22 weeks and choosing battles worth fighting

A week has passed since we came back from Cherating and the way I feel right now, it is as though we never went for vacation.

Call it whatever you want this past week....hectic, slumdog, downright mad, running just to stand still, frenzy....okay, okay....not slumdog...had to exaggerate a bit....

I admit that I lost my temper a few times in the office perhaps out of irritation and not able to be rational about the state of things. Being too principled does not help either. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow. Or put it another way, you have to choose your battles.

That is right. I have to learn that not all battles are worth fighting. Like I do with my kids these days. All three have obtained their first term test results and generally they have improved. I am less focussed on whether they obtain As but that they have improved. My neighbour once said that whenever the twin daughters of a friend of hers would show their exam results, regardless what the results are, she would just say, "well done, very good, you have done your best..." or something to that effect. It didn't matter what the grades were, but what mattered is the child's emotional well-being and that we recognize that any effort is still an effort.

That friend has since migrated to New Zealand and my neighbour has since moved to Brunei. Yeah....Anne is English married to a Malay and her friend is a New Zealander married to an Indian. They have long decided that the education approach here is not for their kids.

As opposed to another mother here, whose son does well in school, obtained 99% for God knows what subject, and demanded the teacher to explain why 1% was taken off from her son results, in other words he ought to be getting 100%.

I don't have that expectations anymore. I used to and it stressed the hell out of me and it did nothing to my kids grades. The more you pressure them, the more they (my kids) loathe school and school work. And of course it does nothing to my relationship with them.

I lost my temper last Sunday when I found out that Zarif has been drinking ice-water when he complains about his asthma all the time. And when he has been told not to drink ice-water. I shouted at him and in the car on the way to hospital to send him to have his ear infection checked, I realised that he was very quiet. While waiting to see the MO at the hospital, I apologized to him and said that I didn't mean to shout at him. Zarif, my gentle giant, just broke down and cried. Simply said, I felt bad. Zarif is just being a child. Like I did when I was his age and drank the F&N Orange during Hari Raya and suffered asthma attack in the middle of the night. I don't recall my parents ever shouting at me on drinking F&N Orange. All my late father did was change and sent me to hospital for my jab (those days there were no nebulizer) and waited for me to recover. Why did I do that to him? Why? I have no words to explain except irrationality takes over and I go berserk!

Back to work situation, most times I do set such high expectations on myself in responding to any circumstances. Sometimes I express my opinions too strongly. I recognize that and then rationalize that later. Both creates the stress for me and in a way for my direct reports, too.

That is why I need to choose the battles worth fighting. The organization was not built in a day and I can't change things in a day, too. Everything has to follow a certain process.

Baby is moving very actively and I have not been able to sleep for the past three nights. My skin itches, my back hurts, insomnia too perhaps, all that contribute to poor quality seep....