Insecure

I don't think I've ever been comfortable. Just. Being.

I'm a worry-wart, someone who is forever looking at the past, pretending it were better, yet reliving the embarassments of certain times and forever stuck in-between spaces. Between now and the end of the year, anticipating yet again another event and the cycle of life spins and spins and spins like a whirlpool.

The past few years have been a haze and yet paradoxically, some of the most committed times I've made for myself. It's the whole, think of what you want, chase it, and if you fail, fail fast.

I forgot that motto for myself. Much as I was, chasing things, chasing potential, I actually idiotically got reminded to look at myself from the last person I would expect to hear things from. A tinder random who I started chatting with. Maybe it's true, the ones that know you the least will actually spot how you are presenting yourself to them, raw, from what you say, how you react.

I also blame the creatively stunted work of corporate life. For all my inabilities to express myself in writing. Also blame the best and worst invention in the world, the bloody phone/computer/robot that sits in our hands nowadays.

New resolutions - purchase 3 books and finish them by the end of the month.

I also feel the lack of deep discussions with friends totally don't create the same inspirations anymore. We talk about very superficial things nowadays and not what really drives us, or maybe we just avoid the hard topics because it is easy to.

Tomorrow, a new outlook. Enough with the jaded complaints. Enough with expectations. Enough with presumptions.

You cloak yourself from really feeling and expressing by presuming, and you believe that experiences make you the best teacher for yourself, when the best teacher is just acceptance, openness, and to hell with the outcomes.

That's when you always discover yourself, no?

Once Upon a Time

Written 5 years ago
_______________________________________________________________________Time inexorably flows on, to the point where it's been a year+ since graduation and job hunting and 9 months into settling in and looking forward to projects, to more experiences, to figuring out life.

Why is it always like this? Maybe I was never aware of holding onto something, but everytime I think about it, the more I realise there really is only one. For now.

It's like...topping up the vase of dead flowers in a vain attempt to revive, well something? But why fight then? What's the point, always a one sided affair isn't it? And then time just keeps ticking away, and I can see it happening already, a decade or two really. Because I don't want to let it disintegrate, so I try and keep it locked up, but the more you hide it safe, the more you realise that you're also losing the password to it. And I guess eventually you end up not caring anymore.  I guess.

And memories. Let's not even talk about them. I think the older I've gotten, the reason why I've also been able to be more chill about things, is because I've learnt how to let go. Let go of moments where I've paused momentarily and said to myself "wouldn't it be great to just have this on loop? Forever?" Those moments are so preciously rare. So, so rare.

What's the point of it all, when it all ends anyway?

Travel

If one thing that travelling for work has taught me, it's that the more I step outside Malaysia's borders, the more I realise that I often act upon pre-conceived sentiments and notions of a country.

Case example, going to Paris for the Tango Marathon, there was some disgruntled sense in feeling that we were being treated rather rudely by some of the members of the Tango scene. In Dubai, having the taxi driver suddenly turn on the meter when the hotel bellhop had assured us of a flat rate. Little things like these that suddenly draw up the comparison..."In Malaysia..."

But really, "In Malaysia..." all these might have been multipled 10-fold, taxi's would have fleeced us and service wouldn't have been the best either. Yet, we seem to filter our lives by growing the barnacles that protect us against such negativity. We grow the layers of skin needed to survive in a country and carry this with us anywhere we go.

I do realise something though. It doesn't matter how developed a country is, there will be something that you pull and pick at and want to compare against your own sense of what home should be. Sometimes home is what it is, warts and all and it's not a black and white thing, no it is the multi-coloured rainbow hue that makes us who we are, and makes the nation what it is.

When people drag Malaysia's name through the mud, we are apt to also try to protect it. It's like how no one can use the N-word except for the people themselves, so really, no one can slander Malaysia better than her own people. But maybe sometimes we do need to drag our name through the mud, maybe sometimes its justified when we look at the powers that be and what they are saying, doing and acting upon. Yet when we defend it, we are not defending the powers that seem to want to test us with every step, we are defending the friends we have, the family that exists, the memories of time, place and childhood. Our identify, woven into the fabric of what makes this country great, and also what makes this country flawed.

Believe, trust, and the grass always seems greener on the other side 

27 Things

9x3. 3^3.

Jeez. Getting old, still not close to 30 yet!

27 Things to be Grateful for over this past year:

1) Getting to work in another country for a bit
2) Increasing responsibilities at work
3) Meeting new colleagues and making new friends
4) Breakthrough in Tango Expression
5) Discovering Yoga
6) Being able to do a headstand
7) Travelling to new places (Istanbul, Brisbane)
8) Bettering Tango DJ-ing skills
9) Meeting surprising friends
10) A ton of sweet weddings
11) Performing in Esplanade
12) New sports - Kickboxing
13) New Tango Shoes
14) Frolicks past midnight in the Ocean
15) Letting go
16) Clear skies post haze
17) Saying temporary good byes to key life people
18) Mad Men Finale, and a host of other good shows!
19) Paris/Italy end of year trip
20) Participating in my 1st Rally
21) Diving trips and relaxing island bumming (with rain)
22) Good Concerts
23) Functioning Family
24) Health
25) No worries over where the next meal will come from
26) Potential House Shopping
27) Good Friends

Wow. It really has been a worldwind year! More to come!

Burnout

Half a decade. I have reached half a decade of work. I have reached half a decade post graduation, 2 jobs, 1 promotion and a ton of projects.

Where's that bright-eyed, bushy-tailed 22 year old me? Oh wait, no, that was never me anyway =P.

Nope. Always wanting to strive for something else, that's more like it.

Oh the places you will go indeed, hardly really, so much more to explore, just..maybe not in this capacity. Quite burnt out at this point and need to refocus on a new direction.

To throw it all away? Maybe. 

Being Present

I used to document days of my life. Through high school and every mundane little detail that came my way. Now relegated to the closed down site of Xanga along with all the memories, big and small, encapsulated under one title of "The Teenage Years". It's easy to forget all the nuances of events, of people we have crossed paths with over and over again until one day when you're hunting through stacks of photos because someones wedding is coming up and you dig up all the chronological events of a decade past, laughing at some of the images and still, remembering what led up to that photo, or this photo, or what you were feeling or thinking. It's funny how with a camera literally glued to my palm now, I take less pictures than I once did when it had to be printed and put into an album.

Sometimes you do feel disconnected, and wonder, truly wonder, where do you belong? Are you a part of something? Do you stand for something? 

Throwback

Been wandering through old photos since my Iphone needs more storage space and really having #tbt moments.

2/4 weddings for this year, 1 from work, 1 from Tango, 1 from Uni and 1 from High School. A whole spectrum of my life activities for me to observe and realise how long it's been since all these checkpoints in life. Funnily enough also a reverse timeline for me.

That juxtoposed against some very sad news coming in from family. Ageing. We spend our teenage years wanting to be independent, we spend our college years "making the most of it" while still stressing over careers and the future. We spend our 20's and 30's climbing up an imaginary ladder that will lead us somewhere. We spend our 40's either worrying about teenage kids or wondering what went wrong if we're still single/divorced.

Pulling back is always something I need to do. Being the youngest cousin of the lot, I am encountering a lot of issues with this concept of ageing because so, so many of the relations are slowly falling apart. White hair showing, wrinkles showing, serious illnesses manifesting left, right and center. I sometimes want to run away from this all, I'm not even 30 but sometimes I feel, looking at the picture back then and now that there are imperceptible shadows and shades of weariness and tiredness that are starting to creep up on me. No longer the SYT eh? Nope.

Forge on. I'll fight perceptions the rest of my life if I have to.

Checking In

6 month project in Sg has seen me move across the boundaries for a M-F job. So far hours have been hectic and I have yet to picture an outcome, which is..worrying at best. Catastrophic at worst, but you know, life will sort its shit out eventually. And nothing is as bad as it seems, unless it's a death. Then yes, it's really as bad as it seems.

Singapore so far has been a hectic world-wind of dancing, brunching, lunching, dinner-ing and a bit of drinking thrown in for good measure. There's quite a bit about being away from home (much like Uni felt) that often unleashes a very *ahem* manic Id side of me that the other sides often feel the backlash of for, far, far too long.

Crossing boats. Always. Why is that? Is it more of the fact I need to introduce more recklessness into my KL lifestyle, or is it that KL just isn't a conducive environment for it? Probably the latter.

But what can I change right? Forging my own career and destiny often felt like something I would look to pa for approval for, now that he's gone I often feel more adrift than ever. Elated at the possibilities, but so, so fearful because there are no check-ins anymore. Welcome to adulthood, here's the keys now go.

Life happens like that.

Of stepping outside Boxes

How many times do we really take a step back to see where life is now and where we want to go? Fortune favours the bold, if you don't know where you want to end up, any road will take you there, be free, chase your dreams!

Being spontaneous is a feature that society seems to put on a pedestal, but what about planning? What about goals? What about hard work? We seem so enchanted by the end story that we often dismiss the things that people have had to do to get there. Do ends really justify the means? I hope so.

3 months wrapping up the tail end of a project that I could call my own. Throwing myself into situations that would have made me seize up and freeze just a short number of years ago. Progress? I think so.

Michigan reunions seem to be in full swing this summer. Nicnocs in Sg with Dian, some ice cream, booze and boy gossip. Lulu in KL at an Entrepreneurship Forum, very yummy vegetarian food all around and Football mornings.

What next? Yes, what next indeed. Rinjani in less than a month and I cannot be more unprepared than this. Time to visit Uniqlo soon!

Also in the middle of a 2 day detox now, this is where the ends really better justify the means because it also  means I will not chew anything for 2 days straight. 

The Secret-Keeper

"We all have the unique ability to narrate our experiences-to ourselves. We are constantly processing and shaping the information that comes to our brains from our bodies and our senses. We organise all that input into narratives, which form the backbone of our identity. Some of them are about the past, others about the present, and we use that same technique to imagine the future.

In this way we can massage the chaos of our lives and transform it into our stories. This continuous conversation, much of which is unconscious, allows us to elimiate dangerous options. It helps us imagine survival strategies and even make good risk-taking decision. These narratives are not immutable-they change as our experiences change-but they are fundamental. You have to reassemble your identity in a way that accounts for the new information."

~http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201312/the-secret-became-my-life

This was so powerful and reminds me that I've been like a rubix cube for most of my life, still trying to find the right combinations. I have a bad feeling this is going to continue for quite a while more though...

Perspective

Today's newspaper highlighted that the Hubble Space Telescope had managed to see further into the past than ever before. It peered into deepspace and told us of a past that is close to unfathomable to me. Which then got me thinking about why we're even on earth. This shift of perspective outward, far beyond my own being, into the How's and Why's. We seem to have answers for the How's, but as for Why we're here...well, that's an answer that has driven countless conflicts in this world. Just pause for a second, forget that stupid analysis you were meant to be doing and just think. Ever fibre of who you are today was a genetic lottery, a mashup of stars and a big bang. So they say. Will we ever know?

Makes you go, why? Why does this work I do even matter? In the perspective of the eternal universe, does it really matter?!

The fascinating thing is the amount of conflict life has given us. The religious fanatics refuse to believe anything hard science has proven while hard science stubbornly clings on to its facts and figures, neglecting the fundamental core, of answering the why. Why us? Why this conscience? What's the point?

It is a weird sensation. All these greater questions about life and all I can think about on a daily basis is what is for lunch...wasted intelligence man.

Anyway, a few days ago I was thinking about things as usual and I started thinking about this. I started thinking about who I was as a person. I've always felt that, when we're younger we feel the pressures of conforming (or not) to a certain type, taking on your favourite singer or idol of any kind and acting out who they are as a character for yourself. Like listening to Avril Lavigne was cool, liking Complicated as a song was cool because it spoke oh so much to your life at that time. Teenage years are funny because that amount of pressure you get to try and differentiate yourself using someone famous as your avator is unseen after the period. We might look back at nostalgia at the juniors we once were and snort at what we used to think was cool, or yell spice up your life in the next decades of karaoke sessions. Every. Single. Time.

But maybe it's this. The older we get, the more we settle. Settle into a routine, settle into an identity, because we've spent all our teenage years trying to be someone else. When you hit University, you tend to mature, to figure out more where you are and where you want to be, in general. Because you've lived all these personas over the past years, and because you've tried all these different 'skins', you can almost refer to yourself back in that era as someone else.

You come to terms with who you are as person, what you believe in, what you want to be and who you want to project yourself to be. Settled. You're less compelled to feel that there's a difference between who you are and who the person you really want to be is. The older you are, the more assured you are as a person, because you've seen more and been through more to make you more certain, since you've already made the decisions to get to your current state. It's this realisation that hey, shit happens, life is chaos, work will always be stressful, so just set it all aside and enjoy the moments that make you smile, laugh and feel alive.

On other notes, I started writing my daily 'Thankful for...' notes again. There are currently mini bumps on my forearms which means bootcamp is back in fullswing, and I am super sleep deprived which means my roster of activities is on a roll. Also my feet hurt as always which means Tango is back on with a  vengeance. And in 6 days I will be frolicking among whales in the deep blue sea and being lulled to sleep by crashing waves. Yes Please!!!

New beginnings

This was my entry of my very first job 3 years ago

Of golf courses and financial models

I spent today traipsing around a golf course. In heels. Michelle Wie was somewhere in the vicinity. I now know that water retention is very important in a golf course and that people often don't really know what they are doing. Good god now THAT is scary.

Still adjusting, can't believe it's only second week. Uncovering more insights, nice bunch of people. See where this takes me.

 

3 years on and I find myself at yet another client site adjusting. Work is the same, what's different is the system behind it and the people.

 

Who knew that 3 years on my ex-colleagues would become the family that I would call on when I need support, entertainment, motivation. Now let's mark this as the new entry.

 

We'll see where this takes me then =).

Woven threads

"May you be open to each thread that comes into your life-the golden ones and the coarse ones-and may you wave them into a brilliant and beautiful life"

I'd like to believe this with all my heart.

 
All along it was a fever
A cold sweat hot-headed believer
I threw my hands in the air I said show me something
He said, if you dare come a little closer
Round and around and around and around we go
Ohhh now tell me now tell me now tell me now you know
Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
It takes me all the way
I want you to stay
It's not much of a life you're living
It's not just something you take, it's given
Round and around and around and around we go
Ohhh now tell me now tell me now tell me now you know
Not really sure how to feel about it
Something in the way you move
Makes me feel like I can't live without you
It takes me all the way
I want you to stay

Oh the reason I hold on
Oh cause I need this hole gone
Funny you’re the broken one but I’m the only one who needed saving
Cause when you never see the light it’s hard to know which one of us is caving