The Year She Was Born

I had an intern this year. She came from Singapore Polytechnic, and I was assigned to be her mentor. In the beginning, I did not think much of it. I asked her name, asked about her course, and moved on with the usual first-week routine.

Then we went for an onsite visit to a client. One of the clients looked at her and said she looked young, then asked her age. She said eighteen. I did not really process it. I know polytechnic students are usually between seventeen and nineteen, so the number did not register as anything unusual.

Then the client asked, out of curiosity, which year she was born.

She said 2008.

That was the moment it hit me. Not gradually, not gently. All at once.

The Math I Was Not Ready For

I was still a first year polytechnic student myself that year. I had not even started my working life. And now, without fully realizing how I got here, I am thirty five years old, with almost eight years of work behind me.

I could not sleep that night. I kept turning the same question over in my head: where did those eight years go?

I graduated from university and started working in 2017. Since then, I have changed jobs every two to three years, always telling myself I was moving forward, building something. But when I try to trace the years honestly, 2020 to 2023 seems to have collapsed into a single blur. And before I even noticed, it is already 2026.

Slow, Then Suddenly Fast

Looking back, the first phase of my life felt slow. School, exams, growing up. Every year had weight. Every year felt earned.

But ever since I started working, time has behaved differently. It moves faster, and I cannot always explain why. It is not that nothing happened in those years. It is that too many of the days looked the same. Wake up, clock in, clock out, sleep. Repeat. When each day carries the same shape as the one before it, the mind stops marking it as something separate. Instead of years, you are left with something closer to one long stretch of sameness.

That is what makes this feel so unsettling. Not that time passed, but that so much of it passed without leaving a trace I can point to.

A Mirror I Did Not Ask For

My intern did nothing wrong. She simply answered a question honestly. But in that answer, I saw exactly how much distance now sits between where she is starting and where I already am. It was not really about her age. It was about mine, and about how much of my own timeline I can no longer account for in detail.

It made me confront something I had been avoiding. If I keep living the same routine, without direction, without building anything I will remember, I am going to reach fifty, sixty, and look back at another stretch of years I cannot fully explain.

What I Do Not Want

I do not want to live with regret. If I continue to just wake up, clock in for work, clock out for work, sleep, and repeat, I will regret it thirty years later.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The "Freedom" You Think a Business Will Give You Doesn't Exist Yet

Every week, someone tells me they're done with their 9-to-5 and ready to "start a business for the freedom." I understand the impulse. I've felt it myself. But there's a costly misunderstanding hiding inside that sentence, and it's worth naming before anyone quits their job over it. The story people tell themselves The logic usually goes like this: my job controls my time, so removing the job will give my time back. It's a clean story. It puts the blame on the employer, not on the nature of work itself, and it makes the solution feel obvious, become your own boss, and freedom follows automatically. It's also, for almost everyone, wrong. What a paycheck actually buys you When you're employed, you trade a fixed number of hours for a fixed paycheck. It's not a great deal in a lot of ways, but it has one underrated feature: a boundary. Outside your working hours, the job , mostly, leaves you alone. Start a business and that boundary is...
Read more

Why Do I Want to Give My Sons a Lump Sum at 21 and 23 in 2046

Some people have asked why I'm planning to let my sons access their investment portfolios when they're 21 and 23. The answer is simple: it's their money, not mine. As parents, we won't be around forever. Our job isn't just to provide for our children while they're young, but also to prepare them to stand on their own two feet. Based on the AI simulation I shared previously, if everything goes reasonably well, each of them could have a portfolio worth around S$130,000 by the time they're adults. I already know what some people will say: "S$130,000 won't be worth much in 2046." They're not wrong. Inflation is real. But if we use Singapore's historical inflation rate as a guide, S$130,000 in 2046 could have purchasing power similar to about S$70,000 today . That's still a meaningful amount of money. Ask yourself this: if your parents had handed you S$70,000 when you turned 21, would it have changed the choices available to you? For ma...
Read more

Why I’m Betting on a Side Hustle Instead of Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Climbing the corporate ladder has long been the traditional path to financial security and career success. Work hard, impress your boss, secure promotions, and one day you will reach the top. For years, that was the story I believed in too. Yet over time, I realised the ladder was not as straightforward as it seemed. The higher you climb, the steeper the sacrifices. Long hours, more stress, office politics, and a sense that you are trading health and time for a title. That is why I made a deliberate choice. Instead of devoting all my energy to climbing higher in the corporate world, I am betting on a side hustle. For me, a side hustle is not just extra income. It represents freedom, flexibility, and a way to build something of my own while still maintaining stability from my full-time job. In this article, I will explain why I chose this path, what benefits I see in building a side hustle, the challenges that come with it, and how I plan to grow it without burning out. The Problem wi...
Read more