Somewhere and nowhere

12 Feb 2025

Feels like I travel, but I never arrive.

For a long time, when I think about my life, the picture I have in my mind is that of me drifting in an endless ocean, no land in sight, tossed back and forth by the waves. Floating in space, I am untethered and out of control. Lost in the woods, I wander, not knowing where I am or where I am going to.

Where is my life heading?

It's a question I find hard to answer—a problem I attribute largely to a four-letter acronym that I'm still trying to make sense of. How can I get there?—when I set goals and promptly forget about them, when I don't remember important conversations about all the things I need to work on, and when my mind keeps drifting and going off on tangents so that all I know is the here and now—and where exactly is the there that I'm supposed to get to?

This constant feeling of not knowing where I am in space is discomforting and disorienting. It's like looking up to an unmarked forest of trees towering above me or waking up to a vast and endless ocean without an anchor to weigh me down. I live in a daze, trying so hard every day to keep it all together and do all the things that are expected of me, only to realise in my fleeting moments of clarity that I am going about in circles—because really, where am I going?

It is in times like these that I have turned to writing to keep me grounded, grasping at the fog desperately to capture words, leaving behind precious pebbles to carefully chart a path that I hope will lead me home. And yet, I've been having a hard time finding the words lately. The words come out stilted, if at all.

In the same way that I wish the words would flow, I do oftentimes wish that the answers could come easy. If only someone could just tell me exactly what to do, because despite my hardest efforts, I often blank out. It's just like how I struggle to grocery shop, cook, clean and tidy up. I get overwhelmed, and my brain freezes from the information overload, and I can't make out the steps to take. It's just, well, ADHD.

Last month, the psychiatrist I met referred me to the psychologist. My appointment is scheduled for the end of this month, and I have all my hopes pinned on this therapy working out for me. Because I don't feel like I have any other options, because I haven't been able to find any solutions on my own to cope well with the difficulties I face. Life has just been so overwhelming.

I suppose this perception has also been aggravated by the whole transition of the move back, going from unemployment to employment and trying to settle into a new routine of sorts. It hasn't helped that work hasn't been going so smoothly, with a partner that is not pulling her weight as one of the bumps in the road. It's been exhausting trying to keep up with the demands of work and trying to clear the backlog that I've managed to rack up.

And I still don't get why there is this demand for the various outputs I have to churn out. Then again, that's the problem with the parents here—they are terribly demanding. And then again, that's the problem with the culture here—the systems always cater to those demands. There's always this form and substance that we have to pursue in order to show that we are doing this and that, even when they may be entirely unnecessary. I still find it hard to come to terms with the way work works here. It makes me hanker for a different way of thinking and for a different pace of life.

I miss W and how my life moved slower there. The kindergarten had their winter concert recently, and I found myself suffering a bout of FOMO as I saw the messages in the parents' group chat (I can't bear to make myself leave). I really liked my son's kindergarten. There, the children were not rushed along and could learn at their own pace and choose to do the activities that interested them. There, they emphasised the development of independence and daily living skills, outdoor play, and the celebration of festivals from around the world, which were things that I really appreciated.

If only my country could import such a teaching philosophy the way it does almost everything else, if only academics could take a backseat for once, if only children could be allowed to be, well, children. And if only teachers didn't have to be at the mercy of entitled and competitive parents, who demand so much to get their children ahead of the game, out of a fear of losing out and getting left behind. I don't suppose I'll ever understand this mentality that is all too common—for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?

Besides work and the way it's been going, some other circumstances that have surfaced have led me to the decision to send out some applications to see if anything else turns up. I've set myself till Friday to get those things sorted, but setting this in motion has got me pondering what my future holds and where that there will be. It's the same feeling of arrival that I find myself seeking in other places—a wondering and a hope that after all that travelling, there will be a someday where I reach my final destination.

It's like how after self-studying 1,500 kanji (I achieved this feat last month, seven months after first beginning), I wonder if I will one day be able to speak, read and write Japanese. And it's like how after beginning The Odin Project on a whim (I haven't gotten that far, but I have started messing around in the terminal), I wonder if I will successfully complete it and one day acquire the capabilities to actually be a developer, not that I have any such aspirations for now.

Between somewhere and nowhere, I wonder if the day will come when I finally get there.

Before we left for good, we managed to catch the beginning of the Christmas market season for the last time in W. At one such market, I had stood for some time with my son at the ice rink, watching the children (and a few adults) as they skated about, living vicariously through their experiences.

I had no intentions of skating myself as the setting felt too public for my self-conscious and easily-embarrassed self. Nevertheless, I asked my four-year-old if he wanted to ice skate, since there would be few opportunities for him to do so otherwise. And because seeing other children enjoying various paid experiences at the market triggered a sudden guilt in me for being the scrooge that I can sometimes be whenever things feel overpriced.

To my surprise and yet not unexpectedly, my generous offer was promptly rejected—the boy only wanted to watch. And so we continued to observe the skaters on the ice, and as some whizzed by and others treaded gingerly, sometimes taking a tumble, I found myself wondering if I may have somehow stifled my son, if I may have, along the years in my way of being and parenting, curbed his enthusiasm and spontaneity. Then again, he had always been a little more cautious and wary, but could that also be something I had unknowingly imprinted on him?

As we watched from the sidelines, the smiles and laughter I witnessed on the ice stirred a longing, and I wished that I was the one there on the ice, skating with carefree abandon and experiencing the joy and freedom of the moment. It's a longing that is familiar, a deep desire that I've always known, a yearning and reaching for the so much more that I believe is in store somewhere out there for me—a place within reach—and one day, one day, I will get there.