2024 was a very different year for me. Last year at this time, I submitted my resignation letter of a job that I spent 12 years in. It was probably the best thing I could do for myself.

After serving 2 months notice period, I spent the rest of the 10 months as an “unemployed” or “self-employed”. When asked “What are you working as now?“, I probably did not even had a consistent answer throughout the year. Last time, I could easily just say that “I am an engineer” or sorts, because my work identity was tied to a full-time job. Now, I no longer feel an attachment to any particular work identity.

This year was a year of exploration and savouring my new-found freedom. I was hesitant to even put a professional label on myself of what I work as. Different people see a different side of me, so I had to introduce myself as a different identity in different context or settings.

The fact was that at this point in my life, since I was not really providing a service, the opportunities that came up just depends on who knew me, what they knew about me, and what they thought I could help them with. It was interesting to learn about what people thought they know about me this way. I relied mostly on my instincts to decide whether to continue the work discussion.

Hence, I attempted to be as authentically myself as possible, so that people know me better as who I am. Many new people came into my life this year, many disappeared too. It still was not easy to deal with people who distant away perhaps because they knew me better, or just because of some misunderstandings.

One lesson I learnt was that some misunderstandings were meant to happen, because maybe my time with those people were up, and we just need some reason to part ways. Painful but inevitable course of life. The saving grace is that for every person that leave, one or more people may came in at a more similar frequency channel.

This year, I travelled a lot, not to much new destinations, but with more new purposes. I was away from Singapore about almost half the time of the year. It was liberating to travel without having to worry about counting my remaining annual leave, but I over-travelled a little bit such that my family complained about it. Hence I’ll aim to travel less next year.

One of the highlights of my travel was the one-month trip in May, where I went to Omaha, USA for the Berkshire Hathaway AGM to catch a glimpse of the legendary Warren Buffett with a bunch of like-minded fantastic people. I later learnt that this is considered the pilgrimage of every serious investor. I continued the trip and visited Death Valley, and then spent two weeks in Japan mainly at Nagoya and Hokkaido.

By the way, the visit to Death Valley was very surreal to me. I first knew about Death Valley through a random video post probably on facebook where they showed a spiral and zoomed out to some ghost figures, which I later found out it was Rhyolite. I got intrigued but did not think that I would actually pay a visit so soon.

Oh yes, I mentioned I followed my instincts more often this year. It led to many interesting events and ripple effects. I attempted to be more attuned to my intuition and not fight it with my rational brain, with the belief that the Universe has better plans for me than I know for myself.

Near the end of the year just before I was leaving Manchester, UK, I was burning some time at a bookshop and I felt a compelling impulse to purchase a book on Numerology. In fact, I left the bookshop but returned to just purchase that book. I read the book and did the calculations on the 10-hour flight.

According to the book, my Life Path is a “Freedom-loving Adventurer”. And 2024 was also a year that coincide with my Life Path number where the theme was “Movement and Change”. On hindsight, it was very accurate!

It seems that for the next year in 2025, the theme in my life would be more of a “Responsible Care-giver”. Indeed it was aligned with my intention to become more present with my family and closed loved ones.

I was grateful for the time freedom in 2024 to manage my life in a more well-balanced way to explore professional opportunities, wanderlust, time with family and personal development. For the first time, I was able to celebrate my daughter’s birthday at her school with her friends and be present for more of her other school activities as well.

To a more grounded and fulfilling year ahead in 2025!