I work for an organization who takes pride in striking a balance between work and life, commonly known as 'work-life' balance. Frankly, throughout my 3 years of working here, I have only experienced it once, and that, was in my first year within the organization. At that time, I experienced a wholesome experience of planning in the office, communicating with contractors, executing the job on-site on the ocean, interacting with more people apart from contractors, getting the data that I need, analyzing it in the office and producing reports on the job.
After a completed cycle, I will get 2 weeks off, just to compensate for the hardship experienced. (Although at that time, I didn't think that it was hardship at all. I was only too happy to work , and to earn d extra holidays, which allowed me to travel to every country, as often as I liked.) I even had the chance to sit at home and watch countless movies, write to my heart's content and engage in endless banter.
I have digressed. Back to my current situation.
In my first few months in the new department, life was hectic. First, I had to embrace hydrocarbon accounting. Personally, I don't like numbers very much. To me, they only end up confusing my light, feather-haired brains. I love descriptions. I love sceneries. I love reading and writing of all sorts. Not numbers. They confuse me, more than making me alive.
So, for the first quarter, I spent countless nights staying up, balancing the spreadsheets, ensuring the numbers tallied with each other, from one worksheet to another. I had to colour code each cell, each section, bolding the titles, checking it for every well, every string, every reservoir and countless other spreadsheets to ensure it tallied.
When it didn't tally, I often turned to my housemate who was in the banking industry, who did accounting with real money on a daily basis. She was such an excellent help that she solved everything in just a matter of seconds, which, if it were left up to me, would have taken me days and hours just to find out the source of the error.
Later on, I was assigned to help out in the interpretation and analysis of data from other fields. Analyzing pressure data was what I loved. So, soon, I got so involved in the job that I began spending more and more time at the office, discussing with geologists, fellow reservoir engineers, geophysicists and countless other professions on the possibilities of existing barriers.
At the same time, I was exposed to an entirely new aspect of my job, which was dealing with entirely new softwares and forecasting numbers. The first time I did it, I cried to my heart's content. Wondering what on earth did I do wrong to deserve all these hardship. Couldn't we just outsource it to any of the available engineers around us? Nevertheless, in times like these, jobs are hard to come by. Challenging as it may be, I just have to 'suck it up' , be a dear, and finish up my job. I came to the office on weekends and stayed on until late in the night, just to view the results and submit a few more runs before I returned home.
It was a hectic, and tiring journey. Had there been bathrooms and beds present next to my workstation, I would have been so glad to be able to just live there forever.
The job took 6 months to complete. When the job was approved and the reporting cycle had ended, I was so relieved. Suddenly, I looked up and saw that I had turned into a sulky, anti-social, temperamental individual. I had skipped lunches, dinners, just to finish up the work. I had less lunch appointments. I had less exercise regimes. I hadn't even travelled to any of the countries that I have been planning all this while at all too!
Oh! No! Where had all the time gone to? What have I done with my previous, perky, bright and cheerful, innocent self? Oh no! I........ have been transformed into an a typical gray rat with whiskers, who rode on the rodent's vicious wheel of life, cycling and cycling non stop on the wheel of no return.
That, was when I uttered, "Congratulations, Jean. Welcome to the rat race."
