The Path to Mental Wellness

It’s been yet again a year since my last musing as a gig worker, wondering what paths and adventures God has prepared for me. A year on and it’s comforting to know that no matter what kind of silly plans I set for myself, He always had His eyes on me.

I returned the F&B unit to my landlord which I had spent almost $10k restoring to its bare condition at their request. They didn’t allow me to find an alternative tenant to lease to so I could minimally save on restoration costs. The administrators had the cheek to tell me that may have plans to convert it to other uses besides F&B. One year on and guess what… the unit has been left vacant since I left, testament to how unattractive the location really is. I guess I should pride myself for making its presence known while I was there.

Since then I occupied myself with my baking diploma which took up two days per week, learning how to bake tarts, pastries, cakes and bread as well as brewing of that perfect cappuccino. In the end, I am pretty sure I have no affinity with cakes and shall thus content myself with mastery of tarts and bread, the latter which is a most basic and useful skill if I should say so myself. During this time, I inevitably found myself ‘looking after’ a 70-year old Indian lady who was quite oblivious to all the instructions from our chef so no one wanted to partner her. She ended up in my care which I think I handled pretty well. All my life I’ve always found myself in such situations of providing support to marginalised individuals. If this isn’t a calling, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile I trudged on in the part-time temporary job with my previous government job to complete a youth engagement project. The amount of commitment in this role was beginning to weigh heavily on me when the two permanent full time staff decided to quit in succession due in part with their inability to tolerate the leadership of the team lead and my good friend. To be honest, when she was reporting to me many years ago, I found her already a bit edgy but now that she’s in management, I found her almost intolerable. But as any good friend would do, I held the fort for her since I had the sudden bandwidth.

This she took maximum advantage of while she handled another major project, went on successive holidays and fell sick when she returned. This youth project was going up in cinders as there were so many procurement issues which I didn’t have the authority to handle or call the shots on. By the end of the year, I told her I wasn’t going to renew my third year with them. I was a little sad that I won’t see this project to fruition in my time, but I did already complete 80% of the work when I handed it over to the new colleagues. I felt that the last two years had made me so jaded and negative, that had I stayed on, I would have infected them with my cynicism.

But even though I closed these two windows in this chapter of my life, God opened five new doors. In my free time, I continued to scout for another location to rent, not willing to give up the community and reputation that I had already built over the last two years. Part of it was triggered by my students lamenting the lack of space for them to commune, and they suffered from the withdrawal syndromes, some more than the others. It was a lesson I recently learnt – that it was important for young people to have proper closure and provided steps to adjourn to a new situation. Unbeknownst to me, all these young people who came regularly to my cafe had built such a strong emotional connection to the space, that it had become a clutch for them whenever the tolls of education threatened their mental wellbeing. When we shuttered the doors, it left an irreplaceable vacuum in their lives. So I felt beholden to keep going.

It took a rather long time, disappointments arising from some u-turns from would-be landlords, and quiet contemplation and deliberation to finally land on a 3-room HDB shophouse near Lavender MRT. The rental was really decent, the space was sufficiently big, it was relatively convenient with the main downside that I was not allowed to operate as a F&B here. With this location, I decided to pivot into an event space hire and management business. I would offer my space, experience and F&B support to anyone within the ACG community who wanted to organise their fan events. It’s been 7 months since we started operation in November 2024, and while we had run several new events and hosted parties and gatherings, I have yet to breakeven. What’s new… I feel like the path of entrepreneurship is never going to be in the works for me because I’m constantly thinking of what I can do for the community than for my own pockets. This is the first door.

Thankfully, God threw me a life buoy. Around the time when I was deciding whether to take up the rental, my ex-boss (if you recall the acquaintance I knew from my government job and then offered me a role in the social enterprise which had defunct after I left) approached me again. He asked if I would join his company as a learning and development specialist. He explained that while he could have offered me multiple roles in his company since I am multi-talented (ahem ahem), he decided on a newly minted role so my presence wouldn’t create any internal conflicts with the incumbents. I told him very candidly that I wasn’t done wanting to be my own boss and I had many other things I still wanted to pursue so even if I take up the role, he would find a rather distracted employee.

He replied that he had faith in my heart and my capabilities. That I would be able to shoulder my corporate role professionally while pursuing my ideals passionately. And he offered to pay me quite handsomely that would enable me to afford the rent for the new space, and even take a day off from work every week so that I could pursue another specialist diploma at Ngee Ann Poly for Youth Development and Mental Wellness. WHUTTTT… To be honest, I really don’t know why any boss would be this generous but having spent so many nights griping to each other while we were both in the social enterprise outfit, I knew I could trust his heart. I guess it’s just his nature to give back and that as a fellow believer I wouldn’t misplace his trust. Ouch. It’s one thing to sneak behind a boss who’s undeserving but another thing to do the same with someone who has so much faith in you, it almost becomes like an invisible mantle.

I decided to take up the offer and while the job duties didn’t excite me, it was clear that I was one of the very few people who could get this job done simply because of my background, experience and personality. Maybe secretly he hopes I would help guide and mentor his next generation of leaders when he chooses to retire in about 5 years’ time. Being about a decade older than me, I would still be able to carry on some of his legacy when that happens. I guess it’s all part of his succession planning process.

True to his word, my boss never laden me with excessive work and turned a blind eye when he catches me working on my personal projects. In return, I delivered whatever I was tasked to do and somehow naturally earned that big sister persona with many of the colleagues here. I share a lot of the same philosophies as my boss (I’ve been brainwashed unknowingly), and could communicate them in my own style with others. And because my boss is more a friend than colleague to me, we have no walls between us either. In the end, the work arrangements are so much more accommodative than I had expected. I have to remind myself constantly not to take his goodwill for granted. This is the second door.

I started my one-year specialist diploma in Youth Development and Mental Wellness in September 2024. Other than wanting to use this to understand how I can better engage youths, I have no idea what awaits me after I graduate. What became really obvious though is that I naturally became someone that my teammates would outsource to be the spokesperson, coordinator, project lead or whatever role is required. It’s been so long since I’m back in school and the academic rigor of writing essays, studying for quizzes and working on group projects feels so surreal. I’ve completed one semester and obtained a GPA of 3.84 out of 4.00! It’s so astounding! I was a lacklustre student back in NTU, barely making my second lower honours and here I am doing pretty well in my diploma. What a wonder.

So far I’ve gone through modules on mental health issues faced by youths, programme design and development, engaging stakeholders and group work and facilitation. I don’t think completing this diploma is going to make me qualified to be a counselor or social worker as those professions really require a lot more academic qualifications and practical application. We are talking about real lives here, not just digits on a spreadsheet. I’ve always wondered if mental health specialists are so important for our population, then why are they paid so much lesser than professionals like IT engineers, business analysts and legal consultants?! There’s something wrong with this whole economy in our country. It goes to show how much value our government really places on social needs.

Nonetheless my heart for the youths continues to grow. It seems like no matter what form it takes on, whenever I hear about the anxiety and depression that our youths are experiencing as they struggle with identity, purpose, acceptance and relationships, my heart just bleeds for them. In a world where social media is their main platform for communication and seek solace from, they have unwittingly fallen prey to the insidious influence of the ‘world’ and are fed with unattainable standards of how they should look, feel or do. It’s so so so scary when I think about the invisible control social media has on our next generation who do not realise that their values are being challenged everyday by the algorithms. I don’t even have to look very far. I find myself absorbed in scrolling through reels on Instagram without realising it.

Which is why I know that youth development is definitely the next stop for me. It’s the purpose I’ve discovered that I have been shaped for. Just that I don’t know yet what form it’d take on. This is the third door.

Earlier this year, an acquaintance I got to know while running my anime cafe reached out to me to link me up with a contact. This contact had secured a contract with a major anime media franchise from Japan to open a first of its kind entertainment hub in the world right here in Singapore. As part of the project, they were exploring a themed cafe and needed someone who had the passion and the expertise to make that happen. You can’t imagine how big my mouth was as I took in the whole scale of the project, and obviously very quickly said ‘YES!’ to it. The best part was that I didn’t even need to cough up any money and they would pay me in equity if the business did well. This project pretty much occupied my mindspace for the first 4 months of the year as I kept thinking about ideas and concepts I would want to work on.

The business is slated to be operational by end of the year however we have already faced several hiccups along the way. There has been a lot of internal conflicts between the project owner and his stakeholders, to the point that he has been thrown out of the working committee and barred from working with the Japanese counterparts. It’s not really a bad outcome per se. After working together with the original contact on a mini project, I realised that he was really problematic so not having him on the team could have been a blessing in disguise? What’s left for me if I still want to pursue this course is to work my way to connect with the other members of the committee. However as I ponder on this opportunity that sprang out of nowhere, I can’t help but wonder if it was more a distraction than anything. We shall see how it goes. This is the fourth door.

Sometime end of 2024, I received an email from the game developer of Love and Deepspace, who wanted to touch base with the fan community in Singapore. They recognised the importance of working through these fan groups to spread love and support for the game and reward the community, since official collaborations brought a lot of unbridled and unhinged commotions. I screamed when I read the email. That one outcome I had really really worked hard towards by organising fan cafes after fan cafes for the community had reaped its reward through recognition from the game developer themselves!! Earning this stripe was so much more valuable than the humongous business opportunity offered by door #4.

Having gained this connection with them ignited my passion to organise more events and whatnot for the community. However as with any ACG related fanbase, there are its share of toxic behaviours and characters. I found myself being embroiled in unnecessary territorial squabbles with other organisers for trying to be helpful. Why does everyone view my involvement as being threatening?! And as LND gains even more traction from local players, the event space had also began to heat up literally. There are so many LND events happening every month that I got quickly fatigued by it, mainly because I find myself endlessly comparing the success of my events with others. I realised I don’t cope well with competition. It leaves me angsty, irritable and even to the point of obsession tracking every other person’s event promotions and outcome. It was certainly not good for my mental wellbeing!

I just completed a rather successful campaign for the game in end April with my first themed escape room game and I was really pleased with the results. It was innovative, well thought out, everyone had fun and my organising committee found it fruitful for themselves too. At least it didn’t end with us trying to burn each other at the stake. But I had already mentally told myself that I would step down from LND events after this round. I needed to regain semblance of sanity and mindspace too. Then the game company reached out again and said that they have a lot of exciting plans for second half of the year and really hoped to collaborate with me for them. What… This is the fifth door.

So I think far be from it that closing the F&B at the university meant a stop in all His plans. For all you know perhaps that kernel of seed really had to fall to the ground and die in order to spread even more goodness elsewhere. I was reminded recently of a promise I made to God back in 2004 when I was a financial adviser. That after I settled my family affairs, I would continue to fight the war for Him across the ‘Jordan river’. Looking back at the years spent gaining experience, wealth, promotions and some level of stability, is it time to rejoin the battle? Is that why I’m back in another financial advisory outfit? What has financial advice + youth development + ACG have in common? Maybe that’s where I’ll finally find my ikigai.