The calendar pages keep falling away, like autumn leaves in a quiet garden. Since June, I've been floating through a strange space between careers - not quite here, not quite there. Most days I'm fine, though sometimes the darkness creeps in, like shadows lengthening across an empty room.

There's something peculiar about desire - the way it narrows your vision until the world becomes a pinhole. A jazz record I used to play reminds me of this: how the saxophone focuses on a single note while the whole orchestra swells around it, unheard. Gretchen Rubin calls it the "arrival fallacy," this belief that happiness waits at some fixed point in the future. Like a cat chasing its tail, we keep running in circles.

Something shifted inside me when I started paying attention to the present moment, like tuning into a frequency that was always there but somehow hidden. The change was subtle at first - the way morning light changes the color of your coffee cup so slowly you barely notice.

My former self feels like a character in someone else's story now. The one who clung to stability like a life raft. During a recent job interview, they asked why I'd let go of that safety net. I told them about needing space to search for something new, but the truth was more complex, like trying to explain why you remember certain dreams but forget others. This gap in time - this pause between what was and what will be - has become a strange gift. Before this, I'd been running on a track someone else had laid down, never questioning where it led.

The rejections came like small paper cuts - each one stinging in its own quiet way. But pain, like everything else, is just another kind of music. You can let it overwhelm you, or you can learn its rhythm.

When I look at photographs from this year, they feel like windows into parallel universes - each one containing a different version of happiness I hadn't planned for. I've been keeping a list of these unexpected gifts, the way some people collect shells or strange-shaped stones.

Leaving on a happy note and knowing I did well. These guys are eating awards for breakfast and I could not be any prouder.

Finally finishing my Master's Degree in UP.

Passing the Real Estate Brokers Examination.

Ticking off Hong Kong and Macau on my travel list.

I learned about algorithms and digital landscapes, built virtual spaces where others might find what they're looking for. I read books that opened doors in my mind I didn't know existed. I watched stories unfold on screens both large and small, each one leaving its own peculiar echo.

Sometimes the best paths are the ones that appear when you've lost your map entirely. My heart beats steady now, like a well-tuned engine, even if I'm not quite sure where it's taking me.