Letting go of life’s to-do list
When I was 12 and at the end of a “mutual understanding” that barely even began, I was nowhere near sad. I just thought to myself, “Surely by 16, by Junior year, I’d have a boyfriend to take me to prom.”
And while that wasn’t true, that was my earliest memory of making myself life to-do lists and setting deadlines for them.
Four years later, prom season finally came, and while I had no boyfriend, I was sensing some interest from a guy from another school.
While he was nice and I enjoyed hanging out with him, the spark wasn’t there. I asked him to prom, and after my mom met him when he picked me up, my mom told me in private, “No boyfriend muna, just wait until college.” And so I was convinced college would be the time for my love life to shine.
But that wasn’t the case either.
I never really thought much of all these timings again until I was working my first job straight out of college. I’d found my footing in the company and was getting used to the nine-to-five grind, going with the flow as I waited to see where my career could take me. For the most part, I liked what I was doing and the team I was working with.
But the fresh graduate in me didn’t know any better. I was under the perception that saying “yes” to whatever my bosses asked of me would help me get ahead, even if it meant role-hopping too often, without ever getting a real chance to hone what I came into the company for.
Two years into my first job, my then-manager told me, ‘Your only Key Performance Indicator is to be happy.’
In 2019, after missing out on several rounds of biannual promotions—and for contradictory reasons from one round to the next—I became unmotivated and impatient. Even my manager seemed to be on my side and empathized with my confusion and frustration.
Alongside all this, I was living on secondhand kilig from a close colleague who had just gotten into a relationship with another friend from work. He told me how he’d worked up the courage to ask her out on a first date, and then again for another, and many more until they officially got together. He told himself, by that year, he’d wanted a girlfriend. They’ve been together since then.
I looked to my manager and said, “Well, maybe that’s where I can win in life. If not at this job, I’ll need Key Performance Indicators for my love life instead.” Half in jest and maybe actually fully meaning it, she said, “Your only KPI (key performance indicator) is to be happy.”
While it’s been six years since then, I still think about what she said more often than I realized, particularly within the last two years. My initial plan to study abroad in 2020 got derailed by COVID. While 2023 saw an opening up of the world and a reopening of opportunities for me, it also came with an opening of challenges.
Towards the end of my coursework, I struggled with rejection after rejection for work placement in London. After over 200 applications, I felt my luck had finally come when I landed an opportunity that brought together my desire to learn strategy and my passion for food.
While I enjoyed my job, the uneasiness of converting into a full-time role lingered.
I won’t dwell on the ups and downs that went on with that, but long story short, I landed the role I worked towards in the company that dared to take a chance on me. A very welcome bonus came alongside a stable job: a love that I think can last a lifetime.
At the beginning of this year, I looked back at what 2024 was and how far I’d come. Wrapping up my Master’s thesis and finding a job that would keep me beyond a work placement were my priorities—admittedly not to fulfill a lifelong dream of living and working abroad (I honestly never really thought about this possibility), but rather out of necessity.
It wasn’t really a matter of “by the year 2020-something, I hope to find a job abroad,” but more of a “I need to find a job before my visa expires.” It’s only a very welcome bonus that my love life flourished in that time, too.
How things differed this time around was that my subconscious default was to just trust the process. As cliché as that sounds, I was too preoccupied with living life, giving my best when and where I could, and unknowingly making small steps towards big milestones.
I won’t discredit my efforts and say I let time take its course, or that all of these happened when I least expected them to. I know the work I’d put into both those facets of my life, and I knew they were bound to happen sooner rather than later. It’s just a lovely coincidence to see them come into fruition so close to each other.
As daunting as that period of uncertainty was, I look back at last year with so much pride in myself: in knowing what measures (both big and small!) I took to get to where I am, but more so in letting things naturally unfold to where they are now—no hard deadlines to achieve things by and no feeling demotivated when I wasn’t close to where I wanted to be.
Naturally, there are still times I find myself thinking I’m not where I envisioned myself to be all those years ago. But this year, as I enter a new decade, I’m slowly learning to be more patient with myself: to be okay with not jampacking my weekends with plans; to allow myself to be a complete beginner at something through the occasional creative workshop; and to be able to just sit still at a café or during a commute, without a book or my laptop in hand, just watching the world go by.
My KPI to be happy is not a one-time, big-time achievement. It’s something I’m always meant to live by, through both big life-changing and small, momentary ways.
