Blessed are the misfits

“Ita you can’t choose your boss, grow up!”  the CEO said that to me after my decision to left  the company.  It was a hard decision for me after 5 years in the company that randomly chose me as one of their staff without any relevant background nor enough experience. Five years is long enough for  millennials to stay at one company in Jakarta, unless they are being promoted or getting a holiday package to travel around exotic places from company.  

I did not have any other job offering at that time. I was super nothing to loose, I even did not apply for any office position at other companies during my free time or after office hour. I was just would like to clear up my mind after what had happened. I have been struggled for more than one year to fit the way of how my new supervisor worked.  It was very exhausting for me, when came to office just for financial motivation which is the lowest  level of motivation. It is like Pavlov’s theory of reward and punishment where my brain is same with the pigeon and dog.   If I come to office doing nice thing to my boss I will have a good appraisal,big bonus, and salary increment. Changing boss is not a new thing for me, during my 5 years tenure I have 5 bosses and 2 of them are old classic Japanese men that you can imagine how they want me to work.  So when the new CEO gave me that comment, all I could do just smiled and insisted with my resignation.

Many people regret my decision, my mum, my brother, my ex boss, but there is a time when enough is enough.  Mostly people will ask me where will I go? What job will I take? Which company that I will or already applied? How will I pay my bills? I had no answer for  those questions. It was just something inside me asked me to go the zero point of my life otherwise I will be  messed up at the office. Every time I went  home I got tired, I always asked myself,  “Is it worth it?” and the next question to myself,  “How many time you spend a day to complain about your job and your boss?”,  “How many time you spend a day for being grateful?”.  Suddenly it was clear, to me that:“How can I be grateful if I feel exhausted?”. I was tired to force myself to follow my new boss and management who gave me a lot of tasks and responsibilities to handle (I just realized that when they needed almost 2 years to find someone to replace me and during that time there were 3 part timers to do my job). 

“I wish I were as brave as you” my colleague said to me before I left.   For me –it was between not being brave enough or coward enough to run. It was about something that only I can see.  It was not visible, but at that time I just knew that I must  left.  So I left, and let the universe lead my way.  I even rejected some offering from the fashion retail company and also one of big  five consulting company. 

I did travel, tried new things, scratched from the ground to finance myself.  It was not a good fancy time, but it was not exhausting and most importantly I could feel grateful again.  No longer monthly salary, no longer bonus for Eid Mobarak, all I did is just to make my brain happy and focus with what I am going to do in the next 2 years. Set up new goal, started to practice for English test again as I planned to study abroad.

After 4 months jobless, one of my colleagues contacted me and offered me job.   She is actually from the sister company of my previous office. The office’s environment looks so nice and it is nice, really. Well, there was a time I had to adapted myself again into the office life but after that, everything went OK.  Until now, it is still the best office with the best people and the best team I ever had, it was a dream team.  However at that time I still felt misfit, because I had feeling that I need to fulfill my target to study abroad.  It was dilemmatic for me for couple months, the confusion, the stress, the ambiguity of what will happen if I really go abroad, plus endless work load during peak season, plus chicken pox (I got chicken pox for the first time of my life). 

Finally I have to decide and I decided to took the  peril. I resigned and risked my career by studying abroad to the country where I had no idea what will be happened to me. No family, no friends, no boyfriend, I started from zero again.  

The unbelievable thing is few months after my leaving. Someone told me that my last office will be closed and the dream team will be dismissed. It was sad to hear that, I knew them, they work well and make everything simple and clear.  So I thought,“If I had not left then I will be jobless” and maybe that’s the reason why my inner self felt the misfit-ness despite how comfortable it was to work with them. 

It is become clear for me that being misfit is not something that I have to complain about. It’s only the way how myself, my inner self reacts to the upcoming things. Some people may get confuse with me. Even my friend told me “You seem not really know what you want!” , but the thing is not everyone see what I see. Not everyone understands the misfit feeling that leads me through this way.  I am not an oracle nor shaman. The things that I always do to myself is keep asking myself: “Am I grateful enough?” and  “Is it worth it?”.