It's another New Year!

If you know me, you know that I don't usually do new year's resolutions. Because what is time but a social construct? Like ok, I see the point, and if it helps to motivate people into doing things, good for them. But I've never been the kind of person that is able to follow through with something if I plan them too rigorously. But then again, now that I'm 5.5 years into the corporate life, I realise that planning is important, and not even for the kind of big picture capitalist goals/visions/missions thing that companies do, but even for the day to day kind of work, because of how technologies have created this need to be super 'efficient' and 'productive'.

Sometimes I wish that writing a blog post like this could be considered 'productive' as well in this capitalist world, because then I may be more motivated to write more than one post per year. Remember the time that I wanted to write one blog post per week and I wrote like 5 posts? Lol.

Anyway, rant is finished. I'm writing a blog post for the new year of 2022 - whereby it has been raining (mostly) non-stop since the 1st of January. I always consider the rain as something of an indication of good luck to me, so let me continue to be delusional optimistic about it.

2021 was an interesting year, and as usual, I still feel incredibly blessed and lucky to be where I was/am when so many people and parts of the world are still recovering from things like the pandemy, income inequality, natural disasters etc etc. There was a lot of drama at work but I'm lucky enough to mostly be on the sideline looking in and gossiping with my friend, while still maintaining a somewhat decent 'productivity' and work-life balance. Didn't do the best with savings thanks to IVY PARK, amongst other extravagances.

Things took a bit of a turn (for the positive) around the October-November period. If people go through with the New Year, New Me thing, my New Year probably started around then, when I:

• Started exercising regularly at the F45 studios near my house
• Started picking up tennis (self-taught, and somehow my skills are pretty decent, according to a credible source)
• Started a new job - it's been stressful but fulfilling (in a corporate kind of sense. I don't think any capitalist job is meant to be truly fulfilling, but this has been pretty good so far. Side note why do I keep ranting about capitalism in this post?). Met new and amazing people, faced new and exciting challenges, and just tried my best to do well (instead of pretty much just coasting through life in my previous job)
• Reconnected with my close AC friend (super randomly) after not having met/spoken with her for like what 5 years?

I don't know if it's because I'm about to turn 30 this year, but the fitness journey, in particular, has been quite interesting. I'm still not the most motivated person out there (hence the only way I manage to push myself is to sign up for an incredibly expensive program and push myself not to miss it because then I'll really be throwing my money away). Other than that, life has been pretty good I would say. Things can be better - I'm not earning as much as some of my peers, but then again, I know that I'm already in a much better place than so many people out there, so I can't be complaining about that. It's a good goal to potentially achieve in the future, but I don't dwell on it, because ultimately, I'm happy, and money is fake anyway.

The reconnection with my old friend was also another highlight that, as the summary suggested, was super random but I'm super happy about it. We ran into each other out of nowhere and have been managing to catch up afterwards. The amazing thing about her is that she still leads her life the way I'd expect her to lead it, fully true to herself and her lovely characteristics. Here's to the rekindling and strengthening of that friendship - can't believe that it has been 11-12 years (?!) since I first met her, when we were just awkward JC kids living pretty much outside our bodies, trying to still comprehend what was this life in Singapore that we were blessed with.

Moving on to this year, as you may have guessed, I don't have a lot planned and I don't want to plan too much anyway. The one consistent thing that has been in my head is about whether, and how, I'd move to Germany eventually. I'm still taking my German classes (B1.3 - not bad!) and it's truly been a place of solace to hide away from the stress and anxiety of work life. Perhaps I'm just waiting for the right moment and the right opportunity to come along. It's not going to be easy, but let's see how things turn out.

That's all for now - we'll see if I write more in the new year (I was also supposed to read more in 2021 and look how that turned out - not great lol).

Leaving you with my Song of the Year: