Week 36: It’s the climb
The promise of an amazing end result cannot keep you going forever. Enjoying the journey of getting there, can
As we enter the last term of my Masters course, I am tinged with feelings of tire, fatigue, of relief and anticipation; I can’t wait for it to end.
Despite that, I know, when the end actually arrives, I will sorely miss this time where it was my job, where I had the permission, to do nothing but learn — in and out of class — and have fun in the process of it all.
And I started questioning why I felt this way.
The answer I got to, whilst I was planning out the rest of my term (noting down due dates onto my calendar and stressing over getting the right answers to all the questions on my individual assignments), was that I may have been too focused on the output— getting that perfect GPA score— that I lost sight of the true purpose of taking this year off to explore and study.
And I guess the same can be said for this #myvoyagehome series. The last few stories have been sporadic. It wasn’t as if I’d completely forgotten about them. I was conscious, as each week ended, of the fact that I did not put out a story. But the pressure of putting out a story a week got to me at some point; it felt as if I was putting out a story to check off the box of doing it every week, and I suddenly lost all motivation to do it.
When this year started, I was beyond excited about having the year off to learn new things, to surprise myself with what I find, and to document and share them through these stories. But, as time passed, it was as if I became a racehorse and unbeknownst to me, someone had put blinkers on.
I don’t know what the solution to this problem is, though, it does seem like I’m prone to finding myself in these situations (see week 12’s story).
Perhaps I should start by removing the blinkers and cutting myself some slack in trying to achieve “perfection” — both in terms of my grades and in living up to this “once-a-week-story” expectation that I had put on myself.
And I guess, for now, all I can do is to keep being aware of these emotions as they arise, and with as much compassion as I can muster up, remind myself of the things that are truly important. After all, feeling this way is definitely not how I want to spend the last 16 weeks of the year. :)
To quote Miley Cyrus,
Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb
I packed up 8 years of my life in Melbourne in December 2021 to move to Singapore to be closer to home and also to explore the world outside of what I already knew. This is a year-long series of reflections on #myvoyagehome. Thank you for being a part of my journey.
