Focus

To really focus on something is to devote attention, time and mindfulness toward it. Be it an action, a believe, a movement, a learning. In this world of half distracted messages interrupting table conversations, of emails buzzing to be read and of having holidays to really disconnect, what are we doing really? What are we doing in any shape or form that improves our lives, or those around us?

Continued conversations on what next? What should you build for yourself? What should you focus on?

I went ahead and took a plunge, into something I have never done in all my years of career so far. Joining industry!

Well, I did want a shakeup didn't I?

More so, a movement internally, in the mindset, in crossing this metaphorical threshold of 30. THIRTY.

Which is really nothing in terms of years on this earth. It's not even half way in a proportionate long average life situation, whatsmore in the context of earth, the universe and everything else in between.

Context always applies!

No one tells you...

...that beyond the graduation caps and ceremonies lies an even greater unknown than what you've ever been through to that point
...that life really does sometimes ponder on a path of drudgery
...that you'll find your place in the world eventually
...that you really give 0 fucks about certain things
...that sometimes you'll be lost
...that you know less the more you know
...that a decade past adulthood and you still feel like that 10 year old you once were

Why do you do what you do? What motivates you on a day to day basis? What are you working for?

Questions that demand so much more than surface answers, but are often wrapped up in shiny trinkets of "I'm doing well" and the social niceties of having to be nice just for the sake of being nice. All the bullshit of school magnified the older you get and the more nonsense of individuals who have found their path somehow to be dominant to yours due to the factors of age and experience and yet so. so. juvenile.

And what about yourself? Working toward a maturity level where you'd have hoped that others would catch up to but eventually finding yourself wanting to regress, wanting to realise the rule breaking at a later age - but eventually it caught up. Eventually you realise you can do what you want and screw convention. It's the wants that make you alive truly and so what if people have opinions.

It's tiring wanting to keep up. You really do outgrow certain people.

"You do not mean enough to me to care."

Owch.

Tired

It has been a highly charged, stressful time stretching back almost a year ago by now. Challenging in ways entirely and directly linked to career trajectories, and the people at the center of an organisation.

You see, it becomes an entire different universe the moment you step into a work setting. Whereas in school you just needed to game the system, here, there is no set system in place to help you survive what work is, what your worth is, with someone telling you that you are not good enough with little to no proof of who you are as a person or the effort and sacrifice you have put in, into this blasted activity that helps pay for your survival and your many many wants and shiny trinkets that provide momentary satisfaction and happiness. (truly though tango shoes do make me, very very happy).

There have been moments of pure anxiety and stress and being someone who does not forgive or forget easily, it has been a real challenge to my own sanity to have survived this period without utterly and entirely breaking down.

There also comes a point where reflection happens and did I know that close to 30 I’d be where I am, doing the things I’m doing, facing the people I’m facing and dealing with the things I’m dealing with? Actually, honestly, yes. I knew that my ambition and drive would always be the cause of my own anxiety, I knew that the worrywart in me was never going to go away. I knew the grit of solving a math problem for hours at age 16 was never going to go away. I knew that if I had to run a marathon I would run it. Because there is no such thing as quitting, because there is no such thing as not being able to do it, if you put the effort into it. That has always been my motto and that is always something that I believe defines who I am.

So yes, more sleep is definitely required, a reset is definitely required. All the rest, just noise. 

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?

Writings and musings

I often lose the will to want to write. Consulting does that to you when you have to form incoherent sentences to drive a point across. But sometimes, certain inspirations drag out of me the need to want to verbalise or frame what I have in mind about life. I find Tango does the talking for me nowadays though. I don't need to write, I just need to express.

It's been a crazy project in Dubai, highs and lows, tears, anger and fears all manifested into one big mess.

Always feel like I am at the beginning. Traipsing around a golf course during an LPGA championship.

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. 

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.

Passion

Winding down the year and reconsidering some of the passions that have developed over the years which have waned, slowly but surely. Some to a pleasant lull that will likely pick up again once plateau's are over (tango, still the main core interest), others relegated to a I-have-no-time-for-this phase (yoga, pole) and past passions with no more regular counterpart to keep up the interest (tennis). Then there are the latent ones, the ones which had required so many years of investment, but now barely feature in adult life (music).

Somehow have signed myself up for Choir on Sunday. I am terrible at singing, have never attempted to, and am now subjecting myself to choir in German. This should be interesting.

But the more you listen to people describe their passions, be it in the past, do you realise that the statement "everyone you meet knows something you don't" really rings true.

To rediscover that? Aye, that's the rub. Some people we meet later on in life seem to be passionless, and that's the most worrying thing isn't it? I've always admired the fact that when dance becomes the passion, it never quite wanes, and it is, the most expressive form and display of ones personality and physicality.

Especially Tango. Tango, oh tango.

Of Beer and Crabs

I was always an awkward teenager. I don't think there's any way to deny it, but teenage years sucked between the acne, glasses and untameable hair.

Somewhere in between stuff grew out. The hair became far more versatile, acne finally cleared post uni with a dosage of Roac and the glasses was the last to go at the ripe old age of 25. Despite that, there's another set of worries coming about such as the impending wrinkles and tired eyes that don't seem to be going away. There really is such a thing as wearing your age on your face, and apparently I'm a bit too readable.

But obviously this is probably the top of the curve and it's all downhill from here, man I really need to be more optimistic.

Had a great time last weekend catching up with someone that I'd only really met in the earlier part of the year, but sometimes you do realise that you click with people in sudden and unexpected ways. Barring age differences. Conversations about family, about life, about food, about dancing. When conversation isn't forced it is so comfortable and I've realised that people I click with all have family issues. Don't know what it is, maybe it translates into a certain personality that has learnt how to deal with adversity from a very young age.

Besides that tried my first AcroYoga class with C and dinner at Newton after before rushing back to get ready for Sunday's milonga which was fun, other than a very violent crash of heels of which I was not the recipient of. Oops.

Good weekend are of course followed up with Mondays from hell. The usual.

Back home this weekend, CAN'T WAIT!

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...

Strangers

There are these moments in life where you find yourself sitting with an acquaintance, and for some reason or another you end the day knowing just about everything in their life.

For some people I find this process takes a long time and constant contact to occur, but for others, it really is that simple, honest, open conversation that dips into memories past to retrieve events and construct dates and emotions- where stories are weaved through time so you see the tiniest glimpse of the threads of their life tapestry.

It's kind of nice because in this cynical jaded world of ours, you find someone who trusts you with their information, who trusts you to listen and who feels comfortable around you, and in return you sometimes reciprocate with the same degree of openness and honesty. It's rare, but when it happens, it's memorable.

In other news, performed my first Tango Solo and it was a blast. Also conducted my first tango class and boy was it exhausting, but so rewarding. I understand why maestros are so tired after a full day now and barely want to dance at milongas!

Pauses

There's always a necessity to just take a step back and breathe. The world likes to interfere with your state of mind, what with running around day in a day out with a hamster wheel of tasks to do, pay bills, do work, shower, workout, meet friends, dance and repeat for the rest of your life.

Sometimes all it takes is a quiet moment to reconnect with yourself and your own expectations, hopes, dreams, disappointments, fears, and with each breath just...release.

I've always been someone who cannot pause. Illustrated by my busy first quarter schedule of 2014 thus far. This has always manifested itself in the way I express myself through music and dance, always rushing, taking a step too quick, instead of savouring and languishing in the pull of a ritardando, a pause or silence. Forever off-tempo and off-kilter just ever so slightly. Always, breathe before you make the move and don't ever just fall into it.

In other news, finally got a breakthrough in Pole. I've realised I cannot go into it when I am exhausted from bootcamp or gym because I cannot hold my own weight as a result and end up more bruised than ever since I'm reliant on body parts pressed against poles to hold me up. Was contemplating not continuing but since I finally can climb the damn thing I'll keep it up and see where it goes.

Being a woman

Pole dancing has thrown up a lot of questions for me as I watch the teacher gyrate in her bikini bottoms on stage, bodies turned into references of 'boobs' and 'butt' and wondering why I can't arch my back the way she does. I'm in exactly the class that teenage me would have frowned upon, wondering why our bodies matter more than our minds, wondering why physical attributes outweigh my thoughts, actions, dreams and hopes.

But isn't that selfish too? Why do we seem to discriminate against one and not the other? The socially acceptable answer to someone calling themselves fat is, 'love yourself, society sucks, you should be comfortable with yourself rather than answering to someone else'. But no one sticks up the same way if a hot person were stupid, in fact we seem to agree to the affirmation of stereotypes.

Random thoughts that I haven't quite sorted through yet, but anyway, pole dancing. It's weirdly self-affirming which is scary because it really started out, and still is a manner of totally objectifying women as nothing but sexual objects. However tables feel like they turn when it becomes something a woman willingly does, as in, it isn't for the pleasure of men, but for our own pleasure. There's something quite liberating about a thumping bass and hair swinging that I guess most of society would frown upon.

But maybe we should just be less uptight and celebrate our bodies in the best way possible.

The other issue that has cropped up recently is that I am tired of hedging everything I eat. Every friggin thing that I see needs to be run through an internal assessment of 'shit I'm gna get fat', 'have I reached caloric deficit today' and 'do you know how many burpees this equals' before it's put in my mouth. It's actually quite exhausting, and these decisions happen at every single meal. Why why why why why?

I'm often sick of hearing women who are healthy and gorgeous say, 'oh I'm fat' or 'oh I didn't eat rice today', this perennial fear of being fat and unattractive haunts us all the time and it's becoming rather loathsome. Granted, I will probably continue to do it and complain about it, but I often think when I'm 40 or 50 looking back I'm going to scoff at myself too. Sheesh.

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!!!

BANKS

I'm thinking it over
The way you make me feel all sexy but it's causing me shame
I wanna lean on your shoulder
I wish I was in love but I don't wanna cause any pain
And if I'm feeling like I'm evil, we've got nothing to gain

What if I never even see you cause we're both on a stage
Don't tell me listen to your song because it isn't the same
I don't wanna say your love is a waiting game

Baby I'm thinking it over
What if the way we started made it something cursed from the start
What if it only gets colder
Would you still wrap me up and tell me that you think this was smart
Cause lately I've been scared of even thinking 'bout where we are

Teachings

It's been entertaining having new people join in for Tango, because it allows me again and again to retrace the steps from the beginning, from recreating (as much as possible) that earnest-ness that comes with trying to do what is now simple, but was terribly hard to begin with.

Someone (or a few people) have told me that I'm dedicated, and anyone who hears my weekly schedule often questions my sanity. Two words can thrown around. "Why?" and "How?".

The "How" is easily addressed, just cut into your sleep hours and maximize your nights. Simple enough. Before I started work, I could not imagine being shackled to a chair for most of the daylight hours, however, the longer I work, the more I realize how much of a routine it has become. What's most important though, is just letting go, every day. I often find stepping away from a problem, from tasks and coming back to them refreshed the next day makes it so much easy to accomplish and in far more efficient time as well. "How", is about maximizing your hours, about constantly telling yourself that, if not now, then when?

The "Why" is a bit more troubling to explain, and cuts a bit deeper. The "Why" sometimes is because I don't want to be left alone. The "Why" is about sometimes feeling inadequete, this deep-seated feeling that everyone else is charging ahead and you're left immobile as the world rushes around you. It's always feeling like you're 'missing out' on something. There's a whole world of difference between being alone, and being lonely, and sometimes it tips just too much in the favour of the latter.

Fear

I often think that we're afraid of finally reaching a destination set out in our minds because of the unknowns that come after, and what it potentially entails. What if you reach a certain set goal and think that once you've reached it life is going to be easier, but it isn't. Nothing fundamentally changes because you got that degree, that promotion, that goal dress size, that medal. It doesn't. Yet we play up getting to a goal as though we'll reach the answer to life if and when we do.

Maybe that's what's stopping you at the end of the day. That as long as you're still working toward that goal-it's ok to settle.

Peace

The longer and longer I mull over things like, where I was, where I'm going, what I'm going to be, who I'm going to be with, how I'm going to get there, the more I realize that this year has been a bit of an eye opener because it has been serving as a template of sorts for what life could be like for a long time more (touch wood).

This year...this year...I had a nice discussion with R at A2's wedding this weekend over how life changes. For him, it's ranged from moving countries, moving jobs, finding jobs, discarding jobs, breaking up, travels...and everything in between. And the more I realize that everyone around me is still in such a flux. Embracing this constant change is what is going to define my 20's and hell, if I don't find ways to jazz it up a bit more.

Where next? Where next indeed. Travels in January/February, woot! Looking forward to reconnecting with Michigan girlies over tuk-tuk rides to 1000 year old temples. US/London travels perhaps? 2013, you're shaping up to be a good year too...if the Mayans weren't correct.

It's no longer a one-sided game of upstaging each other. It's a peace that comes with accepting that I don't want to feel a certain way anymore. Nor do I want and wish to force you to.