I’ve recently watched the F1 movie starring Brand Pitt and Javier Bardem. It’s a good film. Quick review: it nailed the basics of an experienced bullheaded old timer and an egotistical newcomer dynamics but what made it different was that there were several arcs in the entire story that even the entire team was turned into a character that has its own arc, shifting the focus less on the drivers and more on the people working to support them all throughout the season. It’s good.

However, while watching it, I’m struck with envy seeing people who found their one true calling and have stuck to it through thick and thin, thus becoming very good at it. It was double the hurt. I’ve never found my one true calling because I’m always pulled by different interests that I follow because I don’t want to limit myself and my creativity. The other one is I’ve been in survival mode for some 5 years of my adult life.

It’s kind of sad to think that I’m just restarting my life at 30. I know that there were people out there who would find working hard for years to support my siblings after our last parent died. I got my siblings through college and lived through a pandemic without incurring any debt.

I have an idea of what my calling is. It’s to tell stories. I’ve always been a storyteller, no matter what medium, genre, or form. It even extends to other fields because I believe that stories brings humanity together across time. And that’s what I set out to do – to tell stories.

I felt guilty because I’m already at the age where I’m supposed to have figured things out and was already working my way towards building it. But I think the key word here is “supposed”. If I really look into it, all the rules were made up. The entire human experience is a lot, is too complex, and too random that boiling it down to a few simple steps and a specific timeline doesn’t do justice for the rest of the real experience that existed. That meant that not having a one true calling, and accomplishing it on a specific age, can be true for some people, but not everyone. It’s possible that I fall on that “everyone” category.

It’s nice to have one true calling, and to see the progress you’ve made through the years working on it. But the thing that made them what they were now, was the thing that I have to go through now. It was the journey, the process, of working through that calling. It was a lifetime of work. When we started doesn’t matter, it’s what we’re doing now to get to that. That’s the thing I would like to focus on now. I want to do the work.

We’ll all get there. We just can’t skip the hard work.

There's no one path to living

9/23/2025