Just got home not too long ago after a visit to the clinic where I got the diagnosis on my hemorrhoid condition. I learned something new today, it is called “Thrombosed Piles”. Without getting too scientific, let’s just say that it can be really nasty and trust me, after this personal experience with it, it is something I don’t wish upon anyone, not even to my haters. But it is also a lesson on knowing how to take care of our health and our bodies.

But for me, this lesson goes even further back. On my way back home tonight, I had the time to think about a lot of the things that had happened that have somehow led me to where I am today. While I like to think that there were certainly certain factors and circumstances that were totally out of my control, I am also not about to push all the blame/responsibility away. I know that I have been in some part responsible for some of the challenges that I’ve been facing in recent years/months/weeks.

So without focusing on the things that I cannot control, I’m going to talk about the things that I could control. From where I am sitting right now, there are THREE key areas of my life that I fully intend on doing better during this next stage/phase of my life.

Finances

One of the biggest failures of my first half of my adult life is that I constantly failed at saving up for the rainy days. I always thought that it is during difficult times that we ought to be strict and self-disciplined with our budget and expenses. So it is also with that erroneous mentality that I began spending freely every time that my financial budget would increase (during better times in my life). I always thought that because I could afford something, so it is okay for me to spend my money on it. I would constantly tell myself that I can start saving next month. But that mentality is also what eventually led to my failure.

Putting My Savings as the Top Priority

It is during the recent years, months and weeks that I experienced a 360° change in my mindset. It is now my belief that I cannot wait to start saving up or setting aside money. In fact, I am determined to set my top priority as saving up money. Yes, currently, I will have some debts that I need to repay and return. And I will over time fulfil those promises and commitments. But I refuse to do it at the expenses of setting aside some funds. I have learned a too painful lesson these last few years. I will set aside S$500, or S$1000 if I need to. I will do this first before dealing with anything else. My savings will have to come first.

Keeping My Daily Expenses to the Minimum

Here’s another mindset change that I have experienced in the last few years. Like I have shared before, I used to increase my daily budget and expenses just because I was doing better or making more money. That used to be me. But that is also the kind of thinking that led me to procrastinating when it comes to setting aside money. So this is what I intend to do in the months and years to come.

Just because my earnings and financial situation is going to get better, it doesn’t mean that I will be increasing my spending limit. In fact, I plan to keep it to the minimum. When it comes to food, that means not spending on expensive (casual dining) meals. I’m going to stick to the whole coffeeshop / hawker center level spending. Keeping every meal to under $5 (although I know some times, some places can sell food up to $6.50 or even the occasional $7). Regardless, coffeeshop/hawker food will be my go to daily meals from now on.

After this very recent health scare, I am also determined to eat better, healthier. So yes, unfortunately that means taking the occasional juices or paying for sliced fruits. So that could add a little to my daily expenses. But in hindsight, I think knowing how to take care of our bodies and health on a daily basis is a good kind of investment.

And yes, if I need to, I will get up earlier every single day to walk to the nearby station/interchange so that I could save the money/expenses. One bus ride can cost $1, and two trips a day is $2. One week and it becomes $10. One month and it becomes $40.

The other thing that I will also be saving on is buying bottled water. So, with a water bottle that I carry with me, I can always find a water cooler/dispenser nearby and top it up with water. That would save me a lot of money in the course of an entire year. I’ve done the calculation before. I can save around $416 a year just from paying for bottled water.

My Finance Future in a Nutshell?

I will continue to honor the promises and commitments that I have made to people who have recently come to my aid. I am deeply touched and impacted by your compassion and kindness. I know that many of you didn’t ask for the money back, and some of you didn’t even demand that I repay you the funds by a certain date. I take it that you would allow me time to get my financial situation in order, stabilize everything so that I can proper arrange all the repayments.

So I’ll work on that (without over-promising). It could take me a month at the very least to get everything stable. And then once my situation is finally stable, I will begin to arrange payments to some of you. I probably won’t be able to commitment to repaying all of you at once, but I will try to settle a few at a time, while also making sure that I’ve set aside some money for my own savings and also having enough for my daily expenses.

By the end of 2024, my hope is that I would’ve cleared majority of the money that I owe. And more importantly, I aim to save up at least S$500 × 6 months = S$3,000.00. I know that from the looks of it, S$3K is really not much, but it is still way better than my current circumstances.

There is something else that I might be able to do (freelance work wise) to help boost my budget, and hopefully, with it, the possibility of working off those debts sooner, and maybe also increasing my savings over time. But I will share a little more about that in the next section.

Career

After spending close to two decades in the industry, I am pretty self-aware by now of what I’m capable of and where my limits are. So with all of that, I suppose you can say that I’ve managed to develop some level of healthy wisdom. So, after nearly two decades, what have I really learned about myself?

My Full-time Gig as a Front-end Developer

My first and top priority has to always be my full-time gig. Unlike in the past where I was spending most of my time trying to fit in, or to look for a place where I could be of actual value, this time, I have found a workplace/employer who actually values my strengths and skills. This would be the very first time in my career that I could finally, and I mean..FINALLY fit in. A place where I could finally belong for the very first time.

Because I get to do everything that I’m passionate about and everything that I am really good at, it should not be a surprise that I want to dedicate more time and effort into this career opporunity. And if nothing really changes or shifts, I hope that this would be the kind of place where I could stay for a long long time (and really add value over time).

No More Distractions

One of the benefits of everything that I’ve experienced in the past is that I understand now that I cannot afford to let myself be distracted. That means that once I start working for this new company, I’m going to be 100% focused on my work at the company. Yes, that means that I will be very focused on my daily tasks, and I will be chasing after productivity above all else. It’s not about how much time I spend “at work”, but rather how much I can accomplish on a single day. The goal is to always aim for above and beyond. And yes, that means ignoring all other distractions during the first 8-9 hours of the day. I know that some of my most productive hours are also at nights when it is more quiet and calm, so I will probably manage my tasks between the most productive part of the day and my nights.

The Potential Side Gigs as a Freelance Consultant

One thing I have to be absolutely clear, is that I don’t think I will ever stop freelancing. To me, this is something that will continue to happen from time to time. I do believe sincerely that over time, as more people could see the work that I do, it will start to attract the right kind of attention. And with the right kind of attention, there will be requests (like in the past) from companies to help work on some of their projects.

One Project at a Time

Unlike in the past where I would always try to take on multiple projects concurrently (yes even with a full-time job then), these days, I am a little more focused on producing high-quality outputs. That means I will only be taking on only 1 freelance client every 3-4 months. Which also means that I won’t be taking on more than 3 or 4 freelance clients a year.

I still believe deeply in the value of being a freelancer. As a freelancer, I will get exposed to many other kinds of opportunities and projects of different nature. It is with that exposure that I can also learn new things and bring those valuable lessons and insights back into my own day job. Plus, I think a huge proponent of why I still want to continue freelancing is because it would allow me to practice UX design in a very specialized manner. My ultimate long-term goal after all, is that I still want to transition fully into design some day (even though I’ll be turning 42 in a few months time).

Now, speaking of freelance opportunities, I know that from my own experiences, one project has the potentially of allowing to earn somewhere between $35 – $50K. So, apart from any potential consulting/project related expenses, my mindset is that I would set aside and save up all the rest of the earnings. I want them to go into my savings (or in the early months of this plan, to work off my debts). But what I want to do differently this time in my life, is that I don’t want to touch that money until the project has been fully completed.

Personal Development (Character Building)

Focused on Building/Establishing My Integrity

For the past two years or so of my life, I have been so distracted by what others would think about me that I had lost sight of everything that I had been working towards in the year prior. Before the last two years, I have dedicated my life to making a significant change/improvement. And that involved working on my integrity and character. Between 2017 and 2019, I had experienced a huge and significant change to who I am. By learning to be a person with strong personal and professional integrity, I was able to earn the respect of many people. It is in earning their respect that made me realize that having people’s respect felt way more rewarding than having them like me.

But it wasn’t just that. By being able to build a stronger integrity and character, for a brief moment in my life I was also able to earn real trust from others.

Say What I Mean, and Doing What I Say.

One of the most important aspects of building a stronger character and integrity is about being honest. It is about being transparent and also being accountable/reliable. That starts with one simple thing – telling the truth. Always. No matter how inconvenient the truth might be for me. To get people to trust me and believe me, I have to first show them that I can be trustworthy.

Having a strong integrity and character also means being able to live and act consistently every single day. Even when we think that nobody is watching our every move. Who we are in private and who we show ourselves to be in public matters. And that is the kind of man that I’ll focus on being.

Treating Others with Greater Empathy & Compassion

If you have been following my blog entries for some time, then you also know that I am a huge believer of personal development / self-improvement. But more than just reading those books that make us feel good for a moment, I also deeply believe in the need to apply them to our daily lives. And that is something that I have been striving to do for years.

These last two years of struggles and personal sacrifices have taught me two incredibly important lessons. And for the rest of my life, these are two things that I will constantly practice on a daily basis.

Treating Others with Empathy

I want to begin with empathy. While I would not say that I have no empathy for others. I will admit that I never really gave it much thought in the past. Sure, if I really want to sit down and think about those instances in my life where I felt genuine empathy for others, I am sure I can pull some memories out. But that is not what I am interested in right now. After everything that I had to suffer through in recent years, now I am fully aware and wide awake.

Now when I look at other people, I can feel that empathy for them. Or if I were to read about their genuine life experiences online, I would be able to put myself into their place and try to see things from their perspectives. And that is what I intend to do when I am talking to people, or relating with them. To always put myself in their place and to see things from their eyes. And ofcourse, be slower to judge or jump to conclusion about someone.

Treating Others with Compassion

The final point that I want to make is about compassion. It is in recent weeks and days that I had the privilege of experience the kindness and compassion of numerous people. Some of whom I had never ever met in person. Yet, when I reached out to them in humility to ask for help, they were willing to lend out a hand at a time where I really needed it. This period of my life and experiencing other people’s kindness and compassion has not only inspired me so deeply, but it has also moved me into wanting to do something more myself.

Like I have said before, when the time is right, I want to see about doing something that could be in service of others. That is what being compassionate is all about. How can we be of service and to help make other people’s lives better. So that is what I will be looking into as time passes.

It’s Time to Embrace the Next Phase of My Life

I believe that for each of us, there will always be a different phase/stage in our lives. In some ways, I had wished that the second stage of my life could’ve happened sooner, but that is not usually how life works. We don’t get to really choose when or how certain things will turn out. Sure, we can do everything humanly possible to prepare ourselves. But we must also be ready that life can sometimes throw us a curveball. And then it is our job to respond and adjust accordingly.

For me, that is what it’s been like. I’ve had a really terrible start to my first half, and then towards the end of the first half, I experienced a few breakthroughs, and then I fumbled the ball towards the end of the second half. To me, my half-time break will be over soon. When my new full-time job begins on June 10, that would be the official start of my second half. And now, I’m going to adjust my tactics and approach. I am determined not to make the same mistakes of the first half. I know that when this half is over, I won’t be able to get another repeat.

No matter what, I am here to share that I am finally ready to embrace this next phase of my life.