As my readers know I have been through a lot lately. By June of this year I was planning to trade in teaching in China for studying Chinese in China. I was waiting to see if my school intended to renew my contract, and not concerned if they did not, for I really felt it necessary to swap my 'hotchpotch' Chinese speaking for something more erudite.

At that time I received an offer to work in Baotou. The offer was most attractive, not from a financial perspective, but because of the vision that was shared with me. So setting off in a new direction I came to Baotou.

I won't bore you with a repeat of anything previously written, but suffice it to say, that after 3 months of working for that company, I walked out. In doing so, I left behind students that I would rather not have abandoned.

While those parents who have personally contacted me do understand that it was necessary for me to leave, I have at times thought, 'maybe I could have stuck it out a bit longer'.

When my mind goes along that track, I realise that nothing would have changed, at least for the better. I really needed to quit. Nevertheless, one does at times regret that one's plan did not work out.

The company vision that was shared with me was a vision that I truly wished to see fulfilled, and I still wish it could have come to fruition.

But having left my job and having faced many difficulties, and in the process having discovered some truly wonderful people here in Baotou, I now find myself in a new job, which, while not exactly the same as the one I left, leaves me feeling that I am accomplishing something.

I have agreed only to work here for 3 months, after which I will go home to Australia to see my family and attend to some business. After that I may come back to Baotou.

I have in effect 'started over'. Having followed a hopeless path for 3 months, I came to a crossroad and had to decide which direction I wished to take.

It is not easy starting over again, no matter what form that starting over takes, but today as I was reading Nan Russell's article Winning at Working - Carved in Granite, I found myself feeling a sense of reassurance that I made the right decision when I left my previous employer.

In her article, M/s Russell wrote:

• We resist revision, redirection and starting over.
• People who are winning at working have that mind-set... They understand they can create a better work, come up with a better idea or develop a better result if they let go of what's not working.
• If you want to be winning at working then you'll need to make changes, correct errors, fix mistakes and enhance ideas along the way. Sometimes that requires the workplace equivalent of blasting granite.

I particularly liked that image of 'blasting granite', because in a sense, leaving my first job here had a similar effect to an explosion. On the one hand, while it was known to me both from my Employer's behaviour and 'whispers' in my ear, that she was doing her best to 'get rid of me', at the time when she pulled her final nasty stunt and I walked out, she had no plan in place to ensure a 'smooth transition' if she succeeded. And so all hell broke loose.

We often live in fear of the consequences of our actions, but sometimes we have more to fear by our inactions. Fear of change can paralyze us so much that we endure what should not be endured.

Sometimes, we just have to 'blast the granite' into which we are set, and get ourselves free so as not to waste, (as Nan Russell put it), 'enormous effort producing something inherently flawed'.

Thanks M/s Russell for helping me to realise that I really did make the right decision.

R.P. BenDedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

R.P. BenDedek is the author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' www.kingscalendar.com and is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News.