Day 3 of writing every day.
I’ve been feeling quite stressed out recently and it’s all because of my schedule. Normally I’d work starting from 9 or 10 in the morning and I’d handle 8 hour work days just fine because I’d have Aikido to look forward to after work. I wouldn’t have eaten anything after a late-ish lunch but I wouldn’t feel like I’m starving when practice ends at 9 PM.
Despite having taken a pay cut moving to my current job, things have been mostly smooth for one and a half years. However, it seems my schedule is really subject to change at my current employer’s whims and I find myself working 11 to 8 since the end of November until my assignment ends or I get shifted elsewhere.
How big of a pay cut did I take? I was feeling unchallenged and that there was no room to grow at my last job, but the pay after factoring all the benefits was the equivalent of a few hundred US dollars more every month, amounting to a couple thousand dollars a year.
It might be a drop in the bucket for those who earn six figures or more, but by Japanese income standards that’s like the difference between an entry level job with no experience and training versus a mid-level position with qualifications. My last job even had a paltry bonus even though the earnings by the company weren’t that great.
I’d work 9 to 6 in the city, getting off work around the same time the majority of workers do, with a few hours left in the evening to go out or go home and relax. It was a small midsized company that hired the bare minimum amount of people to keep things running, so there’d be busy days of non-stop working, but it wasn’t challenging in the sense of using your head, just the sheer volume of documents to process.
I thought I’d found something better when I found the job posting for my current job. It was a position in an industry I appreciated as a pastime and specifically sought out people who have a high level of English and Japanese language abilities. They didn’t state their hours and while the starting pay seemed kinda low, it said it was negotiable based on experience.
I got the job and unsurprisingly was offered the low base salary with a take it or leave it contract. Every company handles things differently but I might go into that tomorrow. Or maybe not. I’m just writing depending on my mood right now and if something more positive wells up, I’ll write about that instead tomorrow.
Thanks for reading!
One Chance Works 