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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

My Blog is a Tween! + Was I ever that young?

I recently wrote a small piece on my other blog comparing how I was as a fresh grad and the changes I had observed after 10 years in the industry. After writing that, I became curious about this blog and searched through the dusty blog archives for the very first entry I did.

Lo, I realized that this blog was born on 16th October, 2003. It turns 13 this year! It's a tweenager! 

Even when I read the words from that first entry, I felt old! The style of writing seemed so immature and full of teenage spunk. [I don't want to elaborate on what that shows of me from my writing now...] They seemed to come from someone else entirely and if it wasn't for the fact that I remember typing them down in the university computer lab, I might have never recognized them as my own.

Anyway, here they are, with my older, wiser *ahem* thoughts in between:

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Out of curiosity, and the plain fact that I do not want to start working on any of my schoolwork anytime soon, I've decided to start this blog. If nothing, it'll save me from writing all those lengthy emails to pple ( when I actually do it, that is ) and give my friends the option of choosing to read my crap or not. What a nice person I am. :p

Nowadays, with FB, my friends have no option but to read the crap I post. Sorry, guys.


Anyway, quick intro: 22 year old *still* student at NUS, fac of bizad, school of management, 

Damn! Was I ever 22??? I can hardly remember what that feels like!]


or [my favourite] School of Biz [SOB. who the heck was the one who thought that up??] 

And now my employer shares the same acronym as the bartender from the Simpsons. Who was the one who thought that one up?


I'm graduating in Dec, so will officially join the ranks of the unemployed on Jan 2004, wondering exactly what it is I paid NUS so much for. Will become wandering spirit by that time, the Fool of the Tarot, going where the wind blows me to and hopin' I don end up in some rubbish heap.

Thankfully, not still unemployed. Honestly, in retrospect, that was a pretty uncertain time, living literally paycheck to paycheck teaching tuition. I wouldn't have done [or bought] most of the things I have now with that lifestyle and I do have some gratitude for the paycheck I earn now. Yet, I can't deny there are aspects about it that still appeal to me and I do still have a longing to become that Fool of the Tarot.


My big dream is to strike 1st prize in 4D one day, become disgustingly, filthily, rich and live off the proceeds for the rest of my life without having to work.

Obviously, this still has not happened.


Since the chances of that happening is [nil], I would also like to work in the creative arts industry in some way. If I ever get my Illustrator down, I'd like to become a freelance graphic designer. Until then, I'd be teaching tuition for a living, until the day I die of a heart attack in a pool of my own blood in some kid's house.

Oh, this is one of the parts I miss so much about being in university. The thought that the world was still open to you and your dreams and you could still be anything you wanted to be. Instead, I'm still in danger of dying of a heart attack in a pool of my own blood in school. 

How does this happen to us? How do we lose our dreams and the capacity to dream somewhere in those 10 years?


Ok, too much info for now. Me gotta go do some actual work, you know, the kind that justifies your place in society and that most parental and educational units look favourable upon. See ya.

Yes, I did manage to find some actual work to justify my place in society and be looked favourably upon by parental and educational units. I'm still deciding whether that's a good thing or not.

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Seeing my 22-year old thoughts and my 36-year-old ones together brought home the idea of aging far more vividly than I thought. My 22-year-old self sounded a lot spunkier than I remember at the time and more sarcastic as well. Yet, I can't deny that my older self has some wisdom *ahem* that my 22-year-old one did not have and that certainly, I wouldn't have wanted to live with the salary that I was earning as a tuition teacher for the rest of my life. 

Maybe the key here is to be aware of and grateful for what age can bring you. My 22-year-old self would not have been able to travel to the number of countries that I did in my 30s. My 22-year-old self would have still been sharing the family computer and living with her parents, instead of typing these words in her own study in her own house. My 22-year-old self was very much single with no hope of getting attached. So indeed my older self has a lot more that my 22-year-old self would have looked enviously at.

Still, you do have to raise a toast to younger days. To dreams unfulfilled and dreams yet to be.

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