Everything has changed...

Something has changed.

A small twitch, the tiniest of movements, so miniscule. But a change nonetheless, my thoughts. I am adopting a different outlook, no different from what I have been saying aloud, but it's starting to sink in, I'm starting to believe.

I'm taking my life on a by-feel basis. Too risky? Too uncertain? 

You bet.

But what have I got to lose? 

Especially this one year, which I have already decided to be my gap year. Why not actually live it like I've said it?

And why end it at one year? 

I'm not necessarily saying that I'll continue to wander aimlessly forever (though let's be honest, this is a very real possibility). All I want to do is to be in touch with my soul, my heart. I agree that this sounds completely wishy-washy, unfounded, naive. But let me take the fall, else I'll never learn. 

I am insanely optimistic. Like a hopeless romantic, but towards life, not some guy. But what's wrong with that?

Here's to life.

Here's to the future. 

Here's to forever.

what should i do with my life...

Here we are again. 

How long did I think I could runaway this from problem?

I am scared. I know because my heart is thumping like a drum. I can almost feel my stomach churning. Almost, but not quite. Risky business looms large ahead of me, I thought I liked the risk, but it turns out I need certainty to ground me. 

What will I do? 

Thinking back I have never actually taken the road less travelled, though I thought I did. My decision here and now is frightening. It takes all of me to say yes, jump in the waters, submit myself to its blindness.

Perhaps this is my chance to make a splash in the world, to leave my mark. Which of the voices in my head will ring loudest? Do I thrust forward knowing the absolutely huge possibility of failure? Or do I jump while its safe, into the calm waters of stability.

The things uni have taught me...

I stumbled upon this unfinished draft in my list. Now that I have officially completed university, perhaps it will be even more relevant/accurate for me to give some reflection on this...

Time flies. 

This is something no one needs a reminder of, and yet we all kind of still do. This is the essence of the chase that most of us are involved in. It is precisely because time ticks that we rush into the things we do. Three years in university sounds like an eternity before, but it has flashed by so fast that I can't even imagine all the seasons I've been through (12 to be exact). And yet I can feel it. Somewhere etched in my heart the first touch of soft snow, the first dread of icy slipperiness, the panic at 4am of not getting anyway in an assignment. If I look right ahead at the white wall in front of me, feeling the humidity surrounding me, all those dinners I've shared with my good friends could all have been a figment of my imagination. And yet I can feel it, deep in my bones I know they were real. Yes, time rolls on like a ball of snow tumbling down a steep hill. Faster and faster it goes, and I just happened to be counting down the seconds it takes to hit the ground. 

Life skills. 

This is by far the most observable learning I have, in my eyes. I confess I grew up slightly (maybe more than just slightly) brattish. Going to university with no one to help cook your food OR most importantly clean up the dishes changes the whole game. In fact, red flags pop up when I run out of underwear and have to dry them using a hairdryer. God... university leaves us with such fine tales. I've learnt how to cook for one, or for many, cleaning, talking to people, living with people, learning what pisses me off and what makes me happy. Learning how to use microsoft fucking word and all its formatting shit. Learning how to SURVIVE because when its 8pm and you're too sick to get out of bed to feed your starving stomach, or when you have 10 pounds for the rest of the month and an empty fridge, or when you screwed up that one time over an assignment. You learn not just to get up, but how to move on. You learn to survive. 

University can be the best days of your life.

But not necessarily. It can be because when else can you drop "I'm a student" and get a free pass off any stupid mistake you made. When else do you get to be selfishly brattish and have your lecturers literally holding your hand guiding you away from the dark (if you let them). When else do you get the support of an institution, the FULL support of your parents, the support of other likeminded peers. Likeminded young 20 year olds that are just as lost as you are acting more like kids than young adults. Throwing yoghurts at other blocks, lauching into full sofa stealing mode, transferring your roomates' ENTIRE room OUTSIDE to mirror exactly what it was liek in a room. To be able to wake up at 11am every single day without ever knowing what the air smells like at 6am, have your entire social circle be 5 minutes away. It's like they designed university to make your life easy. But God forbid that the three years should be my best, because I have decades to go in this life.

Life goes on.

To be fair, this I learned after finishing the entire process, graduation included. I learn that as much as I want to put those years on repeat, it is a place I can never revisit. I want to sit and cry and hole myself up in the illusion that I am still a student, but time kind of just leaves me behind. So I do too. 

A new beginning...

what in the world have you been up to these days?

I don't know. But, I think that,

I am on a journey of self discovery. I believe that my being is painted in arrays of colour not confined by the spaces set by traditions and norms. That while I'm yearning for a passion, my soul burns not for just one thing. It's a struggle I've face for years, but I am learning day by day how to achieve a balance towards a place where I can finally find serenity, not in the face of quietness, but in the midst of a beautiful chaotic mess.

Through the things my eyes have seen, the sounds my ears have heard, experiences I've lived, land I've traversed, people I've met... As I've said, there can be no way that I will be just one thing. 

So what have I been doing these days?

I've graduated. Congratulations to me.

I guess.

Since, I've decided to take a year off. Yes, or at least some time off. I'm infinitely blessed to still be able to have food on the table without having to earn it yet, and that my angel of a father lets me fly among the clouds wandering and letting the wind steer me for this hopefully temporary period. What I intend to do may not turn out to be what becomes my reality, but I hope to fill this time with as many experiences as I possibly can. Maybe this will bring me closer to my understanding.

Or maybe it won't. Just like all my other attempts to find my soul.

But alas. I'm young, I'm naive, I still believe. 

Yes. I still believe.

Hello there.

I have a name and I am 22 years old. 

In fact, I just turned the other day and started working in a new place (on my birthday yes). 

If I handed over my resume to my 16 year old self, I'd probably said it was fake. Or that it cannot possibly be mine. I graduated with a degree that I didn't know about then, in a university I didn't know existed, and have filled up the remaining blank spaces with things I never thought I'd do. 

It's a good thing, yes. But to me, it's like I've lost sense of who I am. The very essence of my being is diluted with fragments of experiences such that I can no longer ever piece together a complete and whole version of me. And still I continue to wander aimlessly into the unknown wilderness, though I feel a strange pull coming from way back in my history.

Maybe I'm afraid. 

I'm sure I'm afraid. 

These days, I feel like disappearing to somewhere foreign and unknown. It doesn't even have to be new, I just don't want to know anybody. I want to be drowned in my loneliness, undisturbed my what people think. Somewhere I am so new and different that social norms will never conform, at least for me... 

God... what have I been doing all these years?

well.

What do you want?

I want to curl my fingers round my shoulders, tightly till you can see the blood squeezed through my skin. I want to shake my body violently, repeating that question, what is it do you really want?

It feels not too long ago when I was sitting in humid class room, just a little right from the nearest fan screaming at myself to turn my focus towards the teacher in the front. Then, I thought surely I was going to end up somewhere different, somewhere special. I was battling my inner securities and my outwardly different interests. The world was both so big and so small at the same time, my 16 year old mind could not see the vast landscape it beheld. In a few blinks I am back in the same city wondering how I end up like this, sitting in front of my couch with a bachelors that I never thought I'd take. 

I think I graduated in something I can't quite care about that much. But then sometimes, I do.

6 years later I'm asking the exact same question non the wiser. How do I go forward? How is it that some people show close to zero struggle in accepting their call towards their chosen profession. How is it that some others can't quite give a damn what they do. How is it that my battle can seem so eternal, and that my passion not quite strong enough, my talent not quite eminent enough, yet my doubt can never go away.   

6 years I tried to forget, to decipher the code that lies somewhere in the deep corners of my heart. When people ask me what of the future my answer is I don't know, because I truly don't. Sometimes I fear I will never reach my answer. But time will be the only answer and I won't dwell too long on that. This odd sensation of being happy and not quite knowing what in the world seems to be the cage I am caught a prisoner in.

Carpe diem.

I have both been able and not been able to do it. 

My life is a constant contradiction.