Hi there. I haven’t written a lot over the last couple of years and thought I should check in, you know? Let everyone know how I’m doing. The last few years have brought about a great deal of change for me. Some of those changes are positive, others not so much.
In the wake of the pandemic, I’ve been travelling more than I ever did before. By now, I've seen quite a bit more of Malaysia, whether it's the big city of Kuala Lumpur, the idyllic Pulau Tioman, or my own state of Sabah. Six or seven states, now that I think about it, even if for some I was only passing through. How about that. I’ve also been to Singapore a few times and have been impressed with the city-state’s cosmopolitan cleanliness. Expanding horizons, that’s what travel does for you. I wonder where I'll go next.
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| Pulau Tioman, Pahang |
Back home, I’m still working at the same job I’ve always had had for more than a decade. Somehow that's led to me becoming senior and experienced. I still live in the same village I grew up in with nieces and nephews running around now, the next generation shooting up like weeds. My generation have become mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles, getting married and having kids and doting on others. Where did the time go? We're still young, but not as young as we used to be.
On that note, I’m more forgetful nowadays. It's quite timely that 'brain rot' was named as the Oxford Word of the Year 2024. I can relate. I'll bet a lot of us can, and it's all because we're always on our phones.
I read an excellent book a few months ago called The Shallows which lays out the scientific evidence that yes, the Internet is indeed affecting our brains, with smartphones being the primary vector. We’re all being subconsciously trained to sift through vast quantities of information, to flit our attention here and there and focus on something new at a moment’s notice, which has deleterious effects on memory consolidation. Are we getting better at multitasking? Perhaps. Are we losing our ability to do deep work, to focus for long periods when myriad distractions are available on the little screens we carry around everywhere? Absolutely. It is frightening how modern technology is changing us. I haven’t even wrapped my head around the possibilities of AI yet, which isn’t just some dumb internet bubble like NFTs were. AI is truly world-changing. I have been duly impressed by the answers I've gotten from ChatGPT. I've also been intimidated to find that computers can write almost as well as people now, to say nothing about voice and image generation. How will we know what's real?
I’m writing all this while listening to ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues’. My Spotify playlist is a blend of rock bands, anime and video game soundtracks, meme culture songs that I found on YouTube, and sentimental ballads. I guess it's no surprise that I've become a fan of Elton John. His dramatized big-screen musical biography, Rocketman, spoke to me like few movies have, which led to picking up his actual biography, simply titled Me. Sir Elton’s story of escaping into addictions in the face of the pressures and depression of his seemingly charmed life before finally getting sober speaks to me. Humans are the same no matter their culture or background. We all just want to escape our problems. One of my favorite authors, Mark Manson, talks about upgrading ourselves to problems that are better than what we faced before, and I have to wonder about my own: are they?
I’m a few years into my thirties, and I've been thinking about how this decade is different compared to my twenties. There's more pressure now. I’ve gone from having the future stretching out before me in an unknown expanse to living life on a timer. Six months, three months, one month. Always counting down, and then I need to find a way to push it forwards one way or another. Is this sustainable? I don't think that it is. One way or another, something has to change.
