There isn't a good reason to be writing something at stupid o'clock ``today''. It's not like I have some stimulus which had given me inspiration to vent something out, profound or confused.
Maybe it's just the mood of things. I mean, HoloMyth did just have their one year anniversary, and like all things relating to anniversaries, it does put one in the more contemplative mood.
Back in the day, one of the issues that I was facing that brought me to my first round of consultation with a counsellor was the loss of my inner voice. Before that, I've always had a comfortable dialogue of sorts in my head, weighing things out based on observation, a type of comforting/comfortable inner chatter that helped me retain a good grasp of who I was.
Somewhere between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, I somehow lost that. Today, ten years later, I am going to confirm that I never did get the inner voice back. So in some sense, I lost an anchor to who I was.
Sometime between twenty-one and thirty, I lost my dreams, though I'm not sure if it should really be considered a loss if there weren't really any to begin with. You see, contrary to popular belief, I am by no means an ambitious person by any regard.
Popular belief will be contrary due to observable outcomes of so-called successes, from various awards, opportunities, or even that relentless behaviour in pursuing some truth that borders on the manic. But those are external observations---they reveal nothing about my inner world.
What I am getting at is, my inner world is really lacking in ambition. Any and all successes that I seemingly have obtained thus far is due to somehow meeting the right people under the right circumstances through happenstance.
I didn't win the ``Most Outstanding Pupil'' award back in primary school because I was gunning for it to begin with---my form teacher recommended me and suggested that I turn in my curricula vitae for consideration.
I didn't go on television in primary five for my dizi because I was aiming for it---I was selected by the teacher-in-charge for the school Chinese orchestra to be one of the two representatives there.
I didn't pick the dizi because I wanted to be a maestro at it. I was supposed to play the erhu, but that one day where there wasn't enough erhu to go around with surplus dizi made me switch my instrument. And if not for meeting sifu, I wouldn't advance much in dizi to the point where I can hold on my own today---those days, the dizi section had at most three people, and there was no dedicated instructor for us. We were just left to our own devices.
I didn't represent SIN city at two international programming competitions because I knew of their existence and wanted to make a name for myself there. My first representation chance came from being in a team of senior students who were that much better than I was, but could not represent SIN city because they were not citizens of SIN city. My second representation chance had some minor contribution of effort on my end, and only because I enjoyed solving timed algorithm problems, and had some good luck as well.
I didn't get into River Valley High because I was an amazing student. I knew nothing about that school other than it was ``a good school'', and somehow managed to get in, and only because I didn't get into my first choice at that time.
I didn't get a scholarship for BSc-PhD because I was brilliant, but because I took part in a talent search competition to spite my then form teacher [in junior college] who shot down my project proposal despite knowing absolutely nothing about it. I even wanted to drop out of the final interview round because I was going to be unavailable for the time slot because I was going to be in a completely different time zone competing at my second representation of SIN city in an international programming competition, as I never felt like I was scholarship material in the first place. The principal figuratively slapped some sense into me by intervening on my behalf and getting me access to a global-roaming cell phone to take the interview while I was half way around the world.
I didn't go to Carnegie Mellon University because I was aiming to be there---I would have been happy to be at NTU studing EEE. When the scholarship was awarded to me, I had no bloody clue on where to go, and it was the advice of the scholarship-counselling teacher who suggested CMU to me as a good less-crazy-to-enter university for computer science (as compared to say Stanford or MIT). My General Paper tutor then whom I had approached to help write recommendation letters for even gently rebuked me for my choice of going into Victoria Junior College in the first place, suggesting that I probably could have done much more [and better] at some place like Raffles Junior College.
There are more such incidents, however they are still a little too close temporally for me to talk about them comfortably. Given the sample here though, the general idea should be clear: I was never one to have a big ambition to fulfil.
I was never one to have a big ambition to fulfil.
What I managed to get, where I managed to be, is because of providence. As a believer now, I will say that it has all been by the grace of God that these things happened. I am/was a nobody---my family has no pedigree to speak of be it wealth or power, and I have shitty skin with a weird temperament. Even my mom made a commment (after my sister has graduated too) that she never expected us to get to where we were---she'd be happy if we could get some diploma from the polytechnic and work to keep ourselves going. I ribbed her then for her lack of faith in us, but now as I look back, perhaps there is some truth in her words.
I had been floating through life with little to no ambition, with my direction gently nudged by the people that I meet. A lack of ambition is one of the many ways to reach contentment, but such a life path is highly incompatible with one of the most capitalistic societies in the world. It is also unfortunate that the one passion that I am willing to allow to be commercialised (computer science) is also the one that the world has seized as a means to create new and more insidious yokes to enslave the minds of the masses and bend them in ways whose nature we are only slowly starting to wake up to.
And that is a big part of why I am on sabbatical. Because I couldn't stand doing hypocritical things---I needed an out. Well, now I am out, but the question remains: what's next?
For someone who doesn't have ambition, ``what's next'' can be a hard question to answer. But I need to remind myself to think soberly of things, and to remember the sunk cost fallacy. Just because I possess a Masters degree in Computer Science doesn't mean that I am defined solely on the basis of possessing that Masters degree in Computer Science. Since it doesn't spark joy, there is no point in trying to continue on that path with increasing bitterness just because it can pay well---this is especially true since I have few financial commitments to worry about due to being single and not being tied to paying off a housing loan and such.
But as I had mentioned in a recent meat-space conversation, knowing what I don't want to do isn't enough: at the end of my sabbatical, I need to answer affirmatively on what I want to do so as to move forward. As long as I do not have that answer, I cannot claim success of my sabbatical in clearing my thinking.
Thus, this last quarter of my year-long sabbatical is probably the most crucial and most difficult one compared to the first three.
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