I didn’t make any New Year’s resolutions.
Why not? Because it’s easy to put together a tidy list of agreeable goals, but then surprise birthday parties happen (say no to cake???), your favourite yoga studio shuts down (hello disrupted downward dog) and new targets at work mean longer hours and takeaway (sorry kitchen, maybe next time).
Don’t get me wrong, there does exist a subset of super humans capable of overcoming all of the above without so much as a hiccup, but life has a funny way of butting in what you want and it’s only February.
Since returning to Singapore after three weeks bouncing around in North America, I found my mind in a distraught state. Three questions in particular cluttered up my thoughts.
“What do I want? What’s my end game? And are my current affairs going to get me there?”
2019 marks my fifth year living abroad.
There’s no regret of the choice I made to be away from family and oldest friends. The sacrifice has granted me a full passport, a loving partner, career milestones and priceless personal growth.
But seeing my beautiful mother’s face etch with wrinkles from worry and my dearest friends get engaged, build homes, made me wonder what I could be missing. I always envisioned us girls going through adulthood together.
If I wasn’t building the foundation overseas to achieve the future I’ve always wanted, what was the point of being so far away from my loved ones?
It took me a few weeks and late night conversations to finally figure out what I was going to do.
The private sector is a wonderful battlefield to develop cut throat skills that will come in handy when I make a leap into building my own social enterprise.
CAOSE is the beginning of this platform. Over time, it will grow as I water it with issues that matter to me, trim it with ideas from insightful individuals, nurture it with learnings from my travels and eventually shape up into something I’m proud of.
Each new year gives people a reset – a way to do over all the mistakes and regrets of the previous year but I don’t want a “do over”. I want to create something from all of my wrong turns.
Cheers to the unseen future, the awaiting milestones and difficult but rewarding moments ahead.
-cyn
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CAOSE 