30 Days of Writing, Day 13: Stop Complaining

When things don’t go our way, it’s easy to rationalize by thinking of every single excuse: “I was tired that day”, “I didn’t want to work for that company anyway”, “The system is against me”.

When I was transferring colleges after flunking out of engineering, the Tourism college secretary didn’t accept my transfer request because of a low GPA.

For your information Mr. Secretary, this “low” GPA was because of my (irrelevant to your course) engineering classes heavily skewed that number! In my last semester, I was even exempted from my statistics final, alongside students from your college, because I was one of the best students in the class.

I had every right to complain about a broken system, and for a while, I did, but it didn’t solve anything.

Since complaining wasn’t really helping, I just told myself, “Screw this system, I’ll just look for a job.”

Thus began the steps that led me to the past ten years: working in a call center, changing schools and courses, becoming a star student in UE, studying to be a programmer, working my ass off, landing a job at Sourcepad, and acquiring enough skills to be confident enough to leave the company and try things out on my own.

What I learned most from that ridiculous ordeal was that if something goes wrong, it’s on you to stop complaining about it and do things to make sure the next time you

I would never be put in this position writing this blog post right now if I spend the days and weeks after crying and complaining and trying to sue that college secretary (though I will be honest, there is a small petty part of me that wants to tell him that he made a big, big mistake not accepting me into his college).

Here’s the thing about complaining: most of the time, our complaints are legit, and most of the time, no one cares. So pick yourself up, get better, get your ass back in the arena, and win.