On Gap Years

So when my school had ended I was a hot mess. 100% college-ready and 0% life ready. So I decided to take a gap year. Just to see if I could survive navigating the "real world", even if it was mostly based on my map of blind faith and optimism.

I guess what forced me in a way was this curiosity and imagination for the other possible life paths that I could take, which I was forced to consider once I started doing some profesh gigs while in school, and being thrust into situations where I wasn't always surrounded by people exactly like me doing things exactly like I was and who were also not cultivating an imagination of all different possible lives.

And I lastly did it maybe because I didn't wanna have the regret of not taking one and wanted to have one of those experiences that I could one day maybe "tell my grandchildren" about.

Now in the Asian world by virtue of taking a "gap year" (an essentially western concept) to explore "life & stuff", the majority of the people will already think that you're an idiot.

At first, even my dad too insisted that I was too young to try something for myself and that I should settle for being an academic serf and directly take the uni route for a reputable mater with good job security and prospects.

But being the catholic school girl type, conservative on the outside and rebellious on the inside at that age, I think I just wanted to prove to people that I could do what I wanted and maybe at even a deeper level, thinking retrospectively, to show that I was worth something. So being young, firey and not french, I chose to take that leap.

I mean I knew that I was young--but I already had a few years of work experience in some programming mumbo jumbo– which at that time, was more than a quarter of my life, and according to my astrologist was soon well on the way to half my life expectancy.

And since I wanted, but never expected a pat on the back, it was all fine by me. That is both a good thing and a bad thing, and there are aspects of life where you pay a nice chicka change for that approach. But as Keir used to say that "what it allows you is to not worry so much what other people think cause 90% of them already think you're an immature idiot. So it's like what do you have to lose really?"

Now when you are doing things like these, and you risk walking the pathless paths, there are two things that you need to worry about: a) money (which did not matter much for me cause at the most I might end up with one small house instead of two big ones, but at least I'll be happy) and the other b) what other people may think, (especially the ones close to you)

I mean you shouldn't be surprised if you find yourself sifting through some self-esteem issues because of getting less support than what you expected.

You will feel more uncertain about your path, which means you will crave that external validation, affirmation, appreciation and all sorts of -tions that you didn't know even existed, you might even crave some cheesy, gooey comfort of overbaked pasta from time to time because of the lack of active acknowledgement from others which might make you feel like you’re not being supported.

But what this will force you is to find those 58 idiots just like you, ranging from CEOs to designers to developers who sub to your newsletter, and in a way are just like you. People who you can just be around and you don’t have to be like "why are you doing this... or don’t you worry about not still having been to college... and yada yada". You soon slowly start to find your tribe, people who understand you and even actively encourage you.

Now with that said I did not go backpacking through Europe and lost my virginity like I had imagined and seen in those movies, mostly because I was too introverted and broke but I umm... mostly worked I guess... I helped build a few startups and stuff, and got the a-books-a-week badge on Goodreads that I always wanted.

But even if I did not see the leaning tower of pizza that doesn't mean I saw nothing. I did see a lot of little things that for some reason I didn't see before.

That being said I am not sure about the "grandchildren" thing that I said earlier will really work as there are a series of things that need to happen in order for me to become a grandfather and, right now I am staring into the abyss and the abyss is staring back whispering quietly "you will die alone, cold and scared in your office chair".

Fin.