by ambrose yong

I think I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should name this blog? Website? Portfolio? I am not even sure what I can even term this medium to be. To be fair, it took me ages to even pick out a website building platform that I wanted to start from before I even got to the naming part. I even pulled up the good ol’ ChatGPT to help me ideate some names for this website. Arbitrarily, I settled on ‘Ambrose’s Glimpse’ as I figured this would probably be a little peek into my life through the lens of my writings. This little naming fiasco probably summed up what life has been recently, an endless cycle of indecisiveness and fickle mindedness.

In the limbo stage of life that is pre-college and post-National Service, I tried to be like every good young adult trying to survive in this economy and succumbed to the vicious cycle of ‘internship inflation’. For the past half a year, I drowned myself in occupying myself, gaining legitimate real-world experience that would better position me for a job post-graduation. Ain’t that absolutely bat-shit bonkers that I have not even matriculated into college, yet I am being forced to think about graduation years later? I think my recent spate of indecision and inertia to starting things is just a mere repercussion and reflection of the era that us, 21 year olds have to navigate in this day and age.

Well, I wanted to write (rant) about some of my symptoms and realities in a short list for today’s blog but be warned, I am no doctor so I can only describe my own symptoms! (And treatments to these symptoms are very much still a work in progress, literally)

Symptom #1: Feeling successful? (tagged along with a bunch of extras)

From David Goggins alpha males to internship grinders, there has been a rapid rise in what we claim to be models of success. I feel a little ashamed to say that I too have fallen prey to oscillating between various success gurus that preach what success looks like. Yet underlying the wide spectrum, a central message stands. That there is no room for anything else apart from success — and in order to do so, I have to be better than everyone else no matter what it costs. Such a harrowing message to be shoved down my throat.

The other day I was looking back at the work that I have undertaken till this point of my life: working retail, interning at a developmental centre, tutoring, (involuntarily) working in the military and interning at a special education school. I am stepping into college with (arguably) quite a decent amount of work experience under my belt and yet I feel so behind the curve. Sometimes, when I look at my peers, I get a very twisted sense of satisfaction when I realise that I may be ahead of them in terms of work experience. Yet, when I start doomscrolling, I see “Ivy League applicant stats and extracurriculars” and get instant anxiety. Don’t even get me started on Linkedin cause I might literally throw a fit speaking about it. This ridiculous dichotomy of feeling successful yet also feeling behind the curve when I compare with others on social media is a widespread feeling amongst many of my peers. Success as a concept has now completely been changed to our generation.

Gone are the days where it can exist as an independent feeling, where I can feel successful without the crushing anxiety tagging along right behind it, shouting at me that I have to do and strive more.

Symptom #2: Holding a hobby isn’t what it was previously

A list of the crazy things that I have heard recently: I need to ‘maximise potential’, attempt to monetise even my hobbies, find my passion project that is impressive enough to be presented on my CV. To be completely honest, it is quite ironic that I am writing about this topic when this entire blog may have stemmed from that same desire to build a ‘passion project’. Well, the underlying message in all this craziness is quite clear — hobbies are no longer just hobbies. In fact, hobbies can no longer stay hobbies. And the conceptualisation of that has resulted in me not being able to hold a hobby in ages.

The pragmatic approach that many have prescribed about hobbies have resulted in the joy in having hobbies taken away. Am I fully maximising my time wisely by picking up this hobby? Or am I falling behind the crowd by wasting time by learning how to crotchet? When I reflect upon the various hobbies that I have held in the past few years, I realised that many have been dropped because I realised that I was no longer passionate about them and had to find a more productive ‘alternative’ that would be useful as a passion project eventually. The result: the inability to hold a hobby for longer than a few months and being unable to come up with a satisfactory answer for ‘What do you do in your free time?’ during orientation ice breakers. With everyone trying to maximise everything, to the point that even our hobbies are untouched by this mindset, can we even consider spending time on our hobbies as leisure?

I think the other way I look at it would be that hobbies have become (for lack of a better word) gentrified. With the rise of social media (well technically this rise has been present throughout my entire lifespan on Earth), it has resulted in many sharing their interests online more and more. Yet, some hobbies are placed on a higher pedestal than others, with some being touted as more respectable. Think someone who does LeetCode cause he loves coding versus someone who enjoys collecting Pop Mart. Many have fallen prey to abandoning their hobbies or even picking up hobbies due to public perception. In this loud ass generation that preaches diversity and acceptance of others, we have somehow managed to condensed hobbies to joining Hyrax, collecting Labubus and coding bootcamps. In an attempt to be liked by others, many conform to ‘mainstream’ hobbies (think, pickle ball). This gentrification of hobbies havs taken away the childlike joy we once had when we realised that we enjoyed doing something.

How screwed up did we get that even the definition of hobbies changed?

Symptom #3: Going for countless consultations (especially when taking the road off the beaten path)

In my introduction, I mentioned consulting the magic 8 ball of our generation, ChatGPT for some help regarding the titling of this website. I realised increasingly that I have been consulting in everyone and everything about my life decisions and have become super evaluative in all that I do. Maybe our education system has just become so successful that I am now super skilled in SWOT analysis or setting SMART goals. We have turned to these frameworks to make decisions, rooted in logic and reason in an age that punishes those that attempts to veer away from conventional pathways to success. Amidst my peers, when we discuss what we intend to major in, the one that often leads to the most dead conversations tend to be the kids from Computer Science.

Here is a typical conversation with a CompSci kid (referenced from my brain):

Me: Oh, what do you plan to study in uni?

CS Kid: Comp Science

Me: Wow, you smart… SO why CS? Are you planning to get into a big tech job next time?

CS Kid: Yeah. And earn a lot of money. And also because I don’t know what to study and everyone is studying CS.

Me: Nice…

Compared to a conversation I would have when questioned about my major:

Random Person: Oh, what do you plan to study in uni?

Me: I intend to major in Psychology and Linguistics!

Random Person: Woah, Linguistics? What is that, like Literature?

Me: *Recites my prepared and rehearsed speech about why I want to study this and why it is worth it for me*

And so on and so forth.

As humans, it is understandable that we crave approval from others and stability. After all, life is already so turbulent. Yet, when somehow your interests just does not align with what the tailwinds of the world are blowing towards in the moment, you end up a ball of anxiety and uncertainty. Through it all, I have consulted countless people to give me assurance that the path I am walking is logical in fear that I may fall further behind if this should fail. This has resulted in so much preemptive anxiety in my life as I spend countless hours worrying about the future. And honestly, wasting many hours trying to reassure myself that my interests become muddled in the process. Maybe it is time to reel in the number of people I confide in and think for myself. Self-assurance.

Well, I just realised how heavy of a entry blog post this is, but I guess this is a space where it is meant to reflect my inner thoughts, so this must be on my mind quite a lot these days. As mentioned, I don’t have the solutions to these things I observe in myself and maybe this is just an outlet to vent my frustrations about the world as it is today. As dreary and hopeless the future may seem, I in fact am an optimist.

This blog actually encompasses my optimism. That despite complaining about the changing definitions of success and the downfall of hobbies, I have hope that this blog will be both of those things. A success in rekindling my long-lost interest in writing. And a source of self reassuring that I am indeed all right.

To the start of (hopefully) something that I can be proud of.