Tag: Blog

Posted on in Blog

The climb

My friend and I have set ourselves a goal: we’re going to climb the 45 degree wall at our rock climbing center.

I call it the 45 degree wall, because at the halfway point, it juts out at 45 degrees, making it near impossible to climb. I’ve seen some experienced climbers falter at this point and fall down. Just watching them climb makes my palms sweat.

My friend, Chris, and I got the idea to climb the wall when we were on a plane ride to Japan. We sat there on our 8 hour flight watching Free Solo, a movie about a professional rock climber who scaled the El Capitan, a 900 meter vertical wall in the Yosemite National Park.

We couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards. The way he was able to find grips in the wall and cling to them with the tip of his fingers, it was like watching someone who had memorised a map of the wall in his mind.

Not that Chris and I are planning to climb free solo. No way. We’ll be strapped in our harnesses, with experienced staff around us. We just want to do it for the challenge and to gain confidence in ourselves.

Chris told me that he used to climb regularly with a friend of his back at university. He said that his friend started climbing when he got a lung transplant, and hasn’t stopped since. Now he climbs regularly, scaling these great big walls. It’s pretty inspiring.

I haven’t told Chris about my heartbreak last year. It’s not something I want to keep talking about. But a big part of climbing the 45 degree wall, is to distract myself from the pain.

Anyway, to make this goal happen, Chris and I will be meeting up regularly and training our upper bodies. So far, I can climb the kid’s wall, and do 1 lap of the monkey bars. That’s pretty much how strong my arms are.

Chris says that I’m lucky. I’m slim enough to easily gain muscles and pull my body up. He’s a bit bigger. He says he’s got chicken arms. Even his dad who used to body build has chicken arms, so it’ll be harder for him to pull his weight up the wall.

We are planning to climb to the top of the 45 degree wall by the end of May. Right now, I can’t even lift myself up the wall because the grips are too tiny.

I will try to keep this blog updated with my progress. I really want to achieve this goal. Imagine being able to climb Excalibur in the Netherlands! Anyway, I am thinking too far ahead.

I’ve learnt that if you are always chasing the thrill, you will never be disciplined enough to commit. So I’ve got to start small and practise consistently. Challenge accepted!

Posted on in Blog

What I am guilty of

What I didn’t say was that I was the one who decided to let him go. Then I went back and retracted it because I felt bad. I should have kept to my decision rather than feel sorry for him. Because in the end, he stopped caring and I was the one left with a broken heart.

For the past few weeks, I have been letting my heartbreak sink in, feeling its ebb and flow. But there is something that I keep going back to, something that I constantly feel guilty about. That something is self-sabotage.

From the beginning, he would tell me that “I was the one”. My internal response told me that this wasn’t true. He couldn’t possibly like me without knowing me fully, my flaws and all. But still, I was flattered. So I chose to believe even though I knew the truth.

The truth is, I am shy when I first meet people, then when I get to know them, I am direct and honest. The truth is, I knew that what he liked about me was just the surface-shy girl.

Then after getting to know me, he told me that I was not the kind of person who would go out and travel, that I was sensitive and fragile, even though deep down inside I knew that I was strong in my own way.

So I started acting out. I got angry. I got defensive. I sabotaged all my chances of ever being with him. And what I believed in the beginning became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The truth is, it wasn’t him who broke my heart. It was me. And I blamed him because it was easier to blame someone else, when really, honestly, I was angry at myself.

I am the one who hurt myself. And I feel guilty about it. That’s a thought that takes a very long time to get over.

So I’ve been thinking of doing something to help myself heal. I’ve been thinking of beginning Shaolin training. I’ve always admired the discipline and craft of Chinese martial arts and I feel not only would it be good for my body, but also for my mind.

How am I doing? There are days when I feel angry, and then days when I feel sad. But the pain is not as strong or as intensifying. There are moments when I feel a strong urge to start a new life, and moments where I feel an overwhelming need to stand up for me and defend myself again.

But I know that after all that has happened, this is the moment I will stop practising self-sabotage.

Posted on in Blog

My catharsis

Like the ending to a Shakespearean tragedy, the drama in the last 6 months of my life has drawn to a close. I am in the third Act of this particularly gruelling scene, and I am experiencing a kind of catharsis that I thought would never come.

At the height of my pain, I was rejected twice: first by love, then in my career.

Driven by a need to want it all, I can’t help but compare myself to all those tragic, Shakespearean heroes who I read about at school. I thought they were so silly and dramatic for causing their own demise by pandering to their egos.

How naive I was to think that I would never fall trap to this kind of thinking. My ego, my pride, my need to be right, has gotten me into so much trouble. It has hurt me more than it has helped.

So, on these pages, I’m reminding myself of the vision that I have always had for my life.

In the back of my mind, I have always envisioned myself as a writer of children’s books. I would start the day early and sit by my window, writing a few pages before the rest of the world woke up.

I don’t need to earn a lot or travel extensively. I am not an expensive person, but someone who prefers the simple life.

I know of two people like that. An elderly couple who comes to the studio where I work. The wife writes, and her husband markets her books. He has the most soothing voice I’ve ever heard, the voice of someone who has found his meaning in life and is at peace.

They are an arm’s reach away from me, but a lifetime of dedication away from where I am.

I now know why good things don’t come to me suddenly. When they do, I become afraid to lose them, grabbing at their strings, and diminishing myself to half the person that I am. Good things come to me slowly, so that through the process, I gain confidence without losing who I am.

Lately, I’ve stripped myself bare of all the things that weigh me down, so that I can recognise the good when it arrives in front of me.

The good that is my family and friends.

Also, I am getting ready for my trip to Japan in a few months time. And I am really looking forward to it.

Let’s hope that the next 6 months of my life will start to resemble a Shakespearean comedy, or a Shakespearean love story, minus all that tragedy.

But we all know that’s not how life works. We get the good and the bad. For now, I’m bruised and sore, but enjoying the good that has landed on my shoulders before it flies away.

Posted on in Blog

My sad freelance experience

Something happened recently that made me question my ability to write.

A few months ago, I got my dream freelance job writing content for a children’s educational app.

It was my first freelance job ever and I spent 10 hours a week holed up in my room perfecting my content. I had so much fun coming up with creative ways of teaching children about the Earth, the solar system, and the things they saw around them.

I was earning quite a lot on the side. I earnt more per hour on this job than any other job I had ever had. I thought I had finally transitioned into the world of freelance and that I could quit my full time job.

But I decided to wait just to be sure. I continued working 40 hours a week on my day job, and 10 hours a week on my freelance job. I would come home after 12 hours, then squeeze in an hour to write. I did this for about 4 months. Everything was going so well.

But that’s just the thing isn’t it? When everything goes well, something bad is bound to happen. That’s when things started to unravel.

I started coming home from work feeling extremely tired. I couldn’t think. All I wanted to do was lie down on the couch and sleep. But I forced myself to work on my freelance job. And that was my mistake.

Everybody always tells you to work hard. Work hard and you will reap the rewards. Work hard every hour that you have and don’t waste it by lying on the couch.

But that experience has taught me otherwise.

See, I was working hard. I had a schedule. I thought that if I managed my time well, if I stuck to my schedule, then that was all I needed to get the work done.

I was wrong.

My writing became less clear, and more muddled. I was writing, but I was writing pointless garbage. I was writing for the sake of filling up my quota for the day, so that I could hurry up and sleep.

I knew it at the time, but I just didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to give it all up. I wanted to continue. I wanted it so badly.

On one particular day, when my spirit was at its lowest and my nerves were at an all time high, I decided to ask the question that I had wanted to ask for so long.

I asked my client if I could extend my hours to 40 hours a week, meaning I wanted to quit my day job and take the leap into freelancing.

I hit send, then I held my breath and waited. And waited. The reply came soon enough.

It still hurts when I think about it. Part of me blames myself for not taking the time out to relax, for putting so much pressure on myself to do well.

My face is burning in shame when I write about this.

This was his reply:

“Thank you for getting back to me, but I’m not comfortable letting you work 40 hours a week at the hourly rate that I’m currently paying you. I suggest we cut it down to half and you continue working for me for 40 hours a week.”

Half.

It felt like a bomb had dropped into my gut. All of these months. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t do well. It was supposed to be something that I was good at. And I couldn’t even do it properly.

I replied back to him.

I told him that I needed time to think about it and that I would get back to him once I had an answer.
I was heartbroken. I had put all my eggs in this one basket. And I was left feeling afraid of my abilities, afraid that I wasn’t ever going to be good enough.

So I did reply. Eventually. It took me four days of going backwards and forwards to finally come up with an answer. I asked friends, I asked family, I even did a coin toss.

Against the unanimous opinions of my family, I said “yes”. Yes to the half slashed wage and yes to the 40 hours. Yes to the fear and yes to giving it a second chance.

I said yes to all those things because of a dream that woke me up in the middle of the night that compelled me to write back and say yes.

In that dream, I kept getting rejected by the man who broke my heart. I kept wanting him to say yes to me, but he kept saying no. I had this horrible feeling of being given up on, of bring the woman that nobody wanted to take a chance on.

And when I woke up, I decided to turn the tables. I no longer wanted to be the girl who said no to risks, but the woman who said yes to unknown chances.

That day I made my decision.

I still have to wait for a confirmation from my client. But I’m waiting, not with bated breath, but with a sense of confidence, that whatever the outcome, I chose to give myself a chance.

Posted on in Blog

All woman should hear this

From getting locked in a guy’s car, to shouting down the phone, this is how I ended up getting my closure.

I blew up. Big time. Like really, really, really big time. It was so dramatic, and so unlike me that it almost felt surreal. I have never been in this situation before. Only thought that it happened to other people. I had no idea how it would play out. Twice, I even asked God to help me.

Saturday morning I was sitting in the car with this guy that I had been hanging out with for over a year and a half. I call him “the guy I had been hanging out with” because that was how he wanted to define the relationship.

As I was sitting in the car, there were so many things that I needed to get off of my chest. I knew exactly what I wanted to say but I was editing my words to sound calm and mature, even though deep down I was hurting.

Boy, did I do a 180.

When “the guy I had been hanging out with for a year and a half” told me to get out of his car, I didn’t. I stood my ground because I needed to be heard.

So what did he do?

He got out of the car, took an Uber to his workmate’s place and left me in his car. But before he left, he said “If I find that anything gets damaged in any way, you’re going to have to pay.” Then he left.

After a few minutes I calmed down. By now it was 3pm. I was starving, hadn’t eaten since breakfast and needed to go to the toilet badly. So I decided to get out of the car.

The door on my side was locked. No problem. I thought I’d try the driver’s side. Locked too. So I tried pressing the unlock button and opening the door handle at the same time. No luck. I did everything I could possibly do to get out of the car without trying to damage it. I googled “How to get out of an Audi.” I even tried to get out from the boot of the car. I mean I did everything. But still no luck.

So I phoned him. I told him that I was locked in his car and that there was no way out. Then he said, “No problem, I’ve already asked my workmates to pick up the car. You just need to wait.”

At this point, I’d never even met his workmates. I didn’t want to look like some crazy maniac, which I knew I probably already did. But I didn’t want his workmates to be there judging me while I was still in this state.

Five minutes later, a car pulls into the parking lot beside me and two of his workmates, one male, one female, unlocks the car I’m in and tells me to get out. Like they had no idea what was going on, only some hashed up story he had given them about why this crazy girl was in his car. So I gladly got out of the car, and went back into mine.

It didn’t end there. No. That was just the beginning.

When I’m in my car, I phone him and tell him that it was not cool of him to get two people who had no idea what was going on to intervene in this private situation.

While I’m raising my voice at him down the phone, he tells me that his workmates have just arrived with his car.

And then guess what happens?

He passes his phone to his female workmate because he doesn’t want to deal with the situation anymore!

And guess what I say next?

I have no idea how I managed to choke down these next few words because boy did I say it with as much command and emotion as one possibly could.

I told her:

“Can you get him back on the phone? I know that you think that I’m acting a little crazy-”

Her- “No I don’t think you’re crazy at all.”

Me – “It’s just that I’m acting this way because he was the one who wanted me to fall in love with him (his words exactly) and now he’s gone off without even giving me some kind of explanation.”

Her – “He should talk to you. No woman should have to deal with that.”

And she passes the phone over to him and gets him to talk to me.

Like what just happened? Did she just agree with me? She, someone who was supposed to help him, just agreed with me. Maybe I didn’t look as crazy as I thought I did?

Like I didn’t even agree with what I was doing. I had been telling myself that I was this crazy maniac for demanding some answers, for demanding an apology. I was ashamed of myself. Have been for months trying to pretend that nothing had happened, trying to pretend that I was OK. That I was just too sensitive, too emotional and that I should just bottle up my emotions.

But here was this other woman telling me that what I was doing was actually OK? Because of what she said I found the courage to tell him exactly what was on my mind without fear. To tell him exactly what I felt. And nobody stopped me. His workmates just left him to talk to me. I could hear them in the background doing their own thing and leaving him to deal with his own personal situation like he should’ve done in the first place.

I said many things to him on that phone call. One of the things was that he had always run away everytime he had an argument/fight/break up with a girl, and that this time he was not going to run away.

He had always either moved to a new country, gone hiking up a mountain or left one way or another to avoid feeling any emotion close to love.

I also told him that everytime he had ever done anything wrong, like bully someone when he was a kid, drink and drive, or light a fire on someone, his mum or some other person had always been there to protect him and tell him that he was not going to suffer the consequences of his actions because they loved him. But today that was not going to happen, because I was going to tell him that he had done something very wrong and he was going to have to confront me instead of running away.

He stood there listening to me fuming at him for over an hour and finally said that he would come up and apologise to me in person – in 2 weeks time.

Whatever.

Let’s just say that when I woke up today, it was like a fog had cleared. I heard the birds chirping outside the window again. I felt the sun warm my room, even during this dreary Winter season.

The shame that I had held inside of me for so long was gone. The shame that had prevented me from moving forward all these months was lifted.

None of the passive techniques that people had suggested to get over a relationship – meditating, forgetting, forgiving the other person – even came close to lifting the shame that I had felt.

None of it worked, until I did what I did yesterday.

Because sometimes to get over something so painful and not let it get to your soul, you need to stand up and defend yourself, your heart and all it’s emotions.

Posted on in Blog

Financing my writing career

If I quit my job today, I will have enough money to last me 6 months. If I sell off all my assets, I will have enough money to sail into the sunset for 3 years and 6 months.

I have always had a bigger purpose for the money I’ve earnt. Some people save for the next high, others for a fancy car. I have been saving all my life to finance my dream of becoming a writer.

Growing up, I was told that writers only have two options: to struggle or to give up.

Being the kind who doesn’t like to give up, I decided to struggle. Or so, I thought those were my only two options.

Fast forward a few years of working non-corporates and low-income jobs, I can say that my finances are in better shape than most people working high-income jobs.

Having it drilled to me from the start that I would never achieve financial success in a writing career, has made me strict about my expenses.

All my life, I’ve forgone the daily necessities of modern life: makeup, coffee, and alcohol.

I have never faced the mad rush of putting on makeup in early morning traffic, nor lived for the first hit of morning coffee. I don’t know how many shots it takes to get me drunk, because I have never tested the limits of my body in such expensive ways.

I keep my life simple.

When I need to feel pretty, or confident, I replenish my energy from the inside. I read books, I write, I go outside, and I talk to friends and family.

I am an advertiser’s worst nightmare, but this has saved me a lot of money.

To emphasise how much one can save on a low income, I’ve broken down my weekly expenses as best as I can:

  • Groceries: $50
  • Mortgage: $325
  • Electricity and internet bills: $20
  • Transport: $40

Total weekly expenses: $435

I share my expenses with my sister, which makes it possible to cut down on individual costs.

Next year, I will be turning 28. I have yet to experience the highs that people my age have experienced. I have yet to travel to Egypt to see the pyramids and ride on camels.

But for now, I substitute fancy vacations with long road trips, night outs with night ins, take-outs with homecooked meals. And I’m OK with every single choice.

I set this lifestyle into motion when I was 12 years old, training my mind from an early age, not to desire the things I don’t need.

I am now 27. If I wanted to spend 3 years in isolation, writing a novel, I could. If I wanted to quit my job and sail into the sunset for 3 years, I could. But I’m not going to do that.

My mind is set for the long term. Writing is a long-term game. And in the beginning, financial support is a writer’s best chance of staying in the game longer.

So, to writers and dreamers everywhere, I urge you to learn to support yourself financially.

I urge you to set yourself up to succeed in a world that doesn’t want you to.

This is the first article that I’ve written on Medium. If you like it and are a Medium member, please give it a clap. Thanks in advance!

Posted on in Blog

My dad’s advice

My dad came over yesterday and sat next to me as I poured my heart out about my failed plans and how heartbroken I felt.

After talking with him, he made me realise that my loss allowed me to gain something in return. Time.

Now I was free to spend those extra hours after work solely working on my own projects.

Later that day, as my Dad was driving on the road, a car suddenly came up in front of him. By the light of the headlight, he saw the word “GO” and my name on the car plate.

To him it was a sign of encouragement from the universe, so he followed the car, took a picture of it and sent it to me.

Even though I felt quite small, knowing that my dad was supporting me made me feel a lot bigger.

Posted on in Blog

The secret book club

Since things haven’t been turning out as I had hoped they would, I’ve a little more spare time on my hands. So I decided to do something a little unusual today.

I placed an ad in the local newspaper asking for kids to join a book club.

Now I don’t know how well or disastrous this will turn out, or whether anyone will even respond to my ad, but I thought it would be good to at least do something to encourage kids to read.

I used to work in the library, and during my time there I read to kids, and did lots of fun activities with them. The most memorable moments were when the kids would come up to me and talk to me while their parents were exhausted and napping on the couch.

I remember with joy when a little four year old boy came up to me and we had a full on conversation about everything you could ever talk about on the planet. He had so much to say and I was really surprised by how well he could hold a conversation.

I even made a little friend while I was working there. To this day we talk on FB once or twice a year. Our conversations are quite brief, I don’t think she can stay on FB for long, but I actually think it’s quite funny that once or twice out of the blue, I’ll see a message pop up and it’s from her.

Anyway, wish me luck. I really hope this book club thing kicks off. I guess what I’m really looking forward to is seeing some of the kids make friends with each other and have huge smiles on their faces.

Posted on in Blog

The book seller’s magic

The lady at the bookstore, I saw her today, wrapped in a heavy shawl outside the bus stop.

Her hair was pinned up with a little black clip, a dark statement against her wispy white hair.

Four words popped out as soon as I saw her. Straw-like, stuck out, and slightly unkempt, but she seemed to flow of a magic that only book seller’s have.

One day, I hope to be a part of that same magic too.

And though I wanted to speak to her, I felt mute underneath the vast night sky. Some small feeling inside of me was holding me back from the book seller’s magic.

In my bolder days, when I’d spoken to her, she told me that she lived far away from the bookstore. Her children thought it was silly of her to travel all the way to the city just to work there.

But people who aren’t part of the magic don’t know. When you find a place of belonging, you’d do anything to keep it alive.

And though I am scared, pretty much every day now, I know I’d rather be scared than to stop being a dreamer.

I can’t help but continue on this path. It’s the only one that seems to ring true, the sweetest melody that makes all else bitter.

Now I can see that whatever happens, I will strive for that magic that booksellers have.

Posted on in Blog

The one who makes all the wrong decisions

Do you ever make decisions that are insane/ incomprehensible/ illogical, that nobody in their right mind would do?

I feel like that is me. Or, at least, I am on the verge of doing that. And I’m so torn between logic and insanity that I’d be willing to base my decision on a simple coin toss.

The thing is, I am always torn between these two opposing forces. On one hand, I think how awesome it would be if I took a leap of faith into the unknown, where there is no guarantee that things will ever work out. And then I snap back to reality, scaring myself with all the what ifs.

People seem to romanticise the idea of taking leaps of faith and letting whatever comes your way hit you.

I do too. And it scares me.

So why do I think like that when I’m not really that brave of a person? Who am I to think that I will be able to soldier on through whatever comes my way?

Because there is something that I am utterly afraid of. Something that happened to me when I was nineteen years old that has stayed with me and messed up my process of thinking.

I could be safe and comfortable going about my own day. But then I think back to my nineteen year old self and the way I didn’t act when I should’ve or could’ve. My life would’ve changed in that instant for the better if I acted on that whim.

But I didn’t. And that has stayed with me for years, crawling underneath the roots of all my decisions.

No regrets. No regrets. It’s why I push too hard even if things look bleak.

No regrets.

I would rather have tried too hard than not at all. Because then I would know. I hate having to rewind back in time to find a piece of knowledge that has slipped through the cracks because of an indecision. It’s tedious. That’s why there’s no such thing as time travel.

Regret has made this shy, wallflower of a girl need to try something different. Regret has hurt my mind, stretched it, and bent it in ways that I would have never imagined.

Regret has disrupted my safe thinking and conjured up wild and crazy alternatives, opening my mind up to endless possibilities.

Fearing regret has probably made me a little insane. It’s probably led me off track at times. But I hope it will eventually lead me back to the right decision.