12/4/18

It's been quite a while. 

I realized so much have changed since I last blogged. Yet it is still about to go through a whole lot more changes. 

Full time job was going well for the past few months. But no pay raise would mean not much future TBH. I had quite the expectation of an immediate salary boost at the end of probation, but I have only myself to blame for thinking it'll come so easily. 

Then I really thought what did I truly gain from work so far and to me it really is nothing that I really want my future to be like...

The woes of going down this line. Hard to see myself continuing this, but it definitely pains me to know that I've committed so much but the reward is so little. Living out of your arts and passion will always be a struggle for us folks. 

I'm not sure what life would be like in May, but I definitely have to get some tickets booked in. LCG is so soon yet I'm clueless what is going to happen again. Every year feels like the same thing. Wonder where my priority lies. How are we able to make progress like that? 

Being close to not having a job anymore and also having zero opportunities in the parkour world really scares me in trying to raise a good future. Yet there's nothing I want to do other than making this parkour gym thing happen. I'm just afraid that it might fail so hard too. 

No one sees how real money issues could be for a low income family. It's been a good few years getting used to not having a constant backup of wealth from my father's job. Savings has been used up and now your Mom is living paycheck to paycheck. Imagine you're pretty much self sustainable totally with your sister tanking the pressure of maintaining the household. You try to ease the pressure for her but now you can't even hold on to your low paying full-time job. A parkour gym will probably take so much work and very little rewards (or none at all, for a bit). There's so much risk involved and not much of a safety net to land on. 

I have been enjoying life a lot and my expenditure consequently have gone up quite a bit too - which is fine as my monthly income is doing me quite well. However I'm not anywhere close hitting my targeted numbers this year so I'm still needing to hustle for more.

However, it's hard to get see people to understand your POV without them going through it in your shoes. No one sees why there's a need to save, even if money is coming in every month. It does take a lot of discipline to keep to your budget but people often misconceive it as being tight-fisted and calculative. 

Two years ago, I felt that I chose work and earning money over being in the same country as my (ex) girlfriend. For me, I had an extremely good paying job and was on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be working overseas and in Australia. I somehow felt it was a lot more worth it to keep earning money and hustle while I can. However, it did come at a cost of being disconnected to a girl whom I really love back then. I guess both parties had their faults but I do realize that maybe money is not the most important thing. 

I've learnt that and recently I've been spending and giving a lot more than I usually ever would to anyone. I feel that the money can be earned in the later stage and I deserve to spend some money on the people I love and for myself too. But I scrimp and save on other instances, and work extra jobs so that I won't be depleting my savings. There are many people who are still living paycheck to paycheck, and I really don't want to be like them. 

I'm not one of the lucky ones. It sucks to not have the capacity to spend and buy all extravagant gifts for people. I know others would do it in a heartbeat, but I really want to be earn more first before living life a bit more luxuriously. It's not as if my future is perfectly set and will have tons of money then. 

It definitely is hard to juggle the saving/earning money aspect of life with the other realities of life. It's hard for others to see eye to eye with how I am with money.

It's hard for me to put others in front of my myself/my passions. I guess my selfishness is partly me protecting myself yet also pushing others away from me. 

I do need to strike a better balance.