you get release papers; surely, many at AirBnb and UBER got such a shock.

The personnel cuts at these two companies have direct consequence to where I live, because both are headquartered here in San Francisco. This many high-paying jobs disappearing means people will leave, and that should cause downward pressure on rental prices, if classic supply and demand is to be followed. Not to be a shark smelling blood in the waters about this - you’d hope to be empathetic during these times - but that would be excellent news for me. If I’m lucky enough to still have employment out of this lockdown, I plan to finally move out of the house.

Talk about good timing.

The cost of rent in the San Francisco Bay Area is notoriously one of the highest in the nation, and before COVID-19 happened, there was no end in sight to those absurd prices because the city/region is super slow to build new housing to meet demand. The standard one-bedroom apartment costs nearly as much as my entire take-home pay, which is just insane because I make a solidly middle-class income. Those of us outside of the tech sector have somewhat low-key wished for a recession so that these people would move away from the area, and rent would go back down to slightly more affordable.

Again, the assumption is that I myself doesn’t get swept along with those job losses during the imagined recession. Well, the downturn is very real right now, and I’m lucky to still be afloat above the waters. Fingers crossed that continues.