I seem to write a lot around my birthday - but I guess that’s cause birthdays are always contemplative times for me. I have written blogs ever since I was 12. It started with MSN spaces, which I really loved cause it was connected to your MSN messenger and hotmail. I then moved to using blogger and a livejournal, which I curated from the time between 2007 - 2009. I gave up on livejournal eventually and moved over to another blogger blog. I guess writing has been a thing I’ve done ever since I was a kid. I kept diaries from when I was 8 or something. A teacher at Chinese School told us how writers kept diaries so they would understand their growth, and I was really attracted to that thought…. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something I wrote that was all mine? And so my love affair with writing diaries began at quite an early age. My blogger blogs are still online on the interwebs - and I still go have a read of them every now and then. I gain an insight into the person I was, all those years ago. I wrote this 15 years ago, when I was on the brink of turning 15.
It's nearly my 15th Birthday and wow, it's been a fast year. Last year this time, I was stuck in Hong Kong, trying my best to get out of that place as fast as I could. But now, for this year, I'm in Australia for these winter holidays, appreciating the time I have for myself and enjoying the sensation of this coldness of winter (Not that I like the cold, but really, it's a good change from the hot and stinking summers).
In a way, I still write like that. But I guess what’s incredible is seeing what type of mindset I was in back then and reading about the things that were bothering me - which was mainly school work, friendship dramas and wishing that I could go to NYC and study fashion.
I’m a little shocked to think that I am actually going to be 30 tomorrow. How did that happen? I remember all my birthdays, although I completely forgot 2021’s birthday because it was probably spent in lockdown… but I remember the flavours of all my birthdays. I remember not being able to wait to turn 15, and suddenly I’m 30.
How would I describe my 20s? Unexpected. Full of learning. Introspection. Understanding.
I remember when I turned 20 and I felt like the world was my oyster. I was very optimistic and felt like was a grown ass adult. In fact, I was still just a little naive baby back then. But I was really enjoying how I could do so many things that I always yearned to do - like go to bars with friends, buy things I wanted, be responsible and have a job. It made me feel so adult. It was the year when I got into a relationship with my first boyfriend and so having a boyfriend felt really thrilling as well. Between the ages of 20 - 24, I was very much focused on my career. I went back to uni for a second time at 22/23, then dove head first into the corporate world, albeit focused in health. It’s funny how I have worked in other professions for longer than I have ever been a physio. But physio really made a mark on me and shaped me with who I became.
25 was a pivotal year. I remember giving myself goals at 25 and thinking I would tick them all off by 30, which I am turning tomorrow. But I didn’t do any of them. Perhaps this is my learning that life isn’t really a tick box, cause… The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Life happens when it has to happen. And the best thing to do is to stop fighting was is happening but go with the flow. Because life is meant to be magical. The more I think about it, the more magic I feel with life… because honestly, I’ll have a longer time of being dead than being alive. So perhaps there is a reason as to why I am here the time I am here. I could have been born in 2000BC but somehow I am right here, right now. So I’m not fighting the reasons for my existence here and I do believe that even though I don’t understand what the point of my life is sometimes, it will make sense. And I think it is actually starting to make sense - there really is no point, except to enjoy life. Seeing every moment as a moment to savour is the point. Finding joy in the mundane is the point. Finding beauty in fragility is the point. Anything can be the point - just live life.
The last few years of the pandemic were the last years of my 20s. In some ways, I felt a bit robbed. It felt like the world came to a standstill and in some ways, it felt like my 20s were halted then. Technically I should probably be 28 if I minus the pandemic years, cause they don’t count. But I always think back to how unique these pandemic times were. Enforced isolation, masks abound, vaccination centres - who would have thought and foreseen all these things? No one.
The thing is, when I was 18, I thought by 28 I really would have gotten my life together. So when I turned 28, I felt a sense of disappointment and frustration for where I was at in life. But honestly, not hitting any of those age related goals has kinda liberated me from my self-imposed limits. Now I can embrace life as it is for however the fuck it wants to happen. I didn’t get to achieve any of the things I wanted to achieve prior to 30. But that’s ok. Because now I’m free and can finally embrace what life really wants for me.
Hello 30, I’m ready for you. Bring it on.
See ya in Queenstown, 30 year old me.