OWEN GRAY

I went to the bank today to apply for my student loan. Looking at the interest accrual gave me some slight anxiety, which I slept off in the afternoon. In four months, I will be in Canada for at least the next four years. The only thing that makes me nervous is the climate. I don't quite like the cold, and yet, in humid, hot Singapore, there is never a time that I'm not perspiring, so perhaps I will adapt quite well to the cold. I don't know if it's been brought on by the pandemic and/or quarantine, but in the past two months, I have had several requests seeking advice on therapy and a therapist for the first time. Most of the people who approached me seem to be settling in quite well with their therapist. I have also been speaking about therapy burnout or hangovers, which is when you are overwhelmed by being too in touch with your feelings after a long while of disconnection. I told them that I've definitely made excuses and flaked instead of following up on some therapy sessions when I refused to deal with my sexuality, etc. I think I'm bisexual at the very least, but I'll shelve the thought until I'm in Canada. My mother would definitely invalidate my sexuality, given she had a fit at my pink hair. In Singapore, it's still a taboo to mention therapy, much more than it is in the places I engage most in social media, like LA or NY. I don't think it's necessary to go to therapy, but it can expedite a lot of solutions to internal conflicts. We've been asked to write weekly reflection journals for work at Lululemon. I'm always torn between writing real reflections, that contain my straight-outta-whack thoughts that come out of therapy or during work calls, and writing to please, because it is after all a work endeavour. Mental health and professionalism are things I try to keep separate, which I think is quite a pity. I turn 30 in exactly a week, and I'm still waiting for the day my mom says I'm a princess or something, and I've passed all my tests, and she bestows me with $10 000, no strings attached, just for me to study. You know what I hate most? I hate LinkedIn's slogan, which keeps being shown with every email to me. It says: it's not what you know, it's who you know. That's like, the most morally repulsive slogan??? There are people who know a gazillion things who may never get anywhere if they don't make the right connections, and then there are people who keep climbing and climbing, because they know the right people, who have the right kind of money. Do you know how many emails I have sent out, how much time I've put in trying to find CEOs' and writers' emails on RocketReach, trying to make connections, so I get into some kind of money???? You ain't got no clue!!!!