I’ve always been the type of person who will bend over backwards to try to anticipate what people want and do it.  At the expense of my personal enjoyment, I’ll let them have their way and enjoy something before I do.  I’m constantly proactively thinking about what I can do to not get in their way and to be more considerate to them in ways they may not notice, but would make a difference.  I’ve certainly not been completely successful and still step on people’s toes despite that foresight, but I still try, even if it means I’m always evaluating how other people might think.  It’s a tiring process and I’ve been jaded a few times, but I still tend to act that way.

More recently my strong-willed side has come out more and though I spend no less time thinking about how people would react to my actions, I care less.  After all, I can’t always live my life by everyone else’s rules and time and time again I’ve suppressed a lot to please someone else.  I’m worn out from years of giving, giving, giving.  Giving my time, my money, my energy, my resources.  I’ve got stepped on, walked over, and even trampled a few times that way when I allowed too much and didn’t stand up for myself.  So nowadays, I spend some time justifying my actions when they aren’t so people-pleasing.

Now this is how I'd like to work if I had to be at a desk. photo credit: expresspros.com

Take work for example.  My working style is erratic and varied, with plenty of distractions throughout the day.  I’m not the type of person to sit down and focus for hours on end, complete a task early, then call it a day.  Instead I meander through, sometimes chatting with others, sometimes checking e-mails or social networking sites, sometimes reading articles for personal enjoyment and enrichment.  All of this goes towards what I consider an important aspect of all our lives – personal improvement.

Often people get so caught up in their work that they don’t take the time to make themselves a better person, a better worker, a better friend.  I tend to focus on the gaining new knowledge aspect of it, but sometimes I’ll turn to my interpersonal skills as well.  This translates to a confusing picture for anyone looking over my shoulder, who will find that I have thirty tabs open at any given time and switch between them quite frequently.  To some, it may look like I’m slacking, but I’m too tired to try to make everyone understand.

So, I’ve been justifying it to myself: I still work quite efficiently overall and there are periods of intense focus (usually when nobody else is around).  The bosses know the product of my time and though we’ve talked about how I let my fear of failure hold me back, all feedback on the quality of my work has been positive.  My work is internal development, which is always ongoing and has no real deadline to meet.  Of course, I set incremental ones, but really I could be working until the cows come home and still have the bulk of work to do.  So, it’s not like I can just finish a project and be done for the day.  Put these together and that’s how I explain to myself why I don’t need to work like the others do.  It’s not my style.

photo credit: art.com

I almost don’t care what the others may think of what they see.  I used to worry that people would think I napped too much, but that’s just another way that my body copes with work.  I’ve come to the point where if I need to rest, I will, and for as long as my body tells me to.  Whereas before I may have tried to hide that fact by sneaking to a corner or setting an alarm so I didn’t sleep for extended periods, now I am accepting my personal work style.  It’s extremely unconventional and I’m lucky that this environment is very flexible and forgiving.

I guess that’s why I’m so adamant about not getting a typical desk job.  I know I’d fall asleep in the middle of the day.  I know I’d get antsy and want to move around or just surf around a bit online.  For me, it’s still a part of my creative and learning processes, so it’s not exactly time wasted.  I don’t know how I could stand to show up to work at 9 every day, sit and focus, take a lunch break, then complete the day and leave.  It’s such a stale routine.

Though I try a bit less to please everyone now (which, of course, is impossible, since not everyone will know all the factors and will often misinterpret things), I am still often concerned with it.  However, I’ve learned to not always change my behavior to fit what I think others want.  In fact, it turns out that some of the things that I have been doing that I thought were considerate was being seen as strange behavior.  Suddenly being independent was being seen as being aloof and being conservative with resources was being strangely stingy.  I guess I’m screwed no matter what.

Asian on the outside, Asian-American through and through.

It only struck me here that I am so strongly Westernized and even though Singapore has huge Western influences, it is still very much an Asian society at heart.  The things that I do that I never had a problem with before are suddenly all problematic.  There are many layers to the misunderstandings that have occured, but much of it stems from the cultural divide.  Just like I am deceptively Asian with my standard Mandarin accent, Singaporeans are deceptively Western with their lifestyles, but deep down, it’s a completely different story.

I guess the hardest thing is that people expect me to know all the nuances of Asian culture because I look the part.  They hear past my American accent and only see my Chinese face and assume that I know what it’s like in an Asian culture.  But in fact, I left the country when I was only three and have since spent twenty years in the states.  It wasn’t even until I moved to California nearly seven years ago that I met so many other Asians.  The bulk of my childhood was spent among white people (the Midwest doesn’t offer much diversity).

I wonder about all the things that I must have done as a child visiting in China (that I didn’t even realize were different) that my relatives just wrote off as a trait of being “the American” one.