I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and found that I’ve lost a bit of my sense of self (and self worth). We were discussing my next steps when I go back to LA and I found that I’m rather confused. There are a lot of things I want to do with my life and a lot of things I don’t want to do. Between all of those desires, it’s hard to choose what exactly to do now. Part of this had to do with my lofty goals of starting my own environmental consulting firm (or perhaps eco-consulting is more accurate). There’s so much I need to do and learn and know to get that off the ground and sometimes I lose sight of how to do that. However, talking to her has helped me get hope again, and find a better focus for my job hunting to come.
Reconnect with the lion within.
I’d slowly been losing faith in myself, finding that maybe I don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, a business owner, a CEO. Though that’s always been my dream since I started thinking of what path to take my life on after high school, the work I’ve been doing has shown me that what I’m good at is not leader of a company material. Instead, I’m far better playing second fiddle, doing all the background work and behind the scenes stuff to keep the front lines moving. I tend to be strong with research, but that’s not what will take me to where I want to go. There are a lot of areas I’m weak in, like interacting with people and managing things holistically. Seeing this has slowly ground away at my self-confidence and blind faith in myself to make it somehow.
Additionally, I lost a lot of faith in myself since coming to Singapore because of the many obstacles I’ve been struggling with. From the cultural barriers to more personal issues that have cropped up, each time it left me wondering what I’m doing wrong, what I’ve been doing wrong, and why in the world there are so many misunderstandings. After a lengthy conversation with Typea, I began to see so many misunderstandings stemming from my Western upbringing. There are so many small things that you would never really know about because it’s usually not worth mentioning. But add them all up and you’ve got a very inaccurate interpretation of who you are and why you do what you do. Singapore is still an Eastern culture after all, despite all the Western influence they may have.
It’s kind of funny, because now I’m starting to see Singapore much like myself. It’s neither here nor there, with English as a primary language, but Asian cultures still dominating the way of life. Similarly with me, I’m neither Chinese nor American, but Chinese-American and as anyone who has studied complex systems can attest, the sum of parts is greater than the whole. What that means for me is that I’m not simply Chinese mixed with an American; the interaction of the two produces an entirely new result altogether. Yet to those who have not grown up knowing what that is like, that’s a hard thing to understand, so they just assume I’m both put together. Unfortunately, that means they expect me to know a lot more of the nuances of claiming either identity than I actually do.
Still foreign.
What I have trouble accepting is that I can’t do anything about it. One of the quirky things about Asian culture is that nearly everything is suppressed. People aren’t straightforward, but rather expect you to insinuate what they want and what you should do. Not being armed with the right tools to figure this out, I am left to flounder and come up with completely bizarre conclusions (in their eyes, at least). It’s frustrating because I just need pointers and guidance (albeit a lot) to help me along. Also, because I look Asian, there is less leeway or forgiveness for many transgressions because it is assumed I should know. If I didn’t look so, I think I’d either get written off as a foreigner or people would be more patient with the mistakes I made. I always had that luxury as a child though, because whenever I went back to China to visit, I was with my relatives who knew how different I was, so they didn’t expect me to be like them.
So, my ego has taken a hard blow and it doesn’t help that no matter how hard I try, it doesn’t make things better. I’ve been told quite a few times to just let it go – what is, is. But to me, that’s like giving up. Here I am in a foreign culture – how could I not try to adapt? The difference is sometimes too great though, so to some extent I want to stop trying so hard. I spend all that time and effort to avoid stepping on people’s toes or giving them the wrong impression only to do so anyway. Is there still a point? I’ve got one more month here and two of those weeks will be spent as a tourist going around to other countries. There certainly isn’t time to fix things as I’d like, but should I keep trying anyway?
