It's been a long while

 It's been a long while since I last wrote.
Partly just because I've not kept up with the habit of writing here--or anywhere, for that matter.
Partly, this may be just the fatigue of life. Fatigue in the sense of life having become a routine, a repetitive routine of sleep, work, sleep, work.

Certainly this year has felt like a write-off. 

2020. The year of the pandemic, the year of the coronavirus that began in China (let the record stand that it began in China, despite all attempts by the CCP to whitewash and rewrite history) and spread around the world, and that has to date infected close to 72 million, taken 1.6m lives, and devastated the entire world. Closed businesses, locked down economies and societies, broken and separated families. 2020 will be marked and remembered as the year of cruel separation, social distancing, and the largest peacetime humanitarian tragedy since perhaps the 1918 Spanish Flu. 

Much of the year just flew by. What did this year mean? It was just a routine of work from home (WFH), anxieties going out (or anywhere at all), and keeping a distance from people. Daily reports of case numbers are the norm, masks have become the norm, as have dry hands from the frequent santising and handwashing...

Thankfully, I am alright. Healthy, albeit a bit mentally distraught and frazzled. It's been a long, exhausting year--for everyone-- even though it somehow also has been a frightening quick year that just went by due to "lockdowns" that just dragged on and on. The only place that has escaped this all is Taiwan, which has miraculously withstood all this by proactively taken action and preparing before anyone else. Life there is "normal", unlike the rest of the world, where societies and economies have been broken by the pandemic.

And now, at the end of a long, exhausting year, I feel lost.
At 2.24am  just two weeks before Christmas, I feel lost and thoughts wracking my brain, causing restlessness. In the room next door, my beautiful J.bf sleeping. We have been together now for over a year, and what a year it has been. With him, I have experienced a semblance of normalcy, affection, and care that I have not experienced before...

But that attachment is part of the "problem".
For the past two years, I have been flirting with the idea of quitting my current job in academia and going into the aviation industrym, particularly at a major airline. It would be a major change. It would potentially be life-changing, and a huge leap into the unknown. For the past decade or so, I feel like I have just coasted--and been lucky to have just drifted on top of the wave that has taken me to far away places, allowed me to experience so many opportunities and met great people that I could not have dreamt of.

BUT part of me somehow still felt like "there must be something more...". Out there. Something seems to be missing. 

Of course, people are discontent, constantly. There is no more, no less. But life seems always to be unsatisfactory and there always appears to be something more alluring on the other side. 

Now that feeling is back.
Last May, I went on an excursion to visit the place that may have been a place I could work. I was dragged unexpectedly into an interview, and they seemed very keen. But then for a long time, there was no news at all. When news came, end of 2019, it was also coinciding with another interview I had hoped to get to work in industr (which I did not get. And then the pandemic hit). That opportunity at the airline just fizzled.

Until yesterday. My friend who works at the airline reached out and said they are interested in hiring, and there is an opportunity.

I am excited by the prospect. By the attraction of a new beginning, a new experience, a new era in my life--however long that may turn out to be, should I take that path that seems to be opening up.

But then what am I leaving behind? Who am I leaving behind?
This comfortable, cosy life that I have come to settle into, that, though at times feels tiresome and mundane, has been my life since pretty much the passing of mum in 2012. It is not almost 2021.

What am I going to face? Am I going to exhaust myself?

So many unknowns, so many uncertainties.

And most difficult of all, is the pain of having to tell my bf that I may be leaving.
It could all happen very quickly, very dramatically.

Tonight, while we cuddled and watched a movie , I at moments felt unease.
That may have translated into a bloated stomach and just feeling nauseated.
At moments, I kissed his cheeks, I hugged him, closed my eyes. He didnt know it, but I was silenctly wishing this moment together would last forever. I was feeling anxious and afraid to let this all go, and go blindly in the direction of pursuing something that I dont even know would be worth anything, would actually amount to anything. To be fair, there was in the background of a possibility of going to study in Australia, finally pursuing a Phd. That would have also been a turning point, and also meant I need to let go. And he was fine with that.

He has always been so accepting and encouraing, and said kindly that we will deal with things when we  come to that moment... That is a special someone that is hard, so very hard to let go of.

Back to the opportunity... It's not sure yet whether anything will come of it. But this is the second time that they have come to me and expressed interest. The salary is a bit better, and the greatest benefit would be taking a leap into the airline industry, something that I have longed for some time.
But I am also afraid. Afraid of the cut-throat nature of that corporate world. Afraid of potentially just losing a work-life balance, and just becoming a drone. Afraid of losing my creativity, my individuality. Afraid of the great unknown and what will happen next month, next year, next 5 yrs.

 I'm genuinely afraid and unsure what I must/should do.

Part of me is afraid of the pain of loss, of letting go. Letting go of such a wonderful someone, of letting go of my usual comfort and being in my comfort zone for so long.
But part of me is also excited by the new prospects of a new challenge, of a new life, of a change. I'm almost 37, and this is the time, if there is anytime, the slightly-past-prime period when I can still experiment, experience and explore what it is that drives me.

I simply just don't know...

But such is life.

(Perhaps the movie of tonight is telling. Let them all Talk, it was called. A star cast, about old friends reconnecting and reconcilling after over 3 decades, of lost time, of misunderstandings, of regret.)