The Last Decade Throwback

As we all know, 2020 has been just about the most chaotic year so far. I hope everyone is staying healthy and keeping their distance from each other in this difficult time.

To fill this big hole of no social life (well, I don't really have an existing social life before all this social distancing started anyway) and to indulge on my study procrastination, maybe now is the time to look back on the last decade, remembering happier times...

2010
By January, I had been living in a new country for about 6 months. I think around this time I had definitely made myself a new best friend. I am very grateful to Thasya and Meita for keeping me sane and help me settle in a new school and a new country. I have made some friends by this time and started to enjoy my time a little bit more. I still found everything to be difficult, away from my friends that I grew up with and from my loved ones, but I felt immensely grateful for sure. I learnt to become a lot more independent and I definitely enjoyed that as a teenager.

2011
I started feeling more and more at home in the new country. I liked my school and the friends that I made. I got better at communicating in English, although probably still not feeling that confident about it all. I discovered new hobbies with my friends, I explored more of the country that I live in, went and do a lot of activities than the previous. I feel like I was closer to my old self, or at least a version of my older self that I thought I liked. I still played piano and it was all groovy.

2012
I continued to feel more comfortable with my surroundings. I felt like home. I also had a lot of feelings around this time because this was the year I graduated high school. I had to figure out where I could go for university, what I wanted to study, what grades I have to get to get there, and so on and so forth. It wasn't exactly "stressful", but there were a lot of big decisions to make. A lot of my friends seemed a lot more settled with their choices and I almost felt like I didn't really have any ground to land on. Funnily enough, if I remember correctly, I wasn't too bothered about that. I had my first heartbreak and lost myself a little too. In retrospect, I took that one badly.

2013
Big changes round 2 happened. I moved country, started university, lived in a college with 800+ other people. I felt like a tiny fish in a big aquarium filled with sharks and whales. My self confident wasn't at its highest as I still felt pretty sad. I did make the effort to go to all my classes and put effort in my studies. I was cast in a musical, which was a dream come true. I was learning to interact with people with different culture while still maintaining friendship with all my high school friends who are scattered around the world. I made friends that I still talk to regularly today and definitely tried to enjoy my first year of solitude and being away from home for real.

2014
This year was a blur. I remembered I wasn't sure about what I was studying, I wasn't sure if I liked it, I wasn't sure if I enjoyed the whole thing, really. I didn't put as much effort in my studies, definitely started skipping lectures (don't worry, I listened to them at home). Productivity just went out the window, my room was always in a constant mess. I still made the effort to go out, socialise, see my friends, join uni clubs and all that jazz to make myself feel better. It definitely was not bad, but I so wished I would have done things differently. I got my first part-time hospitality job as well. 

2015
I hung out more with friends but definitely abandoned my hobbies around this time. I worked part-time while studying. I tried putting a lot more effort in my study because *final year* and *graduation*. There wasn't really any plan on what I wanted to do after university so I definitely felt a little anxious just all throughout the year.

2016
In a bold move with the support of my family, I decided to stay and try out my luck in the city I had been living in for about 3 years at the time. I moved out of my college, the same room that I have lived in for the past three years, to a lovely home with Kirrilly and Amy, 2 of the loveliest house mates I will ever have in my life. Home life was thriving as I really loved living with these two. Some of my closest friends were still at uni so I didn't miss out on socialising around this time. There was a period of about 9 months of constant job searching, going to some interviews, getting rejected heaps of time, which was stressful. However, having a lovely home life and friends around you, also getting into running to forget your anxious mind, really helped me get through. I finally got my first job at this great local law firm (not doing law things) and met my work-wife (a.k.a. my manager) Lucrezia. Towards the end of the year I met +1, which had a rocky start to say the least.

2017
Settled in to my job a lot more, really enjoying that 'young professional' life. I still worked part-time hospo around this time so that was interesting. I decided to continue my study as well, but realised I missed some things at uni so I had to take some foundation course, which wasn't too bad. I was loving life a bit more, enjoying my company, my friends, and whatever came my way around this time. I also did a charity bike ride event called MS Sydney to the Gong, it was a wet 58km bike ride from somewhere in NSW down to Wollongong. It was one of the highlights of the year and I promised myself I would come back.

2018
I moved out of my first house-share to a city apartment with Sof, which is such a lucky steal. I started the CPA program, passed my first module but afterwards felt unsure about it. I stopped working hospitality part-time because I was tired all the time. I enjoyed my job a lot more and knew what I was doing more than 10% of the time so it made me feel good. I went to New Zealand, which was beautiful. My company decided to move back due to unforeseen circumstances so it was also a really sad time. Not too long after that, I decided that I would prefer to do the CA program, which I unfortunately couldn't officially start unless I worked in a public firm. I fortunately got a graduate position (I know, kinda late 3 years after I graduated) but unfortunately had to moved away from the law firm. I also enrolled in 3 foundation courses that I needed to have as prerequisites to start the program all at the same term (3 months long, because I was a young dumb keen girl)

2019
Tried to settle in to the new job, tried studying for these foundation courses and managed to passed them all (very close calls on some). I actually swapped one of the exam schedule in my head; I ended up going to the Audit exam without preparation because I spent the whole weekend preparing for the Tax exam which was not until 2 days after the Audit exam. It was chaotic. I hung out with my friends a lot more too and had many regular very long Skype calls. I started my CA program and passed my first 2 modules. I went home after two years and spent some quality time with my family.

Now we go on to the new decade... I just hope no one is actually cancelling 2020. Maybe it would be like one of those rom-com where it was tragic in the beginning and ends in an uplifting beautiful way. You never know, a girl can hope...