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

Let me preface this by saying that I know I’m not the most open minded person on the planet. I think I’m relatively progressive, especially within the largely conservative society that I’ve grown up in, but at the same time I recognise that there are certain deep seated biases within me that engender discomfort in reaction to certain situations, and that these are going to take a while for me to get over.

But I’m trying. I think that the least I can do, that we can do, is to be open to the idea that we’re fallible and that these judgments we sometimes pass are built on foundations of sand that can be eroded away with time and effort if we’re willing to open the dam, to look at it from another perspective and reflect a little before slamming down a mental block like Gandalf going “You shall not pass!!” to any new concept or viewpoint. And even if it’s difficult to pry away from the thoughts you’ve cherished your whole life, any concession you make to this is progress in itself. It’s the definition of being considerate, you don’t have to behave in the same exact way to be able to try to sympathise. 

In the effort of consideration, I understand that the society I’ve been brought up in has  succeeded so far on largely conservative, paternalistic values, which perpetuates the retention of such values. I understand that while I myself have been raised in a largely liberal environment, that others have not been, and that it takes time to get used to new concepts. But even with these concessions, there are things that I still don’t quite understand. 

Like why it’s considered terrible for a girl to be hooking up with guys when a guy hooking up with girls is considered “fulfilling urges”. 

Like why for a girl to be doing so, her main motivations must be that she is either mentally or emotionally damaged or lacking. 

Like why it’s considered wilder (or at all so) for a girl to be hooking up with a girl than for a girl to be hooking up with a guy. 

Like how people can hear that a girl was attacked and ask about what she was wearing without asking if she’s okay.

Like how people can say that it was a person’s fault that someone else inflicted unprovoked pain and harm to him/her. 

Like how misunderstandings and the inability to grasp a concept in a certain way can transform itself into malice and spite, into insults and defamation, into hurt and disbelief. 

Like how a bias can turn something meaningless or cherished into something offensive. 

Like how people exploit this bias to turn a personal vendetta into a societal, almost systemic persecution. 

In all honesty, this list could go on for a long while, and I’ve had many discussions over the past few months with friends over this. This probably won’t be the last time I find the urge to write about this, because sadly a similar discussion could be applied to anything from gender to religion or sexuality, and I wish I had the literary skill to combine that discussion into concise prose but this is all I have for now.  

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that open-mindedness negates stupidity. Nor do I think that enlightened ideology necessarily validates every action done in its name. 

All I’m saying is, think a little. Think about why you’re condemning what you are. Then think about how you’ve come to the basis of that judgment. Think about the biases you’ve internalised. Think about whether you’d apply the same judgment to others in the same situation. About whether you could understand the motivations of others in the same situation. And as objectively as possible, about whether those actions are worth the weight of the judgment you’ve passed. Because even if ultimately open-mindedness doesn’t negate stupidity, at the very least it minimises the potential for it. 

On a rather unrelated note, this is me playing with light, blinds and the self-timer function.