It has been a year since I last posted, and I received an email asking if I’m still alive.
In the physical sense, yes I am still living. In the metaphorical sense, I died with the onset of the pandemic (though not because of it). I am lucky to be living in a country where the situation is in control (although there’s currently a small resurgence of cases), and the environment is peaceful. Really, I open local news apps and the bulk of the news is really depressing stuff happening outside of my country. Conflicts, strong-arming, supply-hoarding, variants…
But you aren’t here for my RL thought-processes. You want to know what happened to me. There’s two major changes that happened, and I’ll write separate posts about each at some point.
First, my education is in limbo. The borders remain firmly closed, and I remain stuck in Singapore, unable to take on meaningful employment or internships as I don’t want to have to drop them on sudden notice to travel. I’ve been working part-time, mostly to while the hours away while I lay in wait. Online learning is terrible, and it got to the point where I changed my course, but still, there’s only a slight improvement.
I know Singapore is making plans to open up borders now that 80% have completed their vaccination. Just yesterday they announced that 4 categories of travel thingy that separates countries according to risk. But Australia’s borders are firmly closed, and will remain so to Singapore until at least January 2022, though several indications suggest it is more likely to be so until the middle of 2022.
Second, as I remain in limbo, I have moved back in with my parents. I became lax, and let my guard down due to my tiring work schedule, and as a result, my diapers were found. Or maybe because my mother went snooping. But more because I became lax. As a result I got caught. It was a very low point in my life that has taken me months for me to get past.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for me being distracted by work I’d probably have cracked. But not everyone’s journey is a straight line, and that is the case for me as well.
It was very hard for me to get back to accepting my DL side again, and I think I’m ready to restart posting and connecting. Most of all, my writing projects that have lain abandoned need a restart. I really need to get up to speed, and figure out this whole writing thing, and how to make it work. It doesn’t have to be profitable, but it has to be worthwhile.
-Selv
dlselv@sg 