Plan.

Prologue: As I was thinking on fleshing out this post, it's important for me to note that most of thing that I will be talking about as you read along should be defined mostly on a professional, management dimension though personal dimension will be involved from time to time. You'll get the drift somehow so read along.  

Planning. Organization. Responsibility.

Urgh.

There are no other words in this world that can evoke such a torrent of mixed feeling inside my gut than these three words. Hearing these words in any context these days makes my emotion sloshes violently, brain cracking into dust and gut churning in discomfort. Unfortunately, these three words occurs disturbingly frequent in our daily life but none more so when you're a budding, young adult in this world.

Let's be frank, I will never be able to grasp whatever is needed in order to be a master in plan or planning, organization or organizing and responsibility or being responsible. (like how my soul withered, brain cracked and body shuddered in fear as I plan my Gantt Chart for my research, originally for application purposesbut now has been officially modified and adapted as per suggestion from my supervisor as my milestone chart. Imagine my surprise when she mentioned about it during our meet today like shite just got real or something. Maybe it's a natural progression on how thing should be work but I am still genuinely surprise. Luckily the better part of my conscience reminded me to bring it along. Guess I still had that small amount of self-conscience inside of me. Oh where was I?) I am not entirely sure how these skills or values eluded me. Maybe it was me who eluded these things altogether. I don't know. Remember those Diari Sekolah (I think most school have it these days) and Buku Perancangan Bestari (Highian will know this *wink*. It's basically a study planner.) that comes along as you bought all those official school stationary? It started with blank pages to fill in your plans or key events or days to pass up your homework at the start of the year, it's still mostly blank pages as the years closes for me aside from those few blank spaces that I remembered to fill in once in blue moon for whatever importance it had for my school life. Same thing for that Buku Perancangan Bestari in which we're supposed to do our study plan each and every day. Some really hardworking people did that but I never done that and I dare bet most of my peer didn't. In fact, it has come to a point that the school makes it compulsory for us student to do study plan and our form teacher has to sign it. I think making it compulsory is the worst idea that school management manage to thought up of just to make Buku Perancangan Bestari remotely useful both for student and teacher. I know there must be some student and teacher who enjoyed whatever benefit of Buku Perancangan Bestari has but for me, it didn't because I fill it in with whatever random crap of arrangement that I can think up when the deadline to submit the Buku Perancangan Bestari to my form teacher to check approaches. Definitely didn't learn or appreciate the beauty of study plan there. Oh talking about all those last minute planning stuff in high school, don't even get me started on NILAM/Reading Lamp (St. Thom has such a naming sense.) or the reading programme to encourage students to read certain amount of books every year. You see, they have an allocation for amount of books we need to read every year for BM, BI and (for Highian) Chinese books and at the end of year, we need to submit it to the form teacher (again) to certify it and those avid reader will be qualified for prizes. Again, those who love reading for the sake of reading will definitely enjoy it and I do enjoy reading too. Unfortunately for me however, the things that I actually like to read which are atlases (I know I am weird.), National Geography, Times, Newsweek and newspapers weren't considered as READING MATERIAL simply because it's not books per se. I am not in anyway interested in reading fictions such as Harry Potter or Singaporean Ghost Stories and all kinds of horror shit. I have no idea why these horror shits are actually popular for young readers back then but I am certainly not a fan. What about books in BM or Chinese? It has come to a point again that the school makes it compulsory to fulfill the basic requirement as if our life hangs on to it and didn't hesitate in penalizing those who didn't read the bare minimum by deducting their marks in English, BM or Chinese. I got royally screwed once (or in another perspective, I royally screwed myself) when I was in Form 2. It was end of year checking time and being the lazy me, I did whatever I can last minute to reach the bare minimum. My NILAM supervisor which was my Form 1 form teacher that seems to have a grudge against me (Because I scribbled on my exercise books which end up her chastising me in front of the whole class and ask to write everything again in a clean exercise book. My Form 1 time was miserable and it haunts me til this day. She didn't even address me by name when she saw my class practicing choral speaking and comment about my line. I don't understand why everybody else adore her but I don't. These grudges forms a great part of misery that I had in lower form which makes me glad when I moved on to Form 3.) and she just dashed everything that I read last minute with a red pen. I remember I tear the stupid NILAM book in pieces and chuck it somewhere I can't see it at home. What a GREAT way of learning planning.

I know after reading from all these crap above that some of you will just say that I just got it to myself and I deserve all the shits that I had back then. The point I am trying to make (if I am trying to make) is that I don't like planning and organizing and responsibility when it's forced upon me. My mom always wanted to me make a daily activity timetable and she even buy folders and files asking me to arrange everything in order just to make my table seems much more orderly. I tried it for a short while but sorting stuff into orders itself is such as time consuming ordeal that I just give up doing it altogether pissing my mom off in process and instead relied on orderly chaos (not sure if there's such a phrase) with rudimentary guide for studying and organizing stuff. Planning my day ahead and organizing stuff in order is definitely not stuff in order is definitely not the stuff that I am OCD about as long as I remember that I need to wake up and sleep, eat my lunch and dinner, go to tuition (mom paid for it so she will make me anyway) and study stuff that I feel like studying at home or library. I still manage to finished my high school somewhat decently if not without its ups and downs though the notion of I would have done better constantly creeps in into my mind or when my parent mentions about it. That's when I got depressed again.

They say all the skills needed to become responsible in general starts at home. I did assume responsibility at home but the thing that I learned from responsibility at home is that at least 30 minutes is needed to cook the rice in rice cooker, remember to flap the laundry before hanging it with cloth hangers and the broom last longer if we sweep more gently (and even until now I haven't mastered these judging from all the comments that I receive from my family about the rice I cooked, the cloth I hanged and the floor I sweep.). I am not sure when I actually started actively resisting conditioning but responsibility at home definitely didn't follow me into my highschool life. I quitted St. John Ambulance in Form 2 because going for exam and camping and running donation drive is tiring for a kid like me and all the other clubs I joined through out the five year in my highschool life usually end up inactive or being duped into it by those scheming individual in my class while promising some sort of post for free. Here and then I did tried joining active club such as Science and Math Club or Chinese Language Society but being an inactive late comer means that I will be totally out of place and failed to blend in. At the end of my highschool life, the club I joined are just for bare minimum and all the achievement that I had in form 4 and form 5 are all personal achievement. If what people say is true about school as the jumping board in assuming group/professional responsibility, then I guess my life has screwed beyond recognition from that highschool onward by missing out that crucial part of experience as a student and left its toll in all angles of life that I am in right now in both social life (no common cliques) and professional skills. (To offer another angle though, it also said that appointment in school clubs are all clique based or whether you're in sync with the teacher in charge so it wouldn't be in anyway resembles the reality outside...or is it? *cock eyebrow cynically. But then they will rationalize it by saying: it's early exposure!). The lack of motivation in planning, organizing or being responsible had certainly spilled over subconsciously into my Form 6 and subsequently university life. I tried to change my outlook in my university time and enthralled by all the chintzes and bang, joined AIESEC. When I look back the good old days of first year, I am foolhardy and an idiot to think that I can actually achieve something meaningful by assuming responsibility and being a committee in activities and such. What happen in the end was my personal incompetence marred by past creeps in which was made worse further with all the politics and mismanagement not to mention the very basis on how AIESEC is structured back then had left me disenchanted and disappointed. Maybe it was my problem, maybe it was theirs but I left with bleeding hearts and t-shirts. My next two years of involvement in course clubs (PPIK and BATI) didn't get any better as well especially when being pushed to the position again and again which ALL of them end up under performed and occasionally ends in disaster or another. That's experience of responsibility for me, ladies and gentlemen.

You know, all these failed experience in planning, organizing and being a responsible person had left me so jaded in thinking about these stuffs that whenever there's a situation requiring these stuff, I will quiver in fear bordering mental breakdown. Why can't I do my stuff in my own pace? Why must I plan everything when there's always a chance that I will fail in doing it because of fate throwing some wrench in it making it spinning out of control. I know plans are done because we want to assert some certainty in our life but still there are stuff that which we'll never be able to predict as much as we tried to by taking in consideration some degree of error. You may say these failures are part of experience that we can learn from but unfortunately I didn't see anything that I can learn from here. Just let me do my stuff the way I want it to be. Don't force me too much. Let me get used to things slowly. Don't force me to retreat further because I am just too fearful of reality anymore.

Epilogue: As you can see from here ladies and gentlemen, I am saddled with lots of emotional baggage that I haven't been able to get over with even after so many years. I know those of you who feel (and some really are) that you're way better than me as a human will tell me to DEAL WITH IT and GET OVER IT. All I am asking is just some form of understanding and patience. Then some of you might remind me how merciless life and reality is in general. Which I will just reply: screw me, screw you, screw reality. I am just a loner incapable of expression certain part of personal emotion anyway. Come to think of it, I am not sure either how the writing took a turn somewhere away from the original point that I was trying to make during the start of this writing but oh well, a rant is a rant even if its depressing content is incongruous with the warm colour of my bloggies. At least I can take in comfort with the fact that it has been a while I wrote a blogpost revealing my inner thought and it doesn't involve anything with food or outing, a change from the usual if you will. I think I will refrain for further negative post though because it's really getting into me so expect a more upbeat post or at least boring post about what I eat and what I had done and such.