The Peter Principle of Life

The Peter Principle is based on the idea that in the workplace an employee being considered for a promotion is evaluated based on his performance in his current role rather than on his qualifications for the new position. This results in employees being promoted only until they "rise to the level of their incompetence." That is, until they reach a position that is beyond their skills and/or qualifications.

After months of fruitless job-searching, it felt like I've reached my own level of incompetence in life: being stuck as an unemployed university graduate. It's not an entirely unfamiliar feeling, really. Throughout my life, whenever I was about to graduate from one "life stage" into another, a part of me would fear that perhaps I didn't deserve it; that maybe there's been some kind of mistake or oversight and that I've somehow just managed to slip through the cracks and was woefully ill-prepared for the next stage to come. Of course, it wasn't always this way. I remember a time way, waaayy back when I believed myself to be fully capable of facing life's challenges, just like everyone else. In fact, I had even harbored some hope and ambition that not only would I survive life, but I would excel in it. The kid me was ever confident that I could be a shining example of goodness and success for all to follow.

So yeah, I had a pretty positive outlook on life back then, but it didn't last long. Looking back, I think a large part of my optimism was due to a seriously erroneous notion I had when I was a kid: that school, and life in general, would progress at a more or less consistent rate. In other words, I thought that my level of learning and personal development would run parallel with the difficulty of the problems that I will be facing. Take math for example. When I was a child I was under the impression that by the time I began learning algebra, it would be as easy as when I was learning multiplication and division, or addition and subtraction before that. It sounds pretty stupid now, but I really used to think that our minds would be able to simplify the complexities of the world into child-like manageability by becoming more complex themselves. What I didn't realize until later was that life's complexities actually progressed in a more exponential manner, while our own development appears to be stuck on linear growth. The result is that while we may be able to navigate through life after childhood, the effort required to do so becomes increasingly taxing on our minds.

And so it was that I went through life living in fear that I would one day reach a point when the problems of my exponentially growing world would become too great for my linear growing mind to handle; the day that I reach my level of incompetence. With every new stage in life, I felt more and more certain that I wouldn't be able to make it through to the other side. It started to feel that way in high school, grew stronger when I entered university, and after my graduation the feeling became so strong it threatened to leave me paralyzed at an existential level; the feeling that I have no idea what I'm doing here with my life and that I'll never be competent enough to figure it out. We're all familiar with the saying "fake it til you make it," but so far it feels like I've been faking it all my life, like an actor perpetually stuck in rehearsal and never ready for the real thing.

But just as I was beginning to lose hope, a little something happened last month that changed my daily grind of job-searching: I got myself a part-time job at the local movie theatre. It may not sound like much, just a minimum wage position designed to give high schoolers and university students some extra income, but it's definitely better than sitting at home watching my days waste away; plus it does come with some pretty neat perks (free movies for this movie-lover? Yes please!). Of course, I've no intention of making this the final destination of my work life. Instead, it will serve as the first stop in what I hope to be a rich and rewarding journey to finding a career that holds true personal meaning to me. In addition, my brother and I have both been accepted into an accounting program beginning this fall, which we hope would help our prospects in the future. My brother and I have never shared a class together before, so this should prove to be a most interesting and unique experience for us; something I very much look forward to.

Post-graduate life may have started out as underwhelming and depressive, and it may continue to stay that way for a while yet; but now I am no longer trapped in the fear of reaching my level of incompetence, because I know now that it is up to me to define that level. The best is yet to come.

Multiple Selves

This one took a bit longer to publish than the others, but here it is, my third article for the Elite Daily.

http://elitedaily.com/life/many-multiple-selves/884442/

If you're so inclined, please share it with others, it would really help me me out. And if you feel like commenting, please comment on the article itself if you can. Thanks a bunch!

So This Is Christmas...

Well folks, it's that time of year again. Colorful lights fill up the night as friends and families everywhere celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and/or some of the other holidays around this time. They may have different names, but the one thing they all have in common is a celebration of togetherness.

I promised myself that I would make a post for Christmas day, and usually I don't like to make posts in which I cannot contribute any significant insights or otherwise interesting thoughts; but I guess this can be an exception. Honestly, I don't think I can tell you anything about the holiday spirit that you don't already know, so I think I'll just give a little snippet on how my own Christmas turned out this year.

Let's see here. On the down side it's been almost four months since I've begun my job hunt, but sad to say I still remain in the population of the unemployed. On the bright side, my family is here with me again, just like they have been every year. But unlike in years past, this reunion will be a fairly short one. Since my brother has found a teaching job in London, he is only here in Canada on a two week break. Likewise, my mother will return to Hong Kong after a month's time here. Two weeks really isn't a whole lot of time, and it'll be at least another 6 months before I see my mother again; 7 months for my brother. Because of this, I find myself cherishing our time together more so than in previous years. So my troubles may not be miles away; heck it's not even out of sight, but I'm having a merry little Christmas this year nonetheless because I've already got what matters most. I wish a Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Observations on Love

Here's an article I've written about some things I've learned about love. For the record, I have felt and experienced love in my life, so the title isn't quite accurate...not sure why they went with that. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy!

http://elitedaily.com/dating/6-lessonsobservations-love-dating-virgin/823723/

(Please comment on the site itself if you can, thanks!)

Blog Hop

I really should have made this post two months back, my deepest apologies for the mega-delay. Anyhow, here it is, my little contribution to this Blog Hop!

First I'm supposed to answer this question: Why are you working on the project you are writing now? Why is it important? (to you, or to the world, or…)

Well technically there are several projects I'm working on, but most of them are just small-piece articles so I'll stick with my first original work: this blog. I started this blog in the hopes of refining my writing skills, create more exposure for my writing, and to share topics and thoughts of interest with the world. So far, I'd say things have been going pretty well. Thanks to a blog share group on LinkedIn, I've been able to share my blog with plenty of my fellow writers and bloggers while enjoying their literary works as well. The comments I've received have been very positive and encouraging, so I hope I'm doing at least something right! As for why I think it's important to me, it's probably because of my strong belief in the power of words. To create something from nothing, to convey meaning from such meaningless characters, I think, is a privilege that should be used to its fullest potential.

Next is the honorable mention of the lovely Robin. Many thanks for introducing me to this blog hop and for jump-starting the whole project! You can find her blog here: http://leave-the-frigging-marshmallows.blogspot.ca/

Finally, I'm going to nominate two delightful bloggers I've had the pleasure to meet to continue the blog hop:

Kelly Boyer Sagert is a freelance writer with a great sense of humor.
Chris Rose is a writer who also works as a translator. Naturally he's fascinated with language.

Go check out their blogs! I promise you won't be disappointed.

Existential Struggles

So recently I've become a contributing writer for the Elite Daily and I'm very excited to share my first article with everyone! Hope you enjoy it!

http://elitedaily.com/life/existential-struggles/795250/

Heart So Jet Lagged

Once again, summer has come and gone much too quickly and I am still struggling to process that fact, except...this time it's a whole different feeling.

From elementary school to high school to post-secondary education, students of all ages are guaranteed a summer holiday (though the length of that may vary depending on factors such as part-time work and summer school). The point is, no matter how short summer vacation always seems to be, these students can count on next year to deliver another one. Alas, my time as a student has finally passed me by. Having graduated from university this June, this summer may very well be the last time that I have a guaranteed, official, no-strings-attached summer holiday. What comes next is anybody's guess.

It's been nearly two weeks since I came back from my two months vacation in Hong Kong, and yet I still feel like I haven't fully come back in some way. The jet lag is gone, but it seems like my heart is still jet lagged to Hong Kong-summer mode. It's not just the freedom and lack of responsibility that I miss (though it did feel pretty great), but it was also all my friends and family over there, the atmosphere, the lifestyle, everything. I stumbled upon this quote some time ago by the writer Azar Nafisi that I find to be quite true:

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place. Like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."

I guess you can say I'm still recovering from post-summer-stress-disorder, but really, it's more than that. In a sense, this summer had marked the end of my 'childhood', and I don't mean childhood in the conventional sense. By that, I mean it's the end of all my official education (for now at least), the end of having a reason or excuse to hide and protect me from the real world.

What I just said may sound a little familiar, since I did make a similar post about graduating a while back, but it's different in that right now I'm not actually too worried about the future. Instead, I'm feeling a massive wave of nostalgia for my entire life up to this point. Up until now my life has always been more or less structured, with a regular, daily routine to things. Sure, I've had difficulties along the way, but there'd always been a clear, specific goal in overcoming them. Given that most of the problems in my young life has been academic, it was always clear to me what I needed to do in order to solve them. No matter how bad things were back then, there was always an objective, some sort of solution to work towards; an end goal. But the real world doesn't work like that. You're thrown out there after all your learning and somehow, through all the noise and confusion, you have to find your place in it. I knew from the start that it was never going to be easy, but what I didn't know was how woefully ill-equipped I would when the time came. It's a little too late for regrets now, but damn...I sure miss the good old days. I guess that's all the more reason to get my life together, so that I'll have even more good old days to look back on.

Well, I think that's all for tonight. Sorry if my post got a little depressing, but I do feel better for writing it. And to any of my fellow readers/writers out there struggling through life for whatever reason, or maybe just having a bad day, I wish you all good luck, and goodnight.