[16 May 2012 update: I know I said I won’t be online these few weeks and I have been doing quite well keeping my promise. However, May is Mental Health Awareness Week and I would like to offer my modest contribution in support of the Mental Health Blog Party organized by the American Psychological Association.
So I decided to come mid-way: I am now updating my b…
A question: why do we talk about “work-life balance”?
Should work / job / career etc not simply be part of life instead of life’s equal?
It seems somewhat a misdemeanor to segregate finding a job and going to work as a big chunk, and then squish everything else – such as health, family, friends, relationships, hobbies, interests etc – into what we cal…
Type A personalities have it rough with depression. A friend made an acute observation the other day. “Noch, you are recovering from depression by trying to take things easy and release all the accumulated stress from years before, so why are you stressing yourself out with blogging and writing?”
My arrogance has prevented me from cultivating many relationships. Recently, I received a few emails from people I knew from school and university. They all shared with me the same message: they have all had, or had since quite a few years back dating back to university days been diagnosed with depression or other mental health challenges.
Sometimes, I am grateful I’m depressed. In fact, I write the best when I’m feeling down in the dumps. The effervescence of words bubbles out uncontrollably. I dare say, I rediscovered my creativity in the most unlikely way – through depression.
Although 2 years old, Jonah Lehrer has a point in his New York Times article, ”Depression…
The more I write, the more I realize, as long as we write from deep within our hearts, people will feel it and resonate somehow. With so much encouragement from the last post, and readers / followers on Twitter & emails urging me alike, I’ve managed to patch up some courage to publish a poem I scribbled down a few days ago.
As I started scribbling away during my days of depression, I recognized this little call inside me that said, “write more, write more, write poems again!” In fact, many moons ago, I wrote poetry. I was no Robert Frost, but I wrote a lot in my spare time, experimenting with words and phrases, expressing the melancholy and confusion I felt as a teena…
10 days or so ago, I was nominated for the 7 links challenge by my dear blogsophere friend, Justin Mazza. Somehow, my wordpress wasn’t set up properly and I didn’t get a pingback. Or perhaps I did and I just didn’t notice. Sick to my bones with the migraine and flu for the last 2 weeks, it wasn’t until I went through my bookmarked sites an…
Despite having worked for 7 years in an industry where numbers are used everyday, I must confess I’m not very good with numbers. Some friends used to joke that they should start selling shares in the company when I first joined, for how can someone who can’t do 1+1 without a calculator be a manager there?!
Well, somehow I managed. But yes, the company’s sh…
Noch Noch is born and raised in Hong Kong and Australia. She has also studied / worked / lived in the US, France, UK, Japan, The Netherlands, China, and has travelled to more than 40 countries. Noch Noch loves travelling and her curiosity in foreign cultures and languages has led her to enjoy her life as an international executive for the last 7 years in the banking & finance industry. However, she was forced to take time off work in 2011 due to her illnesses and now spends her time in recovery, cooking, practising Chinese calligraphy, reading and writing – in short, learning to take care of herself and letting out the residual work stress.