FINDING PURPOSE IN THE 30s

A honest account of fumbling through life. My mission is to un-filter my filtered Instagram pages.

Around this time two years ago in 2018 I started a new Instagram page and a new blog. After spending 8 hours a day blogging, photoshopping & posting for over half a year (I had a pretty chilled job at the time, in fact too chilled that I got bored and quit, but that’s another post), the serious Instagram & blog ventures fell through pretty quickly as life unfurls. A new job, new city, new apartment, new husband and one hell of a ‘fake’ wedding ride later, I arrived here on this post, as a newly minted ‘married’ 30-year-old.

Asian (both in shape & identity – I was born in Vietnam and still hold a Vietnamese passport), non-conformist and confused, the following pages you will find my life journey.

Why do I start this blog now?

Because as said, my life has been one hell of a ride
Because there is an unfathomable amount of thoughts that runs through my head at any moment. Life is not easy to figure out as it is, and one’s messy thoughts & emotions only make things eternally more complicated. So why not write it all out and share lessons along the way
And because I like to write

So here is a not-so-brief summary of myself:

1. I was born in a small town on the Highlands of Vietnam in November, 1989

2. My dad is a coffee farmer, my mom sold sugarcane juice in the market throughout my childhood, now she has a small shop at home selling herbal medicines. Both of them did not have any high school education. My dad reads newspaper and watches the news on TV everyday; my mom never touches a single book or magazine in her life or reads anything. She types on Facebook with spelling errors and writes ‘phay but’ instead of Facebook (Vietnamese pronunciation). I thought it’s important to explain my family background as all of these factors have influenced my self-growth to such a critical extent.

3. I studied extremely hard and won an ASEAN scholarship to Singapore when I was in second year of high school in Vietnam (11th grade). I then moved to Singapore in September 2005 and had to re-start the 9th grade-- the equivalent of funking two grades. That's pretty dark for a girl like me with a record of topping every single of her class in Vietnam, and since then, I have always felt condemned to always lag behind my peers --- whether it being 2 years older than my Singaporean classmates at the time, 3 years older than my American college peers, and now, being much much older than my colleagues at the same level in my company (all the other associates are in their early twenties and that left me with being the only thirty-year-old associate). This, as I have come to realize, has left a profound, permanent dent in my life. Whoever says age is just a number, is just saying bullshit.

4. Hence starting from the age of 16, I started living a privileged life, without even realizing it. Four years of prestigious boarding school in Singapore. Then I was admitted to Yale on full tuition & board scholarships. This was followed by two years of private business school in Germany for a Master’s in International Business degree (now a defunct program at my alma mater) — also on full governmental grants. That concluded my exactly 10 years of living a high life on scholarships.

5. Graduating into the real life at the age of 26, this was when I really started struggling, hardcore. Or in layman’s term, when shit really hit the fan. Graduating from Yale, armed with a Master’s degree, yet I got fired from my very first job, then picked the wrong second job out of fear and disappointment. A bitter ensuing identity crisis later, I started on the third job at the age of 30 as a fresh associate, officially joining the rank of new college graduates in my cohort. At this point I really felt that my life officially hit rock bottom at the age of 30 and it can no longer go downhills from then on.

6. One year later, here I am, still trudging along, growing and counting my blessings.

So what is this blog gonna be about?

My life stories as I try to weave together the countless journeys and memories of the last three decades of my life into a coherent canvas of life.
My other passions in life, besides brutally frank and melodramatic storytelling, include:

- Traveling

- Food

- Tips for the city I’m currently based in: Frankfurt, and the city I frequently visit and love dearly: London

My sister truthfully jokes that I am a poor kid living a rich’s kid life.