That mandatory first post

You know one of those people who are ‘location-independent’, who roam all over the world freely, and manage to fund their lifestyles through blogging?

I am not one of those people.

Back in 2008, just as I attended the graduation ceremony for my doctorate, an acquaintance that I was having dinner with (together with a bunch of friends) told me that I should be “one of those people who spend their lives travelling and have a website”. I am pretty sure she meant a blogger. In her defense, I don’t think she was familiar with blogging or blogs in general, but she sure knew that it existed.

I brushed suggestion aside. It is not that I am not interested in travelling or blogging. I love both equally, and I have been somewhat intermittent on both fronts.

The travel bug has left me, that’s what I say. Yes, I enjoy exploring the world, especially when it involves shopping, eating and people-watching. Yet lately I have not found a place that I actually want to visit. Don’t get me wrong, there are many places that I have not been to in this planet, and the reason this is so is because… I don’t want to visit them yet.

I have blogged before – many times. Here is the thing, most of the time, I have been blogging anonymously. Lately, I have come to the conclusion that anonymity is overrated. Actually, it is not so much my conclusion, but a friend argued his case pretty well and managed to convince me. Thus, it became my conclusion too.

Nonetheless, here I am now.

I have just been back from Bangkok, Thailand. My first time there. I was touched and humbled by the sincerity of the Thais. It is called the land of smiles for a good reason, everyone whose eyes I met was smiling. I have never come across a friendlier place in this planet.

My last trip (before Bangkok) was 3 years ago, when I visited home. I define the word home broadly, you will discover the reason for that as you read this blog. In this case, home is where my dad lives (hi Dad!). It was also not so much because I wanted to visit him (yes, I know it sounds bad, but it is also true, and he knows this fact), but rather I committed myself to doing something for someone who was pretty important to me. That trip was good and bad all at the same time. In retrospect, I should not have gone through with the trip, but I did, and I tried to make the best of it.

Of course I’d like to travel more in future – I have not come across anyone who does not want to travel and see the world. But that’s not the premise of this blog.

This blog is, for lack of a better description, about my life. My questions and musings in life, how I live my life, how I choose to enjoy my life, and everything else in between. Occasionally, I may decide to write about something sad and painful, and I promise that I am not going to brood over these things. Because I am of view and life is about change and about moving on, letting go, making room and embracing new things. Life is about growth, especially personal growth, the things that are not visible to the naked eye, but obvious to the voices of the heart.

Why am I sharing my life? Because I have benefited so much from other bloggers who are sharing their lives. I don’t even get to thank them – if I were to leave comments at every post that I find inspirational, I think I must have written thousands by now.  I hope that someone can benefit from this. I know that I will benefit from this when I look back on my life one day.

And I know that everyone writes the next sentence a lot – I want to become a better writer. Or even more specific, I want to become an honest writer. I do try harder to be diplomatic when I am writing and I have been told that I am not that diplomatic in my non-writing mode (which is basically the rest of my life). This includes the times that I blogged anonymously. I want to convey my meanings more clearly, with my name attached to it. This will mean that there will be things that I will not write here in a million years – some things are off-limits, okay. This is a trade-off that I am willing to take.

After all of those paragraphs above, in summary, this is a blog of a young, urban, female professional who ponders about life on a regular basis, survived two-rounds of quarter life crises, and just simply want to share her thoughts.