a gentle year
2024 was a gentle year. I think this is a good thing.
When I think back on the year past, I definitely had some real highlights. In January, I got to be on a panel for Best New Singaporean Short Stories Vol 6 in Kino, where I read an excerpt from my story and talked about my work, and if you told me last year that I’d get to do an author talk in Kino anytime this decade I would not have believed you. It still feels kinda unreal. In March, I had the butai trip of my dreams to Tokyo where I got to watch some amazing stage plays including one with my favourite actor. I spent a wonderful couple of weeks in May in London and Edinburgh with some dear friends, and chilled on the beach at Koh Samui in July with my family.
But I think 2024 has been about the little things too. I got to watch my nephews grow another year older, another year brighter and curiouser and more hellbent on spreading havoc and joy and laughter. My siblings and I spent a whole day in this last week of the December holidays playing board games together, and it’s genuinely one of my happiest memories of the year. I hiked, walked, watched movies and shows, ate lots of good food, and did loads of other fun things with friends. I reconnected with people I haven’t spoken to since before the pandemic. I read some great books and played some great games. My parents came home after a year in Australia. I worked slowly and steadily this year on revising the novel project, while also tinkering at some shorter pieces. I think I have a better relationship this year with my writing than I ever have before, despite—or because of—not submitting or publishing anything this year. I made a commitment to honour my time in the mornings to reflect, write and exercise. I’m in good health. I’m calm, I’m contented, I’m grateful.
At the start of the year, I decided my theme for 2024 would be Year of Balance. Over the year, I’ve come to rethink and reframe what balance means to me. I imagined myself carefully portioning out my time between all the things I want to do—read, write, game, watch butai and anime, spend time with loved ones, travel, exercise, the list goes ever on and on—and reaching a zenlike state of spreading my time evenly across it all. It took me till November to realise that balance, at least to me, doesn’t look like that at all. It’s more like water. Like flowing round obstacles instead of getting stopped by them, like being able to look at an ever-shifting life and tell myself, okay, today I might not do everything I wanted to but I’ll do a bit of this and a bit of that, and over time, trust that it will even out. Balance isn’t stasis. It’s staying present, and open, and finding a middle way through rather than being all-or-nothing.
I fly to Sydney tomorrow night to start off 2025. I’m really looking forward to a week of sunshine, coffee and nature, and to a year of continuing to grow in small but mighty ways.