Keep Walking On

The idea of traveling overseas for a long time has always been on my mind. I was 21 when I thought that I had to do this one day, but it was also the time when I graduated from university and started my first job as a reporter. Then I spent the next 5 to 6 years working too hard, changing jobs, climbing up the ladder… thinking that I had to save “enough” money for my journey and wait for the “ideal” moment to set off – when there’re actually no such things as “enough” and “ideal”…

So looking back to all those years, I was always walking on the “right” path – the marked and safe one; the one that makes sense, the one that makes everyone happy. I followed what the standard path of a “successful” life should look like, studied really hard and finally got the ticket to university. I studied Journalism at a renowned School of Communication in town, which only admitted 10 people out of hundreds and thousands of candidates. I was proud of myself. My parents were happy. I pictured a bright future ahead.

But that was when reality knocked on the door – like many other grass roots families, mine also didn’t have the money to pay for the university school fees. Then there comes the student loan – which means once you graduated you’re immediately in debt (bright future ahead!) – spending the next 5 to 10 years repaying the money to the government, and which means – you’re not going anywhere until you’re loan-free.

That’s why I got my first job offer one month before graduation, and started to work right after I stepped out of the gate of the university. No break. No graduation vacation. That also explained why my urge to travel, to step outside has always been so strong. Because I’ve never deviated from “the path”. I’m always doing the RIGHT thing.

Once you get a job, you make money – you feel secure and comfortable. Even though you’re working more than 12 hours a day, 7 days a week (no joke, that’s my real experience) – you think there’s nothing wrong because there’s nothing worse than losing your job and salary and feeling insecure. Because you’re not only working to pay your own bills, but you also have your family responsibilities* and others’ expectations to live up to. You work as hard as you could because you believe everything will pay off – like it always would.

(*It’s common in Chinese culture that we give a monthly housekeeping money to our parents once we have the ability to earn money, as a gesture of repaying their favour and sacrifice. And for grass roots families like mine, it’s not only a filial duty but more a necessity. Sadly enough, with this housekeeping money and the government loans that I had to repay, I hardly had any money left as savings.)

I always said to myself: I’m going to quit my job and travel one day – the day when I have saved enough money. But what is “enough”? Desire for money can be endless, you’ll never get enough. If you don’t set a goal, or a time frame for yourself, and really work on it – it’s very likely that you will end up doing nothing but staying the same, making more money until it’s “enough”, and waiting for the “ideal” moment to come. But the ideal moment doesn’t come to you, you have to make it happen.

I left my reporter job a year later and started to work as a PR in the film industry for the next 5 years. I loved my job. I was happy and proud of what I did. But at some point I started to feel that things were going all wrong. I felt like it’s squeezing the soul out of me. No matter how much I loved movie, no matter how passionate I was, I started to ask myself – What am I doing?

Life has lost its savour. I didn’t have a life at all. I worked so hard to fulfil someone else’s dreams because their dreams were huge and important. I started to put everything about myself to the least priority. And then I “evolved” to a point that I thought these bullshits actually made perfect sense.

I think this is a very common problem – we are not happy with what we’re doing, we complain a lot, we go to work every day like a walking-dead – but we stay put as if we don’t have other choices. And then we learn to accept things as how they are, even if they’re ridiculously unreasonable. We don’t think. We don’t ask. We don’t reflect. We don’t want to feel so that nothing could hurt.

I knew that I had to rescue myself from this vicious circle. I started to make plans and some serious calculation to save up in order to quit my job without finding a new one, but at the same time still being able to support my family. That’s a long way to go. But I had to burn some bridges, because what I needed was a break. I had to stop in order to see and think clearly what’s the next step to take. And I had to live the life which I’ve always imagined.

And so at the age of 28, I finally decided to quit the routine and started a rather insecure life as a freelancer so that I can travel. Since then, I have had more personal time and space to explore other possibilities and find out what I really want, or what I’m meant to do. I took a gap year to travel and work abroad in Australia, followed by many more journey to different parts of the world, fulfilling my dream of experiencing life outside of the tiny, crowded and workaholic city of Hong Kong.

I started to step away from the marked path and take the side track. I’m not sure where this little side track would lead to, but I’m pretty sure the marked path, although safe and secure, is not going to lead me to where I want to be, and what I want to become.

So this is my story! What’s yours? I’m always interested in people’s stories before they set off their journey – because for some people, that could be a difficult decision to make. We have to go through a lot of struggles and make sacrifices before we could go chase for our dreams and happiness. But it’s also for this reason, we treasure more about our journey because not only does it take a touch of madness to take that first step, it also takes so much time and patience and courage for us to finally make this happen…

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