My birthday came a few days ago. On the day’s morning, I received a few good wishes from my close ones, and it felt pretty great. A not-so-fancy birthday party was thrown by them also made me feel happy.

One part of me thought that a birthday is just another day, while another part wanted to write something which makes the day more special. The latter part won, and I guess I am going to write about some discoveries that I had for the year (only on writing this that I realize every year I have tons of discoveries, and it is a good idea to write about them to look back).

I feel like the main theme of the year’s discovery is on what I want for my self, and my romantic relationship, and my career.

On what I want for my self, I guess I have to tell the context on how I found my childhood trauma—childhood emotional neglect, or CEN—first. At first, I stumbled upon BoJack Horseman (really great show by the way), and found myself relating to Judah, who in on the spectrum (or has ASD, autistic spectrum disorder). Relating to ASD, I found that I might have “alexithymia”. It is a term in Psychiatry for “the inability to recognize or describe one’s own emotions”. CEN and the trait helped me explaining a large part of my behaviors, and ultimately led me to some soul searching for what I actually want.

  • As an action, it is create.
  • As a noun, it is creation.
  • As a state of living, it is being creative.

I enjoy making things from scratch, whether it is in writing or in coding or in solving a mathematics puzzle by myself. I am pleased in seeing my creations work.

About what I want from my romantic relationship, it can be coined in two terms:

  • Connection: connection is the sharing of common values. I assume that different people have different specific words when they try to explain what is connection for them. For me, the term contains knowledge and openness.

  • Safeness: my definition of safeness is kind of synonymous to trust or accountability, but I guess the usage is to emphasize the feeling that I want to have when I am next to the person.

Earlier in my career, I thought of money and growth as the most important things, but only recently that came up with sustainability, or how long can I stay at the place. I switched job a few times, and had enough my share of interviewing. I felt… tired about the process and wanted to stay at one place longer to develop my technical depth.

I think money and growth can be a big part of sustainability. I also can think of work-life balance that constitute a great factor. However, let us just use sustainability, money, and growth.

Previously, the equation is:

job =
    0.5 * money +
    0.5 * growth

Now my equation is:

job =
    0.4 * sustainability +
    0.3 * money +
    0.3 * growth

In the end, despite all this clarification, I still take by heart this quote:

Everybody has plans until they get punched in the face.

One part of me feels that there is an explanation for everything. Another says that life happens purely by chance. What we do is play the cards we are dealt. We tell the story after everything is done by trying to make sense of the random events. For me right now, it is 50 50. I strive to explain everything, but I am going to accept the randomness.

See you next year!