Interesting

I follow the presidential race rather closely and one thing that continue to baffle me is this - with two very contrasting candidates, why is it that the polls continue to show such close numbers?  what does it tell about the quality of the voters? and that is assuming the polling sample size, methods, etc is as robust as it should be.

New people coming/ going

This recent 5 months of "singlehood" has been rather interesting. I have blogged before about characters whom I had interacted with that came and went. I have accepted that these fleeting interactions, with or without meeting up, is the norm. And of cos, there are also characters that became friends over time. Without going into too much details, let me just mention about some of them here:

• I have known this person for many years. He is a year older than me. We had not really chatted nor meet up with him over the last 7 - 8 years after I got attached. But recently, we reconnected and met up a couple of times. Our interactions were very warm and of late, he started opening up more and sharing about himself/ his life - such as telling me his real name, about his family, etc. I didn't probe why he did so but it certainly felt good to be able to connect at a more personal level and have someone showing interest in my life. 

• A person I got to know in KL. We became friends and he invited me to put up at his place if I were to visit KL, and he invited me to follow him to his workplace to see how they run the business. But I fell sick during that particular visit and had to be looked after by his "godson" while he went to work. His "godson" is half his age and often threw tantrums. And for some reasons, I became a subject of his tantrums. It happened before my planned third visit and he said he didn't want to have me stay over.  I have decided not to visit them anymore and thought it is perhaps better to leave this friend alone. Whatever happens between him and his "godson" is for him to manage and I certainly do not want to be involved in their relationship.

• A few others I got to know via Grindr has been quite insistent on meeting up but I have not agreed. Have somewhat chatted with them on and off but well, Grindr conversations tend to have common structure and flow... often it starts with some pleasantries ("hey? how are you doing?", "intro", "wassup"), and in no time, about sex ("so what do you like to do?", "are you top of bottom?"), and asking for explicit pictures, and then to meet up for "fun". It gets kinda tiring to have to constantly hold such conversations. So these days, I reply superbly selectively and would simply delete most of the messages that come in.

• And then there are my coaching course mates and coaching clients that feature significantly in my life this year. These include friends, ex-colleagues, peer coaches, referrals, etc and I met up with them regularly over the course of their monthly coaching engagements. These engagements kept me connected to the larger world. I had wanted to come into the training and coaching space cos I want to make sure that when I reach retirement age, I can continue to be socially engaged. And I believe I am starting to have a sense of what retirement life would look like now.

It's been an interesting journey so far and I believe I will experience more interesting things as I navigate this new phase of my life.

Blogging more

I am beginning to re-appreciate the value of blogging. 

It allows me to offload my thoughts and to relief my mind of things that would, otherwise, take up a lot of space and energies. As an over thinker (that I am), this definitely helps in managing my own thoughts, emotions and bettering my emotional well-being. Above all,  blogging allows me capture my reflections, and learn from it. 

Thing is, I need to remind myself to do more of it... I need to rekindle the interest and motivation to do so. 

:-)

Mistakes vs Intent

I came across a TikTok post last night and it got me thinking. 

The post was about mistakes & intent - that if we repeat a mistake or something we did wrong, it becomes intentional. The example used was about how a person came to a meeting late, and he apologised for it and his apology was accepted. However, when he came to the meeting late the second time round, his apology was no longer accepted and he was chided for deliberately being late. The rationale - that his repeated mistake now reflects a deliberate intent to be late. Hmmm, I could understand where this was coming from - if his has learned his lesson, he would have made efforts to provide enough buffers for the many "what ifs" to avoid being late. But I think calling it intentional for being late the second time may be a tat too harsh in this example, and too simplistic. He could have made provisions to be early but perhaps never expect his car to breakdown, or get into an accident, or missed the bus, or get caught in the lift, etc. You get the drift, there can be just that many reasons why he appeared late again. And my take is this - repeated mistakes reflects an intentionality only if it happens again, and again, and without valid reasons. I do not think there is a clear distinct point as to when it becomes intentional but I do suspect somewhere in the equation are the elements of "communications" and "trust". 

Agree?

Just another of my weekend musing. Been a while...

2024 thus far

Without realising it, we have less than 4 months before 2025. It is also a good time to consolidate key happenings for this year so I don’t have to think too hard when Dec comes knocking. I had set off to keep healthy and to reinvent myself this year. So let's take a look at how far I have progressed.

Self-care & Health

• Let's start off with mental well-being - on the whole, I thought I’d managed this relatively ok, apart from the set-back as a result of the break-up
• I was able to sustain a decent level of social engagement
• I maintained my desire to head out for oversea breaks at least once a month
• I sustained my minimum 10K steps a day (current average steps clocked per day this year stands at 17.7K)
• Regrettably, there was a couple of unfortunate major sickness esp over the last month resulting in the need to visit the A&E (ED) department twice

Coaching 

• This is possibly my biggest achievement for the year
• I had completed all 3 training modules, thereby fulfilling the required training hours needed 
• Also, have completed 2 out of the 3 mentoring sessions and passed all markers required
• I should complete the last mentoring session in 2 weeks
• Had also completed 128 hours of coaching thus far 
• This is more than the minimum 100 hours required but I continued to coach so I can keep my skills warm and to work towards the next level of accreditation 
• I should be able to sit for the credentialing exams by end-Sep/ early-Oct once I finished my final mentoring session
• I have not decided how I will build on this after my certification, but I do think building a coaching business is a possible option for me
• I can decide on this after I pass the exams

Training

• I managed to successfully sign up as an associate trainer with 2 companies
• So far, I have yet to start conducting any training given the need for preparatory activities 
• I expect the training proper should happen before year-end
• By next year, I would have gotten a good feel of what to expect and I should be able to stabilise this aspect of my life
• More importantly, being able to train will also allow me to re-establish a way where I can generate an income source in a more sustainable manner

Professional 

• I had set up a company earlier this year. The intent behind it was to allow me the options to either make a business out of it, or at least to leverage it for payment purposes in time to come
• I got myself credentialed as a senior certified professional with the Society for HR Management 
• This is a requirement set by one of the training company as a pre-requisite before I can conduct their HR-related programmes

The above were directly related to my health and well-being as well as reinventing myself. I must add that when I said I wanted to reinvent myself, it was in the context of work. But 2024 saw me being "reinvented" in more ways than just work, especially in my personal life. These changes had directly impacted me in all ways, especially in my well-being. But positively, it allowed me to channel my energies into reinventing myself. Here're the details.

Personal life

• Had an unfortunate break up after close to 7 years when he decided to move on to focus on his personal priorities
• Have since been avoiding him in an attempt to give myself the space to heal and to grow
• Notably, some of my closer friends gravitated towards him and I am somewhat left stranded
• It had been 4 months and it was the longest time since coming out where I was single and not attached
• Loneliness can be a real bitch and when it hits, it hits really hard
• But positively, this void forced me to look elsewhere to expand my circle of friends, e.g., via social apps like Grindr, which I met with varying successes
• I also made the efforts to re-establish connections with some older contacts
• It also gave myself the freedom to visit gay haunts and to indulge in things I would normally not do (let's leave it at that)
• Above all, it allowed me to channel some good energies into coaching and this kept me sane during the immediate periods after my break-up

Family

• I managed to maintain close and warm relationship with my paternal side relatives with regular calls and occasional dinner get togethers
• Had maintained a somewhat warm relationship with my eldest sister & her family with an invitation to my nieces' housewarming
• For my second sis, the year started off relatively well but the relationship took a dive especially after she badly handled the sourcing of a tenant for me (I am pretty pissed off with her tbh)
• Will let things be for now and go with the flow

Others

• I had sold off my car, after more than 3 decades of driving
• Managed to get a decent price for it with minimal loss, and that's good
• Objectively speaking, it does not make financial sense to hold on to it now that I am alone and public transport is easily accessible from my place
• I had also managed to get a tenant
• Trying to get used to staying with a stranger as of now and tbh, I myself seemed like a tenant in my own home, at least for now 
• But positively, it does give me a source of passive income

The above is a consolidation of my 2024 thus far. Looking at it, I think I have done quite a bit although it seemed like I am quite free and quite chill this year... LOL. Or is this just my way of self-consolation? But back to my aim of keeping healthy and well, and reinventing myself. Have I achieved it? I think to a large extend, I have kept to it. Some things are beyond my control (e.g. break-up and falling sick), but for the parts about reinventing myself, I think I am moving in the right direction.

Let's not be too harsh on myself. All's good for now, that's my conclusion.

I deserve it...

I have constantly felt torn when it comes to managing my pace of life. On one hand, I am taking things slow and easy - in planning my daily commitments, in pursuing my part time career, etc. Whereas on the other hand, I find myself frequently chiding myself for procrastinating, doing things a tat too slowly, and having no sense of urgency. This struggle with how fast/ slow I am doing things is real and often a times, I questioned myself about whether I am lazy, whether I am a loser, etc... and for that matter, I still get very angsty when things don't go according to the timeline I have planned for myself. Well, you get the drift. To manage this, I have to constantly and consciously remind myself a key reason behind leaving corporate life is to give myself the time and space to slow my life down, don't sweat the small stuff, learn to embrace life as it happens and just enjoy the journey.

Take for example, I wanted to get my coaching credential asap, by July/ August if possible and had placed much energies into the process, coaching up to 2 clients a day (which was superbly draining), and with the thought that I can take the credentialing exams once I complete my first mentoring session. I was deeply disappointed when I was told I must complete all 3 mentoring sessions despite having passed the first session. This would set me back by 2 months before I could register for the exams. It took me a while to remind myself that on the grander scale of things, I am still within my target of getting myself full transitioned to a part-time livelihood by 60 years old (2 more years); and thus, I should just chill and take things in stride.  Other examples include struggling over basic things like waking up early vs waking up later, being more spontaneous vs planning every detail of my time.

It seemed like my body has been so tuned to the lifelong habit of waking up early, rushing from point-to-point, getting things done fast, etc so much so that I am finding it hard to slow myself down - that I don't know how to slow down and smell the roses. Basically, I have not gotten used to having free time on my hand! And I often have to tell myself that this struggle will come to past once I get use to it and made this a new norm for me. Ok, I don't know if what I wrote made sense, but yeah, I just want to capture it somewhere... so till I embrace this new norm, I have to remind must “slow down, slow down... you have rushed your whole life, it is time to give yourself a break, slow things down, laze, procrastinate, etc... you deserve it!”