I turned 35 in December, officially mid-way through my thirties.

I’m particularly introspective in this decade because it feels like a lot of time has passed, but I’ve seemingly accomplished very little. No thanks to COVID, a large chunk of my early thirties are barely memorable. I mostly remembered being super stressed out with work, 2021 basically never happened, feeling like I was just existing and missed out the opportunity to get ahead in life sooner than later.

I was working at a global media company during the COVID years, and was being paid handsomely for the work I was doing. It isn’t much to be honest, but it was an honestly stupid amount of money that I never imagined I would be able to earn. I considered myself really lucky.

At the beginning, the culture at the workplace was fantastic. My team was amazing and everyone worked well together. I was working on challenging problems and I really excelled at what I do. However, with the world coming out of COVID, stock prices went falling, and it wasn’t long after that the company started making serious cuts and changes across the organisation. Not soon after, toxicity began invading the company culture. That’s when work started becoming dreadful, uninspiring, political and just a drag. The last straw was finding out that I was severely underpaid when I asked a new co-worker how much they were being offered for the same role I was in in the last 3 years. There and then was when I decided to fuck all the things I’ve been told to care about growing up as an adult — career progression, promotions, high compensation, working hard, chasing shit I don’t even care about etc. There’s no way in hell I will continue to exchange my limited time on Earth and my soul to greedy mega corporations who don’t give a fuck about their employees.

If you can’t tell, my mental health was seriously fucked up then. My self-esteem and confidence was at an all-time low and I just needed to get away. Around the same time, my partner and I talked about moving away to another country. The original plan was for me to return to school and do a Masters programme, and my partner would find full-time work in the same city. It was 2022, and if you could remember, was the year of mass resignation cause a lot of people were seriously fatigued from COVID and were also all going back to school! I failed to make the programme, however, my partner got a job offer and the company was willing to relocate us for his new job. We decided yes, let’s fucking go.

Our settlement into the new country was far from straightforward to say the least. I think it warrants its own post. With all that has happened in the the last two years, I can safely say that it more than compensating the “lack of action” during the COVID years. I definitely have a lot of personal growth, especially through personal adversity and difficult circumstances. I’m truly a changed person, although still fundamentally the same person as before, but I probably give less fucks about certain things than before.

Going back to the topic of turning 35, my goal for the remaining time of my thirties and in the next decade is to make more happy memories. Moving to this new country, while initially plagued with hardship and uncertainty, I want to change that narrative and how I feel about living here. I don’t want to look back and feel like I/we didn’t enjoy our time because we were focusing on the bad things, and didn’t take the opportunity to enjoy the things that the city and country had to offer us.

Here’s to creating memories for the rest of my thirties!