Writing more this year was supposed to be one of my new year’s resolutions, which I set back to make a Chinese New Year resolution just so that I could hibernate mindlessly a little longer. Except that all fifteen days of it have passed so I don’t really have much of an excuse putting it off for much longer. Along with my other resolutions, including staying more contactable (I can basically hear my friends laughing across the ocean), which has sadly been marred by phone trouble and a recent Netflix addiction. 

So, like I said, here goes part two of eat, pray - who am I kidding, for me it’s more like eat, eat, eat. 

The thing is, I’d thought I was done with this whole finding myself crap. I’d thought that it was a freshman year thing, something incited by a new environment and new experiences. This blog I’d started basically as an outlet to figure myself out, and by summer I was having such a great time that I thought I had. Then sophomore year rolled around and I thought I’d spent enough time figuring myself out, time to start trying to figure the rest of my life out - and I thought I had to lock in a career plan by the end of it. And consequently spent a good portion of my fall semester in a basement. A good semester nonetheless, with great company, but often lacking sunlight and vitamin D. 

And what I’m saying is basically that I was a twenty year old who thought she had life all figured out, like every other college aged movie protagonist who finds out that no, she did not. I was telling a couple of people over break that I think training and Singaporean schooling essentially bottled up my teenage angst and everything else apart from physical and academic growth and now everything is falling out belatedly after my teenagerdom’s concluded. 

So I tried thinking about what I would want to do. And I realise I have hardly any idea. I have some clues, I want it to be related to what I like to do, and that I know - fashion? reading? sustainable business? music? but then am I good at it? I’m so distracted and interested by so many things at the same time. I still like business, but I don’t want it purely to be my life. And if you ask me what my ideal job would be, it would be an amalgamation of everything. 

All I know is that I don’t want my answer to why I chose a job to be that I fell into it. I want to know where I’m headed even if I don’t know where I’m going (if that makes sense, it made sense in my head). Even if that leads me right back to the beginning of where I thought I’d end up, at least I won’t start my career off with a bunch of wistful what-if’s. I want to have fulfilment in doing something, in the pleasure of creating something, in the experience of seeing things grow. I guess that’s a start, but it’s a long way to the end of a thought process that’s initiated by a simple question that mysteriously enough I’d somehow thought I’d answered without ever really tackling. 

Sometimes I feel that to think can both be a blessing and a curse in that it can drive you away from contentment. Maybe sometimes not thinking is necessary and a happier existence, and sometimes I envy my friends who are fine with working hard now for benefits in the future. But these sometimeses don’t stop me thinking about what else I want to be, even if I still have no damn clue, and as much as I know that age shouldn’t be a barrier in the future from doing what I want then, I see no reason why that in itself should be barrier from doing what I want now. 

Coming to London was about a few things for me. I know it’s hardly diving into uncharted territory, and it’s not like I’m completely adrift here, but for a girl who spent most of her time from age 9 till 18 circulating within a community with only slight changes (I count at least five from my P3 class in HP with me) it’s still a shift. So I guess coming here was once again about reminding myself that survival outside my direct comfort zone was not a one-off accomplishment fuelled by freshman enthusiasm, but also so that I could breathe and make myself think a little bit about what I want. As much as I love New York and being in it, the pace is so fast that it’s easy to get swept along into the throngs and still feel like you’re moving too slowly. 

I am living a great life. I know that, I appreciate that. Louis the Child and Porter/Madeon performed in one night, it doesn’t get much better than that combination. In all honesty I could simply focus on the good parts and watch Netflix till I forget the rest, it’s pretty easy to move on like that. But then that’s escapism, and not focusing on something doesn’t make me any more prepared to deal with it or another iteration in the future.

As much as I wish I could say I did, I don't have that security that I thought I did. If I did, things I’ve said before wouldn’t replay themselves in my head and make me cringe sometimes or I wouldn’t care so much about what other people thought. And I know that that might never go away, because who has it all figured out? All I know is that for all that I’m laughing more freely and having more fun than I was, progress is relative and there’ll always be room for more. I guess that’s why shows like Girls (very recent wagon) and Skins (one day one season) exist, it’s comforting to know that we’re not the only ones who feel like we have nothing figured out after what can feel like ages of trying. (Is my Netflix addiction really showing?) 

I suppose that’s part of me writing, because for me writing is charting, and saving as a draft or scribbling in a diary is a lot easier than putting thoughts online for invisible eyes to judge. And in a sense it forces my accountability, not so much because I feel more accountable to some vague presence than I do to myself but more so because I don’t want there to be a disparity between what I write and what I mean. 

So stay tuned for more incoherent ramblings, hopefully much more consistent than before. 

Photos:

At the New Museum, “Pipilotti Rist: Pixel Forest” Exhibit

Featuring Eunice, and random strangers

I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a friend who believed that friendships were formed out of a mixture of circumstance, proximity and character, with a different level of each in each relationship. 

It’s a slightly simplistic, but I think relatively accurate Venn diagram relationship between the three. I’ve had friends that fall into some categories entirely, people who I was nominally good friends with by virtue of being in the same social circle but have had basically zero one on one interaction with, the proximity friends. Friends with whom I get along well, but am unable to regularly meet due to geographical separation or completely distinct social circles. Friendships that just slowly dissolved from thick bonds into wisps after the removal of a commonality. 

The wonderful and painful thing about it is that what constitutes this mixture can change. Wonderful in the joy you feel when you realise the strengthening of a friendship, as if two lines that met at a point now run along the same path. Painful as you see the slow dissipation of a connection you once considered one of your strongest. 

I was lucky enough to experience the former this summer, with pleasant surprise that I hadn’t drifted from some of my closest friends this year or so we’d spent dispersed across various continent, but somehow we’d grown even closer. Some friendships turn stale and emptily silent with age but we rambled on headily about books and movies and music and relationships and society. We lay on couches and just talked through the night, danced like idiots and held each other crying and laughing in a backseat. We ran down roads at midnight, finished ungodly amounts of food, propped each other up and acted as each other’s pillows, climbed up hills into vacant restaurants to stare down at the city lights. 

The beauty of it all isn’t just the fun of each experience no matter how big or small but in the company and knowing that this almost tangible bond exists. Part of that little bubble of giddy euphoria that comes with something even as simple as climbing around a playground together like kindergarten kids is from this whole feeling of being understood and the support that this understanding provides to all the feelings of possibility in our lives. 

And we’re not identical people. Hardly. I’ll be off learning how to sell my soul while some friends learn how to run the country and others go into academia or social work. We essentially cover all the areas of a classic three-sector model. And we didn’t necessarily evolve in the same way either; it’s like we all took steps in different trajectories but faced similar directions. Still, these are people who I can talk to for hours on end. People who are terrible influences but have my best interests at heart. Who I know will back me up, who I can come back too, who can make me feel a little happy warmth even when we’re talking across hundreds and thousands of miles. And in that vein they’ve opened me up to sharing moments with new people because I have this anchor and this security, and a feeling of a steady foundation from which I can build myself and appreciate and enjoy the rest of the life and people happening around me. 

I suppose I might be more of a glass-half-empty person than I’d thought because as summer starts drawing towards its close I feel loath to leave this behind. There’s a tiny fear that the little change that brought this wonder about previously could shift its direction towards pain. But then again it’s not like we’re leaving this friendship behind like an ugly t-shirt left to rot in a cupboard corner, and this would hardly be security if it could be so easily taken away. So our summer night expeditions might be on a pause for now but I’m sure our conversations won’t be (I’m sorry if it takes me forever to reply your whatsapps I still love you all) and we can resume them wherever in the world we see each other again. Just know that there’s no way I can fully communicate how much I appreciate having you guys in my life. 

Might be out of the camera’s focus but hey, not out of each other’s

good friends increase my exposure. heh.