2005: Chronicle
From year 2003-2005 were the dark ages of my soul. Everything I did, ventures embarked, project I led, etc, everything started to fail and failed damned badly. Year 2005 was the darkest of my entire life. I felt abandoned by God, rejected by society and forsaken by friends.
In 2003, I anticipated that years ahead may be a big disaster for me so I started to make provision for the upcoming tough years. The worst ever happened to me was my 6-year-old girlfriend left me. Ever since that happen, it seem like the whole world was against me. I lost focus in my business and lost big time. Kinships and friendships began to break up and by the beginning of 2005 I lost myself, I lost my health, I lost friendship and everything I had seem gone, disappeared, vaporised into thin air.
The provision I made was to take a year break in 2005 and happened to be in conjunction with my sabbatical plan, I planned 10 years ago.
In 2005, Now, I was alone but fearless as before. I braced up again, putting all the past behind and looking forward, I went for a year tour and declared 2005 my Sabbatical Year.
2005: Sabbatical
This is my resting year because it was the darkest year of my life. I thought doing nothing was the best thing I could do to keep myself alive. I did try to jumpstart some ventures during the year but the favour of God was not with me.
My original plan was to go Canada for my sabbatical break but then a year before my departure I decided to go China. After Chinese New Year, I took my passport and my baggage and travelled around neighbouring countries and finally retreated to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province of China.
In Guangzhou, the favour of God was not with me again and I moved from town to town and finally ended up in Zhuhai. Here I found peace and new friendship. I was happy and about to settle down, the wind of God changed and blew me to Chongqing province (an hour flight from Guangzhou airport or 30 hours of train ride).
2005: Reflection
I knew this year was the toughest year of my life, nevertheless I still set goals for it but simple and achievable.
The four goals were:
1. Go for my Sabbatical Break.
2. Complete writing the book I decided to write 4 years ago.
3. Restore my health by losing weight from 100kg to 75kg, restore my physical and mental fitness back to my peak state.
4. De-gadget my life.
Go for my Sabbatical Break. Yes I had accomplished it. Leaving all behind, breaking away from support system and leaving your comfort zone were not easy tasks. It was a state of mind, an emotionless calm mind. To some, I might be an irresponsible person running away from responsibilities. To others, seem to be a cool thing to do.
As for me, taking this break, it took me one year to decide and this decision did not come easy. I had to struggle within myself to unify my heart, my mind, soul and strength as one. The fruit of the decision was not the enjoyment of my one year holiday. It was to destroy the “soulish ties” and rekindle the “passion of life” in me. Do not be bothered if you do not understand, I am talking theology.
The book… Sad to say I did not complete or near completion. At least I started to pen now.
Yes! Yes! Yes! From 100kg to 75kg, what an achievement! It took me almost three years to get back in shape. Huh! What was the secret recipe? Go vegetarian, that was my secret. I was not a die-hard vegetarian. Had vegetable meals as possible as you can and avoid meat if you can. Another secret was to eat enough and not eat full.
I was not physically fit as before but I am much stronger now. Five years ago, I injured my back and was bed-ridden for ten days. It took me till now to be able to walk upright. As a semi-pro sportsman since childhood, my muscles started to ache as my age was catching up.
Two years ago my mind started to weaken and I lost the will to live. My mind was so weak that I even gave up driving because I almost had accident almost everyday. My mental health resilient from the break. I was thinking again and thinking of things that were beyond comprehension.
I was proud to say that I had achieved the fitness level that I wanted to attained. In fact I was more acute that before. I was ready to get myself into peak state again.
As a techno geek, I was always the guy that had the latest gadgets, hi-tech devices, etc at hand. Always an early adopter of technology. In 2004, I made a decision to de-gadget myself, reducing my dependency on devices by 2005. It was tough to change my habitual lifestyle but I finally made it. From four mobile phones reduce to one (but now back to two). Remember schedules than depend on Pocket Outlook reminder alarm but I did miss Avantgo and reading ebook on my IPAQ. I was glad to say my stay in China had let me break away from all this hi-tech toys and left it all back in Singapore. Finally I also free myself from the “upgrade” curse, whatever new in the market, upgrade, upgrade upgrade. Switching to Mac platform helped break the curse.
Although it was a lousy year for me, I was satisfied with my achievement.
Thank you God for your grace and mercy.
