I can’t go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
– Lewis Carroll
Our greatest hopes and deepest fears revolve around it. Finding love and losing a loved one. Achieving our dreams and watching them die. Rising to glory and falling from grace. In every life, both the storm and the soothing breeze are born from the winds of change.
When I was younger, my life was static, directionless. I was horribly afraid that this was the best it would get. This was all I would ever amount to: nothing much of anything. All those feelings I struggled to escape by losing myself in fantasies. When, I kept asking. I was alive, but when was I going to start living?
I look back fondly on that younger me now. If only he’d known.
Once again, we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year. I thought of listing out my various lessons learned in the old one for your edification and amusement. But nah, screw it. This time I’m doing something more holistic. As I look back over 2018, the year that was, I sense a common theme. A lot of boundaries broken and milestones achieved, but it was all the same, really. Isn’t that ironic?
For me, 2018 was about change.
Stuff happened in 2017. After an arduous two years, my uncle died of colon cancer, the first death in our family in over a decade. He had 62 years, and it struck me that that wasn’t very long at all. My first real relationship ended in a breakup. I’d finally found someone, and it didn’t work out. My mother was then diagnosed with the same cancer, requiring an emergency operation. I signed the form authorizing life-saving surgery and recognized that most painful of truths: our parents aren’t going to be around forever. The operation was a success, but complications led to a stay in the ICU. She almost died.
I suppose it was the perfect storm. I realized that in so many ways, I’d been wasting my life. Going into 2018, I had to start using it wisely. I had to become a better person.
First and foremost, I gained a newfound appreciation for my mother. Our history wasn’t the best. I’d long kept myself emotionally distant from her, wary of getting too close. But keeping track of blood tests and chemotherapy appointments, sleeping on hospital floors at her bedside, I realized that I had to let go of the past. To embrace her for who she was, not who I wished she could be. This was the time; someday soon, it would be too late. Even the thought of that kind of regret was haunting.
Second, I’d long indulged in a certain bad habit from my youth. One of many forms of escapism, like my books and video games and fantasies. All attempts to avoid a reality I wasn’t happy with. But coupled with the internet, this vice was particularly harmful (and sadly common, even touted as ‘normal’). Reluctantly, I accepted that I was addicted.1 I’d made scattered attempts to quit over the years. Now I joined a recovery-based forum and started implementing what it would take to stay clean.
And third, I realized that I had to start taking my writing seriously. I’ve talked a lot about dreaming of becoming an author, but a dream without effort is just a wish. Was I putting in the work, actually writing my novel on a consistent basis? No, I was not. I’d already dabbled in Habitica for self-improvement. Now I joined a writing guild and began keeping myself accountable through the community.
Meanwhile, the world was changing too. On May 9th, in a shocking upset, Malaysia’s ruling regime was voted out for the first time in the country’s history. Fed up of corruption and draconian authority, the people changed the government. And they did it peacefully, united despite underlying racial and religious tensions. I played no part, but I’m still proud of that. I’m proud that this country is my home. On a smaller scale, my workplace underwent some much-needed, ongoing renovations, with an increased focus on animal welfare. My schedule was also reshuffled to some extent; suddenly I was busier than ever. But I digress.
By the middle of the year, my mother’s cancer markers were going down. The chemo was working. I’d been clean for months and found my whole mindset changing. Confidence and social skills were so much easier without guilt. For so long, I’d believed that my vices were things I couldn’t live without – and now I was proving to myself that I didn’t need them.
I’d also quit Instagram earlier in the year, realizing that social media was just one more time sink on the internet. (It’s a good thing I never got on Facebook.) To my surprise, I even found myself losing interest in video games. I still loved them, but felt no desire to play for hours on end. I’d taken up meditation, was spending more time making artwork, began learning Japanese as a third language and had gotten back to playing the piano. And of course, I was writing. There were better things to do.
I was starting to appreciate real life over the one found in fantasies.
My mother finished her chemo in July, with excellent results. The cancer was in remission. Words can't describe my gratitude for that. But I was also finding the writing frustrating, getting bogged down in the second act. And the high of staying clean was fading fast. This was the new status quo, after all. The novelty had worn itself out, and my motivation faltered.
I’d been driven by the thought of becoming a better man. But I started to wonder: had I really changed? Wasn’t I the same person, with the same flaws?
So I slid back into my old habits. The next few months were a struggle to stay clean again.
I wasn’t exactly moving on in the romance department, either. Even post-breakup, I still clung to my old relationship like a security blanket. We consoled each other that we could still be friends. And we are. I’m forever grateful to her, and still am. But I was afraid to let go, even though the core problems persisted, and my own feelings were increasingly ambivalent.
Sometimes we have to learn the same lessons over and over again.
If the first half of the year gave me the drive to improve myself, the second half taught me something equally important: self-acceptance. We’re all human. Sometimes we screw up. I struggled, failed, went back to the same cycles. And that was fine.
You see, I realized that I’d been approaching this the wrong way. As Mark Manson put it, trying to change ourselves is a waste of time. What matters is our actions, how we behave. We all struggle sometimes. But as a wise old wizard as flawed as any of us once said, it is our choices that make us who we are.2
I am a better person now – because I choose to be.
Which brings me to today.
A few weeks ago, three years after I wrote that first chapter in a blaze of inspiration, I finished the first draft of Wraithblade. There’s still much to be done, but this was the first year ever that I sat down and put in sustained effort towards writing a book. I made more progress than in the previous two years combined. Discipline and accountability make a difference.
I met someone new in December, who showed up in my life out of nowhere. Compared to before, it’s a different story in every way. I appreciate that. Funny how someone can make you rethink everything you thought you knew about relationships; it doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes people just click.
My mother is still with us. I’m still putting my thoughts into words, drawing order out of chaos. And I’m nearly a month clean, which is better than nothing.
There is a Buddhist saying that my father told me. ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.’ I’m certainly not enlightened, but it is apt. In many ways, I’m living the same life as before: working during the day and writing at night and spending too much time on my phone (the struggle is real). But now I enjoy it all more. I’m committed to living in the moment, instead of wasting time picking over the past or worrying about visions of the future. Life is here and now.
I’m not a kid anymore, and that’s okay. It’s time to embrace being a man. I am proud of all I accomplished in 2018. I still have my demons, just like everyone else. I’ve just gotten better at fighting them.
Here’s to turning the page to the next chapter of our lives.
Keep moving forwards, everyone. Have a great 2019.
1 - That post wasn't really about video games.
2 - Or as another wise old wizard said, all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. Bonus points if you can name both.
