J/BLØG

It has been quite an emotional and mental rollercoaster in the last couple of days. After the feeling of contentment on Sunday, Monday gave me a curved ball and an additional stress.

I received a call mid-morning from the Head of Retail Products to notify me that I hadn’t been successful in my application to move to his department as the Manager of Analytics. We had the interview on Friday and I thought I did well – it was my attempt to show my effort that I was open to staying with the company despite the circumstances. I thought that I shouldn’t just wait for offers and opportunities to come my way and that I should make my own move. Well, it didn’t work out at the end, so it did put a dampener on my mood last night. At the moment, I’m quickly moving down the slide again, back to being 85% sure about leaving the company.

It is quite a scary prospect having to face the uncertain economic situation and realising that the career choice that I made only has limited opportunities in Adelaide. I still don’t want to move out of Adelaide because I have a house here, and I am keen to settle down and build a family. However, ultimately if I do need to make that move, I suppose I will have to look for other opportunities in Melbourne or Sydney. The whole process has wearied me mentally – it has been really exhausting and taxing … If it were not for my faith in God, I would’ve slipped into depression easily. He gives me mental, spiritual and emotional sustenance as I walk through the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.

My situation makes me think about faith and challenges – this year’s supposed to be my year based on the chinese zodiac but it has been the most challenging year in my life thus far. I don’t believe in zodiacs and fortune-telling and I have been taking each day as it comes. At times I am tempted to think ‘What have I done wrong to deserve all of this?’, thankfully God has given me years of character building so that I don’t entertain the thought for too long. I know that problems and challenges befallen everybody – no matter how right or wrong you are. As I walked through the pedestrians’ crossing this morning, a phrase came to my mind:

‘The measure of faith is not the amount of problems encountered, but the number of challenges withstood.’

And you can quote me on that one. 🙂