Filed under: Debrief

Debrief On A Failure


Now I have decided to drop out from my part-time engineering degree course. It had been one and a half years of struggle. It is painful to make this decision since I had invested large amount of money and time for the course. If I were to continue, I still have to go next 3.5 years to finish it. It was a slow and painful realization that I am wasting my time and money. My day job is a programmer and I am passionate about it. But spending most of the evenings studying circuits and amps won’t help me achieve what I want to be, an awesome coder.

So you might ask, “Why the hack you started anyway and why wait until now?”. Well, I thought it was important to have a degree from a recognised University. I had a degree from my home country which is not recognised in Singapore. So I was being a sheep and follow the crowd neglecting my passions. To make things worst, they only offers electronics and mechanical degrees as part time courses. I thought, I could study electronics at night while coding at day time. I thought I could become a hybrid electronics engineer and programmer.

I was wrong. Although I enjoy learning, I didn’t enjoy learning electronics. There are all the other things I want to learn, do and experiment. After a year, I had this enormous list filled with books to read, languages to learn, challenges to take, side projects to hack on and a wife to take care of! The most annoying thing is whenever I wanted to take on a thing like poking around new programming language, I was stopped by the thought, “Hey aren’t you supposed to study?” I was getting done less and less in both worlds.

Alright, screw it. I don’t need any internationally recognised degrees or certificates to live my life the way I want! I am going to spend my time on all the crazy things I wanted to do. For all money and time I have wasted, I have learned important lessons. Things I am not passionate about are not worth pursuing. Do less and do the things that matters. From now on, I will keep asking “Does it really matter and does it worth my life?” And you should ask yourself too.

 

Emotions Bankruptcy


Life is the cruel teacher. It will make sure you learn something by throwing lessons after lessons until you learn. Why is this happening to me? Why are people lying? Look at these knives sticking out of my back? Oh Why? Why? I asked and asked without seeking the answer.

I was so immersed in self pity, I missed the whole point: to learn and grow. Instead, bullshits piled up at darkest corners of mind. Visions were sway and distorted, fuelling more nasty down cycles of emotional mishaps. Boom! Before I knew it, I became a pathetic piece of shit. I let my guards down, and let events get the best of me.

When looking back at these unfortunate episodes, there was a theme, there was a pattern. It was the same story, same happenings and of course same lesson to learn. I was so busy collecting twisted emotions, I forgot to let go. I forgot to move on. I has forgotten the face of my father as Roland of Gilead might say.

I messed up. I have to do something before it is too late. Inspired by Task Bankruptcy from www.mostlymaths.net, I decided to filed an Emotions Bankruptcy. It is simply to let go of all these emotional junks. I need to disown them and save myself from the loser state. But how?

There is a simple practice in Buddhism. Just to be aware of feelings and emotions, be aware how they show up, how they seek for attentions and how they exist apart from me. It may work or it may not. I am going to try out this simple practice to built myself, piece by piece.