♥/ flyfreewithme

I couldn’t sleep last night, but still woke up feeling refreshed. I really wanted to worm my way out of going to work today, just felt the burnout; though I decided against it in the end.

I definitely knew why I couldn’t sleep last night. I was reminiscing, I guess, thinking about the last couple of years and how my life had turned out thus far. I’m not sure if 24 is the right age to be looking back at my life though.

Still, many things I thought would never happen in my life did come true in the end.

Truth is, my head is spinning now. It’s hurting so much, I want to just die — or take MC, if that’s more viable.

I felt horrible yesterday when I was doing my exam papers. I had only three hours of sleep, I definitely was not up to reading Korean essays and doing comprehension.

I know, I have to realise I’m working now and I can’t just concentrate on my studies, like I did, when I was a student. I just didn’t like wasting money (i.e. the application fee) on something which I was going to screw up.

I hated that feeling. I hated walking into the exam room in a dazed manner. I hated sitting down on the chair and imagining what would happen. I hated looking at those characters, thinking how foreign they felt to me.

The listening part was okay, I was still concentrating … until it got to the difficult part and I started to panic. I felt so bad about myself, about the entire thing, that I just wanted to give up there and then. I hung on, didn’t like wasting money.

I navigated my way through the maze of words and pages, only to lose to time. I had 10 more questions, 5 more essays to read and I only had 10 minutes.

Never had I read Korean as speedily as I did that day. I’d like to think that experience made me a faster reader and that I learnt a lot more than I ever did in the last three years.

I went home, slightly dejected, mostly disappointed and with a pinch of anguish. I was angry, now that I think of it. Resigned, but angry. There was no one I could blame but me.

Because I love my job and I had to sacrifice things for that love.

I wanted to hide under my blanket, when I arrived home. I said ‘hi’ to my parents and entered my room, sat on my bed and stared at my Macbook’s screen.

I surfed awhile and I chanced upon a blog entry. I read his story and it must have inspired me. To which extent, I’m still uncertain now.

But it had me thinking, maybe this was the wrong job after all. Maybe I’d been lying to myself, to everyone else all these while.

People say it’s okay to not know what you want in life at the age of 24. I don’t think so. I hated that insecurity, which came with the words ‘don’t know’. I couldn’t live with not knowing.

But the blog entry inspired me and something happened. I wouldn’t go into details here, not now anyway.

It all began eight years ago. Six years back, I tried doing it for the first time and fell in love with it. I was signed to a company between 2006 and 2008, but terminated the contract after I left Singapore for Taiwan.

In between 2008 and now, I wrote less than 10 pieces. I wrote so little, that I forgot I actually loved doing that stuff.

Until I heard some stuff recently, until I watched some stuff recently, I found that same feeling I had five years ago, when I awarded my first contract.

Maybe it’d take some more time. Maybe it’d take some more work. I’ll get there eventually.

Yesterday, for the first time in five months, I wrote.

I write every day because of my job, but that was different. Finally, I wrote something outside of work.

I feel sorry and guilty to the people reading Fly Reviews. I did not intend to ditch it, but I realised it’s really difficult to have another life when I have a job.

I could force myself to write. In fact, I had. I started on CN Blue’s First Step many months back, then procrastinated and went on with Big Bang’s Special Edition. Now I have Cindy Yen and B1A4’s lying around in my MacBook, collecting dust, I suppose.

I felt so bad at some point that I wanted to delete the site, but couldn’t make myself do it at the end. It was some four years of writing after all.

True, I wasn’t feeling well. I was so mentally drained that I couldn’t pick up my fingers to write anything outside of working hours. Even this blog entry seemed force.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. I even told someone that I imagined not doing this job, and felt horrible.

Yesterday, as I wrote, I had an epiphany, or something.

I had everything I ever asked for in a job, except it wasn’t allowing me to be me. It’s not the environment, not the people; I’m just not me anymore. I’m more cranky and grouchy half the time, than I am smiley. Even if I did smile, I’m not even sure if I’m really happy.

“You need to decide if this is what you want to do in the (near) future. If not, you need to change your course,” she said.

Maybe.

I committed her words to memory and for two days, I thought long and hard.

What did I want to do? Was this job not what I wanted? Ultimately, when I look back later in my life, what do I want to see me achieved?

It was easy to decide thereafter, I guess.

I was an awkward kid growing up. Everyone was, at some point in their life. Some people outgrew that phase and turned out to be mature. Some people found something they’re good at and focused on that. I think I never quite got over my awkwardness.

So I looked back in my last 24 years and tried to find that one time when I felt special, when I felt truly comfortable — that one time when I didn’t think people were staring at me because I was funny-looking, or had something stuck in my teeth, or my hair was out of place, or I had gained an extra pound of two.

I found it, the memories, where I felt I was where I belong.

But that place … is a place I cannot return to again.

Would I have given up then if I know I would look back now and think ‘how nice if’?

Maybe.

I was never a person who would regret what she didn’t do, because every experience shaped me into the person I am today.

Of course, it’d never stopped me from dreaming about what-ifs.

What if I had chosen to study Psychology instead of Communications then?

What if I never considered Taiwan as a study option?

What if I never left for Australia?

What if I never came back?

Would I be happier? I wouldn’t know. Would I love what I’d be doing? I don’t have an answer to that either.

Am I regretting now?

I know for sure, I’m not.

This job had been an eye-opener and it had been rewarding. I’ve met people, done things I thought which were only possible in my dreams. Those were my dreams.

Were.

This job had been fulfilling, this year had been fulfilling. But I really should explain. My About Me page on Fly Reviews used to have a line, “… hope to find a job I love, can listen to music 24/7 and travel on the company’s expenses.”

I just never thought I’d take just one year to do all of that.

Some people say there was hardly any difficulty in there. That may be so, but how people are actually doing something they love and it pays them? I know a lot of people who work because they merely need to.

So if this had been the job I love, then why was I having second thoughts now?

Because like those people say, this hope/wish/goal hardly had any difficulty.

It is a job I love, a job I still love, but it was never what I really wanted to do. I think deep down inside me, I always knew that I had opted for a safe route.

Maybe it’s time to find my courage and take flight — for real, for once — now.

I probably shouldn’t have said that on my Twitter. I ended up posting it anyway.

“It’s a bit silly to go there because I want to be near him right? Especially since he has a girlfriend already.”

Well, he doesn’t have a Twitter. He doesn’t know I have a Twitter either.

I was in a nostalgic mood yesterday because I received postcards from my best friends, who are currently in Taiwan. My mum sat down and spoke to me for a while, maybe it was for an hour, or slightly more.

She lamented I don’t have a life, that and that I don’t have a boyfriend. I told her I didn’t need one and it’s inconvenient for me to have one now either — given my job demands. My eyes strayed to the postcards on my table and I muttered, “I miss them so much.”

I told her truthfully that I never felt like I belonged here ever since I came back from Australia last year. Can you believe it, it’s been a year. Initially, I thought it’d be easy coming back. My friends are here, my family is here, there’s no way I wouldn’t fit it.

I was wrong.

It took me awhile to really adjust to the life here. When I finally did, I realise some people aren’t here with me anymore. Friends, they come and go. Much as I’d love to hold onto them, I needed them to reach back too.

I’m not a very bubbly person, nor am I an extrovert; so it took some time for me to become friends with somebody, anybody. It’s really an irony, considering the nature of my job. That’s why I have certain people I don’t want to lose.

Like the best friends I met in Taiwan, like the good friends I have in Australia.

But it’d be silly — I know — especially if I choose to go where he is, because I want to see him. I’m still a fairly rational person and that was an irrational thought.

It’d probably be Queensland and the earliest I’m taking off again is next year.