25..26..27

I was born in 1999.

So it’s really easy for me to keep track of my age. I just remind myself what the current year is and check the last two digits. If it’s before my birthday, the last two digits of the year represent my age. If it’s after, then I just add one. I’m currently 26—but I’ll turn 27 in about a month.”

Mid-twenties, huh?

I like this period of time.

I moved out at 19 while in university, and about 3 months after doing so, COVID-19 started shutting the world down.

Melbourne imposed one of the most restrictive lockdowns in the world.

I struggled a bit financially as it was the first time I had moved out of home. But I didn’t want to ask my parents for financial help, because I wanted to find a way to survive on my own. I managed to find a job at Woolworths (a major Australian supermarket), study during the day, and work during the afternoons and into the night. I came out of that period with decent savings and the confidence to carry on with life.

In 2025 and so far into 2026, I’ve been fortunate to be doing what I want to without a global (health) disaster overhead. When I hit mental roadblocks this year, I reminded myself to remain resilient and reminded myself of how far I’ve come since then. This often helps me mentally overcome the hurdles that lie ahead and I then continue moving forward.

I’m currently about two weeks out from finishing the first semester of a Masters degree in Translation and Interpreting (T&I) at a graduate school in Seoul, South Korea. Classes are mostly run in Korean, and sometimes discussions get too challenging for me to understand. Over the past month, I’ve come to realise that I’m not quite where I want to be with my Korean proficiency.

To overcome this personal feeling of inadequacy, I’ve been taking in-person Hanja (한자) classes to deepen my understanding of more difficult Korean words, and have been reading more Korean books (particularly Korean high school level literature and Korean history). These efforts have tremendously helped, and made me feel more adequate.

Beyond my language proficiency, I am also trying to overcome a constant urge to rush. I know the quality of interpreting and translation I want to produce and will take at least 5 years of consistent, hard work. For some reason though, I feel as though I need to be absolutely proficient in Korean within the next two years.

I noticed that this thought grew larger since starting the masters program and that it almost gobbled me up at some point during the semester. At some point during the semester, I lost my smile. I was starting to not feel like myself.

I know this is all silly of me. I lived a total of 17 years away from South Korea, growing up instead through the Australian education system. So, I’m not going to pressure myself to be so proficient and fluent (at such high standards) in Korean in the next two or three years.

As I was wrestling with these thoughts over the past month, I recently had someone much older than me (whom I respect) tell me, “You’re 26. You’re at an age where you could stop everything you’re doing, start over again and still have time to live a content life.” He’s right.

So the conclusion I’ve reached for my inner peace and overall mental well-being is to stop rushing myself to be great so soon.

Instead, to just continue working at it day by day.

Well, it’s been a while since I uploaded a blog post.

Writing this blog entry has healed a part of me. As my friend Filip M used to say, “I should do this more often”.