the end of a chase

i was 24 years old when i started this blog. having grown tired of blogger’s lack of refreshing new templates (and my inadequate coding skills), i made the switch to wordpress. i spent 3 years on blogger and twice the number of years here. adding up the short time spent at easyjournal (my first blog!) and xanga, i have blogged for a good 10 years! (even if i was not always consistent in penning down my thoughts on the internet.)

all that blogging in the last 10 years did not yield major improvements in my writings skills or made me famous but this past decade has definitely brought about significant and wonderful experiences that helped made me who i am today. the twenties were not as exciting as what i have imagined – my early twenties were confusing, stressful, depressing and angry; the mid twenties presented a turning point for me to end a long list of self-inflicted emotional turmoils; and the end of the twenties opened me up to the happiest period i have ever had in my entire life.

the landscape of my inner world experienced its biggest shift in the last one to two years that i sometimes feel that life can be categorized into before and after 28 Jan 2011. the subsequent effects of the momentous day only became apparent a year later. perhaps, that’s the reason why blogging has been very difficult in the last 2 years. this space was created for me to vent and share my thoughts and, evidently, there were more things to vent about and more time to share in the beginning of this 6 year blog affair. while many others see a blog as the one place to document enough thoughts to re-visit at an older age, i see every blog as a different stage in my life. this space has served its purpose in being this great memory bank for my challenging twenties and i honestly feel that it is time for me to move on (instead of finding new ways to motivate myself to blog here).

there are different milestones to achieve at different stages in life. i am filled with excitement about being 30 (and i haven’t met anyone who is not excited about it) because it is such a good and important time to take stock and see how you can take everything you have built in the last 10 years even further. there are enough professional and personal endeavors to keep me focused and occupied for the next few years and it would be interesting to see how i go about achieving them.

if most of my twenties were spent chasing after liberty, i would like my thirties to be a decade of creation, of knowing my identity and settling comfortably into it, of curating relationships, values, beliefs and material things so as to be the best that i can possibly be.

this new journey may or may not be documented in another blog. commitments are hard to keep. for now, i am very happy to wrap this up after 6 years.

a new chapter in life awaits. 30 begins!

Filled Need

Filled Need.

i read this in the office over lunch break last week and found my eyes a little wet from the story. it’s amazing how much can be accomplished when people come together with genuine love and concern. the story is still stuck in my remind – a reminder to myself that small gestures can go a very long way and that i should get back into the helping people, something that have become less of a priority ever since i started working.

try reading some of his other entries – he writes very well.

where to go from here?

i think i have outgrown blogging. started the year with the intention of posting at least a monthly entry but it turned out making one for a quarter was equally hard. it isn’t because there is nothing to write about but it is no longer as easy as it used to. most of the time, it ends up with me asking myself this question “…and this post of my thought or an experience is important or worth my effort because…?” after which, i would probably end up putting down the key points in my journal for future reference. 

still, i never quite gave it up because it is such a pity to not continue something that i have kept going since july 2007. 

happy 6th year, starcrash. i wished i knew what to do with you. 

i heart books

“…books have been my classroom and my confidant. books have widen my horizons. books have comforted me in my hardest times. books have changed my life.” po bronson’s love of books from “what should i do with my life?

10 suggestions for life

listen to (or read) ben bernanke 2013 commencement speech if you have a chance. i thought it was a really humbling and compassionate speech.

couldn’t agree more on life being a life long project of developing oneself as a human being and i couldn’t help but think of my meritocratic Singapore when he questioned about the fairness of meritocracy.

he really got to me when he started talking about how people who are most worthy of admiration are folks who have coped most courageously in the face of adversities – people with little schooling but who through honest and diligent labour, has managed to clothe, feed and educate their families deserved greater respect and greater help.

reminded me of what henry james once said “3 things in human life are important. the first is to be kind, second is to be kind and third is to be kind.”

gone from facebook

i’ve finally deleted my facebook account! unfortunately, its effect will only be made permanent 14 days from now.

first deactivated my account on 11 feb 2013 only to find myself re-activating it a week later to accept friends’ request. however, that didn’t stop me from removing the app from my iphone or restricting my logins from the macbook to no more than 4 times a month.

fast forward to 3 months later, i realized life’s much quieter without the distractions of facebook. and because it is quieter, i find myself happier on most days. and because i now lack a time/boredom killer device, i had to retrain the brain to occupy itself with other means like reading on my kindle, reading more meaningful tweets, reading books borrowed from the library, journaling, thinking about my goals, priorities and habits.

of course, i’m not here to say that you can’t achieve all that with facebook in your life. people react differently to things and i’ve finally come to the point where i genuinely feel that i am not missing out on much without it and that i like myself and my life a lot more when it is absent from my life.

i guess, that’s the most important point isn’t it?

i am here and i am now

i am unsure what drove the blues away but i’m definitely feeling much better compared to 2 weeks ago! i was actually worried that the moodiness will cling onto me for a much longer time that i started quieting down and heading back to my number one comfort activity – staying home to read. eventually, i headed back to the gym, prayed (or talked to the universe), ate a little more fruits and more of my favourite food after fully recovering from a bad bout of flu.

falling sick this time made me realised 2 things:-

1. being confined to the bed is quite depressing. i used to think being able to lie down in bed is the ultimate bliss (it still is but only after a long day at work) in life until i noticed the boredom and helplessness of not being able to get up and do things. not only was it mentally and emotionally draining, i was sore all over from lying down for too long.

2. medicine alters my mood. i don’t know how much of it was caused by the medicine itself but i think it does something to your moods.

realizing these 2 things made me much more compassionate towards the bed-ridden and people who, for whatever unfortunate reasons, have to be on life-long medicine.

“be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” socrates

one week before 2012 ended…

i was still healthy and strong. took some time off from work before and after christmas to do some major room cleaning. my cleaning schedule was more intensive than my work schedule as i usually cleaned from morning to the wee hours of the night. i am really satisfied with the result. what inspired the big clean up was a long overdue mental breakthrough that came when i stood in front of a huge untidy pile of plastic and paper bags that holds a decent amount of floor space in the room.

the first thought that came to my mind was:-

“i am sick and tired of having to tidy this corner of the room only to have it be messed up after.”

the second thought that followed was:-

“what can i do to make management of all these easier?”

and then it occurred to me that:-

“if i used more of the recycling bags that i have and keep one in my bag at all times, i would have lesser (or better still, none!) plastic and paper bags to begin with.”

i couldn’t help but admit that we create most of the problems in life through our own attitudes and behaviour. dwelling on it further drove home the importance of simplifying my life…wanting less means you’ll end up with lesser things which means you’ll need less time to manage the possessions which means you have more time and energy and money to spend on the things that truly matter to you.

with this new principle, i combed through…

  • my wardrobe, took stock and gave away 20 over pieces of clothing. i realized i’m the owner of 10 shawls and 12 cardigans, 10 over dresses and casual tees. this exercise made me realized i do not need another piece of cardigan or shawl or casual tees.
  • my cosmetics and toiletries and realized i already had everything i needed and there was no need to add to it.
  • my accessories and realized that i have not worn 90% of it for more than 2-3 years. i no longer like them and gave them away to someone who might appreciate them a little bit more.
  • books and gave away 70 over books to people who might benefit from me. i have already got what i needed from these books and i no longer need them with me physically. however, i did keep some of the books that meant a lot to me.
  • my old lecture and seminar notes and threw them all away. information is only useful when you need them and i haven’t touched most of them for 4, 5 years.
  • my piano scorebooks. i kept them all these years mostly out of guilt and this strange desire to pick up piano again. guilt because i had memories of my mum buying whatever score books we wanted when i was younger. they weren’t cheap. but i came to the realization guilt is not appreciation for what my mother has sacrificed to buy me what i wanted. i could express gratitude by being kinder to her in more relevant ways. i also realized that even if i did pick up piano again, the last thing i want to play would be beethoven’s sonatas because i gave up piano because i couldn’t stand the classical training. in the end, i gave those scorebook away to my cousins who are collectively better than me at piano.
  • gifts i’ve received over the years and random items like music players, laptop coolers, origami paper, quills, ink, paper pattern maker…
  • my working area at the dining table. i told myself to always keep this area clutter free to serve as a reminder that i should keep all areas of my life clean.
  • one full year of recorded expenses so i know which area to cut down my spendings in 2013. a lot of it made me gasped in horror and sometimes you need the shock factor to find your focus again.

this whole exercise of cleaning and taking stock reminded me of what pi said in “life of pi”…

“the whole of life is an act of letting go again and again…”

so that what i did to end the year before i fell sick.

one week after 2013 started, i…

  • found myself enjoying the process of jotting down my thoughts for the day in my 2013 planner and decided i should continue doing this for the rest of the year. i do not explicitly use a planner to organize my life because what’s there to write in a 9am to 5pm working life. i do however, use it to record events, goals, dreams & quotes. it’s nice to look back at the end of the year. 
  • received my christmas present from julianne. for some unknown sweet reason, she decided to get me a kindle paperwhite. with this new gadget, i decided i should try to read more from kindle and see whether my views on ebooks will change. let’s just say that i’ve yet to read anything on it yet. what surprised me most about the gadget was the kindle logo and the word “kindle”. i felt very delighted to turn on kindle and see a young boy reading under a tree. that was very appealing to me. the second thing that surprised me most was during the kindle walk through – i have never associated kindle the e-reader with the word “kindle”. to learnt that kindle the e-reader meant kindle the word made me go wow. suddenly, what i was holding wasn’t just a gadget to read books on, it was something that will “arouse or inspire (an emotion or feeling).” that was exactly what i felt about reading and that moment of revelation was just so…moving. i suddenly felt like amazon understood the mind of avid readers. i felt like it understood me.
  • wrote down my goals and acknowledge the obstacles that were preventing me from achieving them year after year – the lack of money. over the past few weeks, i realized that sometimes it’s not how much you earn but how you choose to spend the money you have. many great people were able to do great things with a lot less than what i have. when reviewing my expenses and spending habits, i realized i wanted to do too many things or to put simply, too unfocused and too indulgent. i’m not sure if i have blogged this before but one day on a train, i realized life was too short and that it was impossible to do and be everything with the limitations of time and resources. i need to focus my resources on the few things that are important to me. with that, i started asking myself “if i die tomorrow, would i regret not spending on this?” this clarity helped me accept the fact that i need to make the 2013 austerity drive succeed. i got out of debt in 2012 and now i need to learn how to use money wisely to achieve my goals and fulfill my dreams.
  • decided i should continue last year’s resolution of learning how to cook. today, i came up with quarterly plans for cooking. by q12013, i should have figured out how to make homemade tomato pasta sauce, french onion soup, fry the perfect egg, macaroni salad, pan fry a fish fillet, stir fry potato and use more of real butter, olive oil and coconut oil instead of margarine and vegetable oil.
  • resolved to have just two goal for my job – to have no backlogs and to find ways to delegate more effectively. haven’t quite figured out how to make it work but i have been working hard on clearing current work and back logs since the first work day.

the above are a few key goals that will help me some of the other goals i have this year. i don’t ask for much other than to continually strive towards being a better and happier person because we only have so much time here on Earth!

let 2013 be a safe and rewarding year for everyone.