Year-End Resolution: Life is Short

Year 2025 Christmas Orchard Road

Another year gone. So what have I learnt?

Life is short. Very short. About 50 years only.

When I was young, I didn’t really feel it. Only when the limits of mortality start to show, then I realise how short life actually is. Stairs that I used to climb two steps at a time, now I need to hold the handrail. The fine details on miniature models that I could see clearly before are now blurred. The body is deteriorating, and time is running out.

How many things have I not done yet? Many. Too many. So many things I still want to do, and I keep wondering how much time I still have to do them.

Time flies, and here I am at the end of another year.

It has been 16 months since I exited the workforce, and I never looked back. Some people expected me to change physically—especially the stomach. LOL. But nothing changed. Some think that now I am very free, so they start to take advantage of me. But the truth is, just because I exited the workforce doesn’t mean I stopped working. I only moved from one stage to another. Now, I work for myself.

Some people thought I started my own business. When I told them no, I’m just doing my own things and there’s no income tied to it, they find it very hard to believe.

I suppose it’s quite natural to assume that someone who can exit the workforce early must be very rich—wah, very rich ah. But honestly, I’m not rich. I just learnt enough financial literacy to find a way out of the cycle, and I managed to do it by 50. Still, more than half my life is already gone. It took a long journey to get here. Now the best I can do is to make full use of whatever time I have left to finish the things I need—and want—to do before the end comes. 

Just yesterday, I managed to complete the first stage of a project that took me one year. Personally, I still feel it’s not good enough, so there’s more work to be done in the new year. I also received notification that endorsements for some of my earlier work have been cleared and will likely go live next year. It’s a start. From there, I’ll see how far I can go—
or rather, not how far I can go, but to go as far as I can.

 So, everyone—if there’s something you want to do, and you can afford to do it, just do it. Life is too short to live with regret.