What am I doing now?
I tend to sit in my room, just waiting for these two years to pass me by. A lot of people say that you can treat National Service as a chore, or an opportunity, and I treat it as the former. Realistically, one would never join the army if you had the chance, and the hinderance is not really the occupation, but rather the opportunity cost involved in the time committed into it. Without it I would already be in university, working on projects and work that excite me rather than lazing around in the army, where my brain could be compared with an empty attic filled with cobwebs only to find a lack of dissimilarity. Considering my mental capacity and my ease with computers, it would be expected and capable of reaching the top 5% of the cohort with a lot of effort and efficient study methods, enabling me to get a top tier job, which pays roughly 3800 SGD as a new graduate. Considering the boom that will be to come after this economic downturn, it is possible that my salary may spike to the 4000 SGD range. It is therefore likely to assume that with my average army pay of 500 SGD a month, my opportunity cost would be 3500 SGD a month, not including the mental and physical stress that has been placed on me, physical being my getting bigger in size not due to muscle, but due to stress eating, which I am prone to do, especially during this army period. In this period alone I have gained 10 kilos, this period encompassing my army career of 8 months. I am in the process of cutting it down but on days like these where my dislike for army is spiked with a series of events that have occured throughout the day, I seem to be eating more and more, negating days worth of work.
I keep saying that "I wish this would all go away, and that I could move on with my life". I find myself sitting on the chair in a crowded motor carriage way on the way home, and realise that I would probably have been doing the same thing a year from now, albeit from a different place at a different time. I know that I would be thinking of roughly the same thing, with 3 other conscious thoughts on work. It occured to me that army is a part of my life, and really there is nothing I can do about it. Instead of separating it I should embrace the idea that army is a part of my life, and that I am a soldier, as much as I think of myself being anything but.
This incorporation is something that I have just realised, and late as it may sound, but be aware that I have been trying to go against this mindset for the longest time in a sort of mental rebellion on the turn my life has been taking ever since enlisting in the army. It was only through the realisation that I would have undergone the same set of actions during the weekend and my weekdays would be full of work that would otherwise have been just as straining, albeit mentally that I realise that the gap in difference between my civilian life and my army life are not that far apart.
What I should be asking is, what is this life outside of army that I am craving for? And is it as enjoyable as I imagine it to be? Or it being simply because the grass is always greener on the other side, and I hope for a civilian life to be much better off, only to find it being almost exactly the same?
My dear readers, I hope you do keep this in mind when you crave a better life. "Just a few more months, and I'll be done with school/university/my job/my career". Is the life really better on the other side, or it is just your perception? If so will the life you hope for be a let down when you finally get it?
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
I keep saying that "I wish this would all go away, and that I could move on with my life". I find myself sitting on the chair in a crowded motor carriage way on the way home, and realise that I would probably have been doing the same thing a year from now, albeit from a different place at a different time. I know that I would be thinking of roughly the same thing, with 3 other conscious thoughts on work. It occured to me that army is a part of my life, and really there is nothing I can do about it. Instead of separating it I should embrace the idea that army is a part of my life, and that I am a soldier, as much as I think of myself being anything but.
This incorporation is something that I have just realised, and late as it may sound, but be aware that I have been trying to go against this mindset for the longest time in a sort of mental rebellion on the turn my life has been taking ever since enlisting in the army. It was only through the realisation that I would have undergone the same set of actions during the weekend and my weekdays would be full of work that would otherwise have been just as straining, albeit mentally that I realise that the gap in difference between my civilian life and my army life are not that far apart.
What I should be asking is, what is this life outside of army that I am craving for? And is it as enjoyable as I imagine it to be? Or it being simply because the grass is always greener on the other side, and I hope for a civilian life to be much better off, only to find it being almost exactly the same?
My dear readers, I hope you do keep this in mind when you crave a better life. "Just a few more months, and I'll be done with school/university/my job/my career". Is the life really better on the other side, or it is just your perception? If so will the life you hope for be a let down when you finally get it?
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
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