Truly, 2013 has been one of the, if not most, difficult year of my life so far, and only the years I spent in army would be comparable to it. I made a lot of mistakes and failures this year, especially in the area of relationships and I almost slipped down a slippery slope that I managed to escape, which will otherwise led me to a continually spiral downwards in my mental and emotional health.
I've learnt to be more cautious and realistic in my expectations of relationships, as well as not to let my emotions get the better of me. After all, I'm the one who suffers the most if I let it get to my head, no one else. It's still hard to open up, even though many people, especially my friends in uni say I'm at the right age to get into a relationship, because opening up means being vulnerable, and I'm still afraid of being vulnerable and end up getting hurt. I'm still waiting for that someone who will be able to make me open up, who will be the right one, at the right time. I thought of something along these lines about relationship:
"When we are younger, we always dream of the right one and that we will meet the right one and marry that person when we grow up. But as we grow older and we reach into adulthood, we realized that the right one hasn't appear yet, and seeing everyone else getting attached, we start to lower our expectation and just settle for the good ones. But after a while, we realized all the good ones are taken already and the ones left are the average/below average ones. Then, we decided to settle for just anyone, because we realized it's not about finding the right one, but making right with someone we have just found."
In the area of my studies, I didn't do so well in the first half of the semester due to the mild depression that I was having and my grades were also affected. But I'm just glad I didn't fail any modules despite that, truly it's by God's grace that I managed to survive through that semester and recovered in time to do a last ditch study on all my modules, after all the snowball effect. I'm super happy for my second half's results, did beyond my expectation and I'm so glad I'm finally in 2nd class lower honours after being 3rd class for 1.5 years! It's been such a long and hard struggle, especially in an engineering course. Probably the only people who understand how hard it is to score in our course, are the people studying in engineering courses themselves. I think my parents are also slowly starting to understand, and they have dropped most unnecessary pressure on me. Hoping that I'll be able to maintain my grades. ^^
In the area of my social life, I'm glad I've joined a CCA which I managed to find like-minded friends and a sense of belonging to, it's like a home to me. JAC (Japanese Appreciation Club) is probably the best CCA I've joined so far in my life, and I would not have imagined how my uni life would have been without it. All the times I spent with my friends there and all the outings and activities have brighten up my otherwise boring and mundane uni life. I'm really thankful for them all. On the contrary, I think I feel less connected to the people in church, it seems like the longer you are in one place, the less friendly people become to you cause they already know you. It has been a lot time since anyone approached me to start a conversation. I know I'm an introvert and I don't like starting conversations because I feel uneasy to, but that doesn't mean I don't want to. And I always got the feeling that the people I initiate conversation with doesn't seem to want to talk to me, like they reply me with close-ended sentences or sometimes one word reply. Sigh I wish I could go back to the older days, where making friends was so much easier, unlike now. Guess it's easier to make friends when you are younger. When you are older, people around you already have their own group of friends by this age, they don't see it a point to make new friends.
Overall, I think 2013 is a year of learning and enduring. One word to sum all that I've learnt is thankfulness. I'm thankful for everything that has happen, be it good or bad. The fact that I'm still alive, is enough to be thankful. Cause I've experienced losing a JC classmate at this age, and I always thought I'm still too young to die. I realized anything can happen to you anytime, life is really unpredictable. If I know that I'm going to die soon, I would want to make every day of my life count. Which is what I want to do for 2014.
This year, I want to make my life more meaningful, I want to do things that will make my life happier, instead of worrying so much and complaining about what will happen to me in 2014.
For this year, I want to:
-Be more gracious and forgiving of others
-Be emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically stronger
-Be more motivated in my studies and score GPA of 4.0 and above for all semesters
-Build on my relationship skills with others
-Get N4 for my Japanese Language Proficiency Test
-Improve my musical skills so I can play more professionally in weddings and gigs
-Be more courageous in voicing my opinions and not be afraid of being put down by others
-Smile more and be happy
