maybe i'm also nostalgic that way - every year i feel like i'm peaking and i become so reluctant to let it go, but the next year rolls along and it surpasses the previous in an alternative dimension and an alternative high. every year was special in its own way:
in 2014 i remember resisting the onset of 2015 with every fibre of my being - reasoning that we had worked too hard while battling the mighty a-level giant and was left feeling utterly spent. but 2015 rolled along and after a long series of hot tears/being angry at god for making me wait for the promised land, i matriculated into the college of my dreams (the one i had a post-it of in front of my desk while studying for a-levels) and got to embark on a new life different from one i had hitherto known - living with new friends, suite partying, greek literature, dining hall conversations about the philosophy of living and the ultimatum - witnessing the picturesque backdrop of the snow-capped, himalayan peak in the quaint town of mussoorie on an all-expenses paid, learning journey trip overseas. 2015 was also the year i finally felt the vertigo of falling for someone who was reciprocating my feelings to a certain extent and it was so beautifully intriguing (as much as it was the eventual downfall of my heart).
in 2015 going on 2016 i remember wondering what 2016 would hold - hopefully no more heartache? nope, 2016 was a year of solid heartache, loneliness and emptiness from crashing, burning and feeling played to varying degrees after a multitude of experimental pushing of zhuangzi-esque, personal boundaries - but it was also a year where my personal growth was off the charts. it was the year i got to spend 3 months alone in new york city, and that adventure of a lifetime sparked something in me that has since changed my outlook on life completely. those angry nights in the gym culminated in my resolve to remain unabashedly proud of who i am as an individual, so as long as kindness remained my key value. "love will come when it comes, & i will wait for it - but i am done pursuing it" were my famous last words.
on the last day of 2016 i remember thinking it'll be difficult to beat a year like 2016 - a year where i got to experience what it felt like to be incandescently alive. 2016's new york sojourn primed me well for the solitary sojourns of 2017 in alicante and seoul respectively, where i had to push myself in foreign countries i hardly spoke the language of. and most of all - 2017 was the year i felt another dimension of aliveness that i had never felt before in my life - falling in love, period. for the bulk of the year i found myself glowing in our new found infatuation that gradually developed into love. 2017 was the year where it became easy to imagine myself as the protagonist of my very own korean drama - after years of drooling over characters falling in love but never quite believing i was ever going to get to that stage, i was finally the star of my own episode.
the personal growth experiences of 2017 made me feel afraid that i was peaking in my youth - but 2018 held other plans for me. with hard work and alittle bit of luck i abruptly found myself knee-deep in a 6-months stint at a tech giant of my wildest dreams by the grace of god. i got to travel to tokyo on company payroll for the first time and marvelled as i saw mt. fuji peaking out from the office's window. i made so many good colleague-friends from a different age group and realised it was absolutely possible to begin my career in tech even as a global affairs major. i closed off 2018 in celebratory shock for having pulled off a crazy 28mc semester i never knew i was capable of. i know i always find myself proud of the hard work i'd put in every year - but completing my first 28mc semester in senior year while getting my driver's license was unfathomable and it still remains one of my most incredible feelings of accomplishments i've ever experienced. it taught me that i could accomplish even the craziest feat as long as i had a razor sharp focus and god going before me.
at the tail end of 2018, i vividly remember wondering out loud with annie at a cute little cafe in penang: "this time next year, i wonder where we'll be". our time in college was coming to a close and the future ahead felt hopeful yet nail-bitingly uncertain. 2019 felt disorientating - in one moment i found myself drowning in capstone and the anxiety of looming unemployment in an already taxing 28mc semester, and in the next moment i found myself in bangkok for the first time, feeling like a fish out of water as i tagged along on my first official customer meeting with a big bank in thailand. the transition from school to adulting was stark but the inauguration into "adulthood" was also empowering - it felt nice to finally have money and channel effort into more tangible forms of output that had real world implications.
in all honesty - 2020 would have been the only year where i felt like i was plateauing. travel was not in the cards and lockdowns (both full and partial) became normalised across the globe. but feeling is not fact - to do myself justice and not belittle my accomplishments i remember (for the most part) sticking through the 10-month professional development plan i had laid out for myself and baiting myself by withholding korean dramas as the carrot to complete yet another certification. 2020 was the year i studied my way through to build a product niche at work so that i could stem that persistent feeling of imposter syndrome as i sat in meetings. 2020 was the year i found out value-adding constitutes a huge personal value of mine. and just when i thought 2020 was going to fizzle out like old champagne bubbles, a surprise proposal threw me off guard and ended the year on an eventful note -
and 2021 was the year where we doubled down and hustled to build something out of nothing together: i don't quite know how to quantify the amount of work we invested outside of our day jobs that went into both the wedding and the house. for the wedding our planning went down to the detail of timing my walk down the aisle so that we could cut our wedding entrance tune (with final cut pro) to make my grand entrance sync with the instrumental chorus. with regards to the house, it gets even more incredulous - it is hard for me to name a single furniture/appliance/hardware that we did not personally shortlist and/ buy - down to our folding toilet doors, tiles, carpentry and even our kitchen basin. every single nook and cranny in our house was handpicked and exists for a reason - even the position of our power plugs for future proofing.
2021 was exhausting on many levels and i don't feel quite ready to start sprinting again. 2021 was such a defining year - it played a huge role in tangibly framing life as i know of now.
but who knows how 2022 will look like? hopefully still kind and once again crazy, in a good way.
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