Skip to main content

A Year in review for 2021 - Part 1 ( career)

Image
By Rena
With 2021 coming to an end in a few years, it's time to look back at what I've done in this year.

2021 has been the best year in my life. Not because of career, not because of investment (I didn't invest in any crypto or NFTs). Rather, this is a year where I saw many things in a different light, and decide to live life in a different way.

There are some things that I try. There are some stuff that I walked away from, and there are things where I changed my perspective on. 

I started this blog more than 5 years ago to talk about 6 aspects, which I want to focus on as a CEO of my own life:

- career ( which I referred to as my current business)
- new businesses ( simply see it as side hustles)
- personal development
- health
- finance
- family

This is a year where I've truly thought about all 6 aspects, and made some improvements to them. The changes in all these, are truthfully due to clarity of what I really want. 

In part 1 of year in review, I'll review my career for 2021.



I always seey job as a transaction between me and my employer. In exchange for my time and effort, I get paid money. What I wrote here in the past, is still what I truly believe in. And as I work more years, this belief gets more deeply ingrained in me. 

I've felt sick of working for many years. I tried changing a job and nope, I still dread work. I am lazy. I dread working what I do. Even the act of switching on my PC hurts. I even did some consultancy job for my friend mid this year. But I realized, I don't love engineering job. Not because I don't like science, but because in engineering work, it involves dealing with so many people. A lot of work needs help from others which I have no control of. I hate having to do a task which I can't do fully and need to pray the upstream do their part so I can hand in my work. I remembered when I used to teach tuition, I feel in control. If I need to teach a topic or a skill, I just need to make sure I deliver. If the student never do homework, I'll structure my lesson such that we cover the homework as well. It's not such a helpless feeling.  

There are things I enjoy doing. Preparing slides and presenting; collecting data and writing report. I realized, I am not a people person, and people drain me. And because of my lack of love for being with people, I am usually in front of the laptop at work. In most firms, there is a concrete ceiling for technical roles. Beyond, it is managerial roles, which I would be passed for. 

My job is to some extend physically demanding. Sometimes, I climb up and down on ladders. I recalled being overseas during winter at sub 27 degrees, and climbing up a 20m? tower. At the top, I could feel the strong winds blowing at me and marvelled with disgust how I made my way up. I told myself then that in a few years, I would stop doing it. I did stop doing temporarily, thanks to COVID. But, travel restrictions will be lifted, one day. When that day happens, do I still want to do this? 

I reached the MOP of my flat this year, and went house hunting. We looked at a lot. From landed properties, to condominiums, to HDB. After looking at enough landed properties that I have shortlisted - mostly one storey and/or  needed massive renovations, are run down, I decided I can't afford the after factoring in cost of massive renovations.  Next I looked at condominiums, and many have rooms that are just too small. in my current place, each room can hold a queen bed, wardrobes and study table. One of my rooms even have an electric piano on top of that. Many condos can't give me that within my affordability range. To me, living in a condo smaller than my current home is a downgrade. So, private property is out. Now, my focus is to get a HDB with a size bigger than my current one, at reasonable price. And since I have a place to live, and am not in a hurry to move, I can look out until one ticke all my boxes.

With this decision not to upgrade to a private property, then how necessary is it for me to work?  So I took a look at my expenses vs my interest and dividend income from bonds and shares. Far cry! So in short, no I can't stop working.

If I can't stop working, can I take a sabbatical?

So, I did a risk assessment if I didn't work. I wrote about it here , and realized that if I could go on without working for 5 years.

Yeah, you could say I could wait till I have enough to last a lifetime before finding what I like. But if so, why not now?

I left my job some months back. I have 5 years to find something I enjoy doing and pays me. 5 years. 5 years should be more than enough to find it.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

After 2 years of Sabbatical from Work, THIS IS IT!

By Rena
I took a sabbatical from the corporate work back in end 2021. It's going to be my 2-year anniversary for my sabbatical. But , it's time to get serious earning money full-time. Here's why... Meeting Passive Income Objective I haven't been working, and my income was mainly contributed by my passive income from dividends/stocks . If it goes as it is, my passive income this year should be about $2000/ month , or about $24,000 a year. This is $6000 up from last year. Going at this rate, I should grow at $6000/ year. Just like GDP which is always reported as an increment rather than at absolute amount, so does passive income growth, doesn't it? The amount of cash that I have, has slowly been used for invested. And to meet the growth target, it's basically increasing the returns, putting more into the investments, or both. At my comfort level, I'm going with increasing the amount invested. This means finding fresh funds. A full-time job should solve this problem
Post a Comment
Read more

I worked NOT in 2022 - Here's my income report and lessons learnt

By Rena
It's late January of 2023, and while it seems a bit late to talk about 2022, it's probably a year where I should pen down because it's different from the rest.  2022 was a year where I worked not at all since I graduated, and I wanted to pen my thoughts. For curiosity sake, I typed in my topic into the chatGPT, and this was what it gave: Well, how do you find ChatGPT's year? I would rate ChatGPT's response as highly excellent. If I were some student writing some journal entry just to submit for as homework, I'll probably submit this. But while AI can help us with general task, it cannot be us, unless we feed in enough inputs for it.  So below is my version, of how 2022 was, a year where I worked NOT. My Income For 2022 Below is a chart showing my income for 2022. And they are broadly divided into 3 sources: Interest from bonds (including the Singapore saving bonds, but excluding T bills), dividends and T- bills. My Income for 2022  The 6 months T-bills become
Post a Comment
Read more

Passive Income Report YTD and Plans forward

By Rena
I worked not this year, and here's my income for the first 3 quarters of 2023: My income comes from 3 sources: Interest income from T bills,  Interest income from bonds (which includes Singapore Saving bonds and other retail bonds), and  Dividends (mainly from STI ETFs, with some other stocks). This year was an improvement from last year's income ( read here ), not because of what I've done this year, but from what I've  done last year - delayed gratification. Even more delayed gratification, was from the saving I accumulated since I started working.  Grateful to myself for having few material desires.  If $2000 is the minimum survival sum, I probably survived 62.5% of the time. If I average out the 8 months, I met the minimum survival sum on a monthly basis. My goal for this year is to hit $24,000 passive income, and with 66.7% of the year passed, I'm 70% there. June has been the best month to date, and as you can see, it's contributed mainly through intere
Post a Comment
Read more