For as long as I remember, I have been working hard, very hard.
From the time I was in school, having to finish homework and assignments, preparing for tests and exams, I used to work long and hard because I know I didn’t have the academic brains. Back in those days when life was either becoming a doctor or an engineer, getting a University degree was the be all and end all. Immediately after graduation, I was working, at one time, even holding onto 2 jobs (I think there was even once I went without sleep for 24hrs just to earn the extra buck for clocking the midnight shift; it paid very well). The first few years of my working life, I don’t think I ever took more than 2 consecutive days of annual leave. I was just working a lot, and for most of the time, I don’t think I minded it as much as the people around me. I’m sure I had my fair share of complains but overall, I felt like I was learning so much and growing as a professional that the 15hrs workday didn’t seem to bother my 20s. Overtime, I made sure I set aside more time for vacation, take my driver’s, started to exercise more and spending more time with family and friends.
I can’t say for sure when or what overcame me, but it just came to a point (maybe it’s age, that time of your life-speak) I felt I needed to do more with my life. I didn’t want my job to define me anymore. I started to look for ideas to break the routine but this wasn’t always consistently done because work deadlines would still take up a lot of time and energy. It made matters more complicated that I didn’t really feel anything specific I was passionate about. For a while, I thought I was such an oddball that I didn’t have a passion the way some folks feel it in their bones of becoming a chef, a photographer or take up coding to build the next big start-up! I felt lousy about myself and the harder I ‘searched’ for my passion, the more frustrated I became, that I would crawl back into my pile of work so I didn’t have to deal with this “So, what’s my passion/hobby” silly problem.
And again, I can’t nail down exactly how I decided that since I don’t have a hobby the way ‘normal people’ do, I was gonna try as many different things as I could, and maybe eventually I would experience something I enjoy so much that I can call it my hobby. And because I’ve seen how it was so easy for me to slip into my ‘work mode’ (That cannot be my hobby in life!), I told myself to try something new every month.
It was a ‘bumpy journey’ in the beginning – I’d missed my ‘monthly deadline’ because there was work reports to submit, sleep debt to recover and oh, procrastination plays a part. Sometimes when I couldn’t decide what new thing to work on, I gave myself the excuse to work on it the following month. All these ‘challenges and struggles’ felt real and to avoid excuses, I decided to loosen the scope of the activities, not confining myself to only trying new things, but thinking about past activities I had tried and done but left it all behind.
As I embark on this road of discovery, it felt like I needed to give the personal project a name, thinking it would be more legit and maybe then I would be more serious about it. To call it One New Or Old From A Long Time Ago Anything felt too long a title even in my head, so I just called it One New Anything, O.N.A. I don’t know if I’ll ever name it differently, but it sits well for now. While it started as something to find my passion, my hobby, I suppose you can say the O.N.A spirit is about having tried and not liking it is better than to never have tried and live in regret.
No idea was too small or silly. I started O.N.A for myself, not to update my LinkedIn resume; I barely even mention any of these on my personal Facebook page. So even though I am now publishing this for anyone to read, I don’t expect everyone to be impressed. It’s about being comfortable in my own skin, but at the same time going beyond my comfort zone so I can discover a new side of me. Like what Johnny Depp said – Just keep moving forward and don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.
So if you stay subscribed to my O.N.A journey, you’ll read about my joys and tears from various inspirations. I hope it intrigues you enough to think about your life or maybe even get started working on your first O.N.A project. I promise you that if you stay committed and not fall back on old ways, it can be rewarding to see how much you can accomplish.
P/S: It wasn’t until 2016 that I started to write down the O.N.A projects I’ve done so the rest of the posts are the based on what I could recall. It doesn’t seem like much and I am a little disappointed in myself. But my ex-O.N.A buddy assures me I definitely had a longer list, just that neither of us kept track of things.
One New Anything 