Second half of 2023 has arrived. The actual passage of time not entirely relevant to the actual amount of time spent doing meaningful things. But what qualifies as meaningful anyway? I have neither brokered world peace nor found cure for cancer. Nor am I raising children who will one day broker world peace or find cure for cancer. I doubt I ever will. I am only really writing today because I feel guilty for the amount of money I paid to renew my web hosting.
The past seven months have been occupied by my busyness with my new work – a fancy gig at one of Asia’s leading investment firms. By all accounts, I have landed my dream role as a finance professional. Yet I find myself questioning the meaningfulness of my job on more than a few occasions. Surprisingly, many of my friends feel the same way, our group chats inundated with funny memes about overly exhausted millennials who want to quit their jobs and retire early. It is of course all purely rhetorical. We all have bills to pay and most of us do not have generational wealth to fall back on. So we show up every day wearing our invisible gladiator armours, prepared to battle it out in the boardroom (or Microsoft Teams) and hopefully come out at the end of the day unscathed. Do I have a point to make in this? Probably that despite not inherently finding the most meaning in the actual work, it pays. My work is my trade, it’s what I know to do, and what I know to do very well so I get paid for it in exchange. “Pera pera na lang!” is how my friends and I would justify it. Nevertheless, I am and will always be immensely grateful because if not for my work, I would not be able to live a life beyond my fifteen year old self’s wildest imaginings (which wasn’t that wild by the way as written here). I’m often reminded that what I have now is more than what I once hoped for.
Even so, a few people I know have quit their corporate jobs fairly recently to pursue something entirely different. Tin, a college batchmate whom I have gotten to know more in Singapore, is going to France for culinary school. Helen, who used to work at my current firm, is now managing her own cafe and doing travel vlogs. I can name a few more. Their courage to go against the conventional is quite admirable. It got me thinking whether another life path awaits me at some point in the future too. Unfortunately, the ship has sailed for me to become Miss U.
In truth, I don’t have the answer. Life is a constant work in progress. So while I figure things out, I’m content with living mindfully in the here and the now.
P.S. I really should update this space more often. I forgot how cathartic this is for me.