The Uncertainties of Life

It could just be me, but I just love the uncertainties in life. I like it when my future is hazy, and when unexpected things happen in my life, both positive and negative (as long as it doesn’t have to do with the well being of those around me). 

I think these uncertainties are what really makes my life interesting. Not having a clear picture of where I’d be and what I’d be doing in a few months gives me a thrill. 

Planning

I actually love planning, whether it be for trips or for events. For me, planning is a big part of the fun in travelling and attending events. However, as much as I like planning ahead of time, I also love it when things don’t go as planned. Looking back, the trips that didn’t go exactly as planned were more memorable than those that went as planned. 

Ones that comes to my mind right away are the Havasupai trips. On my first trip to Havasupai in 2018, we were planning on driving to the trailhead at night and starting the hike right before sunrise to avoid the sun when hiking down and to have some time to relax at the campgrounds. However, when we were less than an hour away from the trailhead, we got a flat tire on our rental car. We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere with scarce phone reception, but we finally managed to 1) find the spare tire, 2) figure out how to remove the spare tire from the car (it was placed underneath the car below the front compartment), 3) drive back 1~2 hours to get the tire patched for free. When we finally got to the trailhead after all that, it was already past 1pm. By the time we got down to the campgrounds after checking in, it was starting to get dark. So, nothing really went as we originally planned, but this whole experience was so much fun and so memorable. 

My second trip to Havasupai also had something happen that I was not anticipating. During our day hike on day 2, I sprained my ankle. It was the first time I ever experienced something like this, and it was very painful at first, but the pain eventually died down and I still did the day hike and the hike back to the trailhead on day 4. After I came back home, I was on crutches for a couple weeks. I even went to Salt Lake City with my friends on my crutches. I couldn’t go snowboarding as originally planned, but I took off on my own to explore the city. I even got to use the wheelchair assistance service at the airports. After I came back, the ankle pain actually went on for quite a while. I couldn’t go climbing or play soccer. Although, less than a month after I sprained my ankle, the pandemic kicked in and shelter-in-place order was put in place, so I didn’t feel as bad about not being able to do sports. This whole experience was definitely something, though. 

2019 – 2020 – Full of Uncertainties

I guess the year 2019 was full of uncertainties for me. I got laid off from work in March, which actually wasn’t all that surprising as our team was expecting it to happen in a year or two. A week before I got laid off, I got into my first car accident. This could be seen as bad things happening all at once, but I found this period to be really interesting. With all these happening, I felt like I was ready for anything else that gets thrown at me. 

The fact that I had to say goodbye to my old car was the saddest and the worst part of all this, but other than that, I found this experience quite amusing. No one got hurt, it was the other party’s fault 100% and my insurance pretty much took care of everything. I got to experience the process of taking care of accidents. 

As for the job, I wanted to take at least a few months of break so I just spent the next few months travelling and chilling at home. I started doing some Leetcode problems to get ready for interviews around winter time, and was doing some interviews when the pandemic hit and a couple companies I was talking to put a hiring freeze due to the pandemic. The pandemic actually changed so much for all of us, creating even more uncertainties. I used this time to take some online courses, but became more unsure of which direction I wanted to go with my career. But I really just love this feeling of not knowing what lies ahead for me. Looking back, I would never have guessed in my freshman year of college that I would be working and living in the states. 

Mystery Boxes

It feels like I am revealing some sort of mystery box each step in my path. Some boxes may be better than others, but they are all interesting in their own ways. These boxes then spice up my life. I see many different paths that lie in front of me each with its own mystery boxes. I don’t know which path I will take and I don’t know what lies inside these boxes, but that’s exactly what makes my life so much fun.