2 Months Left?!
/
Today I suddenly realized that I've been here for 4 months. That wasn't too shocking but what was shocking was that means that I only have 2 months left to go.
I'm somewhat ambivalent about this. On the one hand I'm really excited about going home in around 2 months (depending on travel after my contract ends). On the other hand, I'm really worried about going home. While I've had this great chance to live and work overseas I've realized that it hasn't solved any of the fundamental problems I need to deal with in my life.
I still have essentially no social life. Living here has really helped me learn that no matter where I choose to live I need to make sure to make more efforts to meet people and engage in social activities outside of work. When I was working at Eastlink my big excuse was the schedule. Here my excuse has been the language barrier. The bottom line is that I just need to be willing to put in more effort. I had a bad schedule before but I still had free time when I could have done things with people. Now I may have a problem with the language barrier but there are Lao people who speak English very well and there are foreigners living in the city, I just need to make more effort to meet these people.
The bigger issue though is that I still need to figure out more of a long-term employment plan and start working on it. I'm still faced with the fact that when I go home I will still have a hard time finding a job in IT that's not a call center. I have experience but call center experience isn't valued very highly and without a degree or diploma in IT it's pretty hard to get your foot in the door.
The possibility of extending my stay here has been thrown around. In some ways I really like this option. I feel like I could accomplish more at work if I had more time and I'd like to have the opportunity to see more of Laos as well. On the other hand, I don't want to stay if it's just to postpone dealing with the same decision. I would at least get some more experience with hands on technical work which is valued more than call center work but I'm not sure how much this would help. The other option I've considered is to look for other work here. There seems to be a pretty high demand for IT people so I could probably find a salary position. The main thing though is I'm worried about becoming complacent and stagnating because I got into a cushy lifestyle. If I stay then I'll really need to look for ways to keep pushing myself.
I'm somewhat ambivalent about this. On the one hand I'm really excited about going home in around 2 months (depending on travel after my contract ends). On the other hand, I'm really worried about going home. While I've had this great chance to live and work overseas I've realized that it hasn't solved any of the fundamental problems I need to deal with in my life.
I still have essentially no social life. Living here has really helped me learn that no matter where I choose to live I need to make sure to make more efforts to meet people and engage in social activities outside of work. When I was working at Eastlink my big excuse was the schedule. Here my excuse has been the language barrier. The bottom line is that I just need to be willing to put in more effort. I had a bad schedule before but I still had free time when I could have done things with people. Now I may have a problem with the language barrier but there are Lao people who speak English very well and there are foreigners living in the city, I just need to make more effort to meet these people.
The bigger issue though is that I still need to figure out more of a long-term employment plan and start working on it. I'm still faced with the fact that when I go home I will still have a hard time finding a job in IT that's not a call center. I have experience but call center experience isn't valued very highly and without a degree or diploma in IT it's pretty hard to get your foot in the door.
The possibility of extending my stay here has been thrown around. In some ways I really like this option. I feel like I could accomplish more at work if I had more time and I'd like to have the opportunity to see more of Laos as well. On the other hand, I don't want to stay if it's just to postpone dealing with the same decision. I would at least get some more experience with hands on technical work which is valued more than call center work but I'm not sure how much this would help. The other option I've considered is to look for other work here. There seems to be a pretty high demand for IT people so I could probably find a salary position. The main thing though is I'm worried about becoming complacent and stagnating because I got into a cushy lifestyle. If I stay then I'll really need to look for ways to keep pushing myself.