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!

Thoughts

I used to be a voracious writer. Whether it was diary entries, daily entries in school, story writing, and its latest incarnation, musings on Tango. Recently though I have found myself quieting this voice in my head, this part of me that is so deeply reflective that other parts of me ignores it, or doesn't want to warrant thinking of capturing this stream of consciousness into a documented form. To be read years later. I often think and write in a way that talks to a future self, what would I want to look back on, to really recapture the feelings at that point in time, to immerse myself into a self that I was way back when. And it's good, because sometimes you re-read these writings and all the emotions you've kept away, locked, forgotten come flooding back all at once. Bringing you back to a truer self that you were back then.

Where am I now? Sometimes emotionally lost, sometimes wondering what next, sometimes wondering how to do this adulting thing. I felt lost at 21, and I still feel lost at 30.

I often anticipate the worst things in life, just so I can brace myself for it. Warranted most of the time, but living a life with a barrier is not quite recommended either.

Where am I on this day - 27th of May 2018?

Disappointed perhaps, that emotionally still not quite stable. I've chosen the average because I could not accept or acknowledge the highs and the lows. These past few years, the moments I've accepted the happy parts of it, it has been met with the deepest of lows. Losing family, losing friends, losing myself. It's hard to open up the longer you live because there are so many experiences just hidden behind a facade. Hidden behind layers of yourself that even you've forgotten about.

Project number 16. I really am tired, and I mean it this time. I've had it about being half assed about everything in this life. I've had it about being untrue to saying and doing what I feel like doing.

Judgements. Of self, of others, of a belief you need to be somewhere by a time. I remind myself again and again that this life is yours to live. Enough with expectations, perceived or real. To really be happy. That is the goal.

LOA!

Taking some time to myself for the next 2 months. I have not been this happy in awhile.

2 months - couple of things to handle - Christmas reunions and New Years aside, moving house is on the cards as well as intense PT sessions - goals!

- Move house
- PT 3x a week +
- Start pole again!
- Read 10 books at least
- Dive

Hopefully these get stuck to!

Yet another year and 2017 was somewhat eventful in the sense that it passed by in such a flash. 29 this year and next year I'll reach an age that seems, kind of insane? But just as currents pass we get carried along in the growing up process and before you know it, people you knew as per-adolescents end up having babies! It's close to being insane at this point how much we really are expected to be adults, but really still figuring out this adulting thing for ourselves.

3 cities for work this year, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Bangkok. All different responsibilities, topics and teams, all equally as challenging in its own ways. Good teams throughout tho which lessened the burden.

The more senior I get the more I need to shape the way I want to lead a team or really figure out what work means to me at this point. Is it about creating or shaping a project that is truly interesting? Value adding? Consulting is such a funny beast in the sense that we really can switch topics and are expected to be jack of all trades sometimes but all it does is that it leaves me wondering what I really know at this point.

Talking to analysts who are still so new to the scene and trying to prepare them really for what's coming ahead. It's hard sometimes to reflect back as everyone's path really is so different and dependent on the types of projects, the teams they'll experience, the real workload that is on their shoulders or what they are expected to deliver on. There are a few things that I'm learning, even for myself, that you may be able to handle the work but what's more important is creating the environment where people can flourish, or where they feel they can create and express their opinions on topics that are challenging to them.

The more people ask me though, am I going to be a career consultant? The more I say, give me another 3 years and let's see. That's the decade mark.

But what is work really about though? Being on a break has already made me slightly stir-crazy as I realised I'm not someone to sit idle, I like the idea of work in the sense that it keeps me active mentally albeit at the expense of my sanity. But the best thing about consulting is the teams and people and the fact you are trusted with a topic and being paid for advise that stretches your own efforts. The best feeling is really nailing the topic and ending up with the team in a good place, the client somewhat happy - if that's what you ever call it- and overall just knocking it out of the park. This is the best that we bring, of course the opposite has about a 50/50 chance of happening sometimes.

This sort of team work is something I've always treasured and I've seen it a few times this year among the pain of long delivery nights and working on multiple weekends. It's you and the team vs. a topic that can be challenging, its fun nights drinking and bitchin' over the work but still just mugging along. That's what Asians do best unfortunately, throw ourselves at the work because it's ingrained that you don't give anything less than 100% whether you like it or not.

But again, time to step back, really consider what 2018 means for me, and sometimes looking for answers from everyone else but that little voice in my own head.

Stood at the coal face, stood with our backs to the sun
I can remember being nothing but fearless and young
We've become echoes, but echoes that fade away
We fall into the dark as we dive under the way (I heard you say)
The devils on your shoulder
Strangers in your head
As if you don't remember
As if you can forget
It's only been a moment
It's only been a lifetime
But tonight you're a stranger or some silhouette
Let's go out in flames so everyone knows who we are
Cause these city walls never knew that we'd make it this far
We've become echoes, but echoes that faded away
So let's dance like two shadows burning out our glory days
The devils on your shoulder
Strangers in your head
As if you don't remember
As if you can forget
It's only been a moment
It's only been a lifetime
But tonight you're a stranger or some silhouette
Just hold me
Just hold me
Just hold me
Just hold me
The devils on your shoulder
Strangers in your head
As if you don't remember
As if you can forget
It's only been a moment
It's only been a lifetime
But tonight you're a stranger or some silhouette
It's only been a moment
It's only been a lifetime
But tonight you're a stranger or some silhouette
But tonight you're a stranger or some silhouette

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?

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?