Blogs

    Living Blog (Post Journey)

    This is a post journey blog about Coming Home to Yourself.

    • Perspective Is Everything
      by ChihSang

      I’ve been thinking about how two people can experience exactly the same situation and walk away with completely different feelings about it. One sees a problem, while the other sees an opportunity. One sees an ending, while the other sees a beginning. One feels defeated by an unexpected turn of events, while the other accepts it as simply another part of life’s journey.

      Nothing about the situation itself may have changed. What changed was the perspective.

      I find that fascinating because we often behave as though our interpretation of an event is the event itself. Someone doesn’t return our message, and we assume we’ve been rejected. A plan falls apart, and we decide the day is ruined. Something doesn’t work out the way we expected, and we immediately label it a failure. We take what happened, add our own assumptions and expectations, and create a story around it. Before long, we’re reacting not only to reality, but also to the meaning we’ve attached to it.

      And sometimes, that meaning causes us more pain than the event itself.

    • If You Don’t Surrender to Life, It Will Squeeze You Harder
      by ChihSang

      I was listening to CBC Radio’s Q with Tom Power when I heard a line from Ahmed Moneka that made me stop and reflect: “If you don’t surrender to life, it will squeeze you harder.” I don’t know whether he intended those words to mean what they meant to me, but something about them immediately connected with my own journey. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much of my life I had spent doing exactly the opposite of surrendering.

      For most of my adult life, I believed that if something wasn’t working, the answer was to work harder. If I faced a challenge, I pushed through it. If I encountered an obstacle, I found a way around it. If I was exhausted, I told myself to keep going. I had built a career in IT around solving problems, and that mindset became more than a professional skill. It became the way I approached life itself. There was always another problem to solve, another responsibility to fulfill, another thing that needed my attention. I became very good at pushing through, but I wasn’t nearly as good at recognizing when pushing through was no longer helping me.

      Eventually, life squeezed harder.

    • Everything Comes to an End. Does It Have to Be Sad?
      by ChihSang

      There is a particular feeling I get when I finish a really good book. Or watch the final episode of a television series I’ve followed for years. Even when a movie ends beautifully, I sometimes find myself wishing there were another scene, another chapter, another little glimpse into the lives of the characters I’ve grown attached to. I want to know what happens next. I want to spend a little more time in that world. And when the credits roll, there is a small sense of loss, as though I’ve said goodbye to someone I know.

      It’s strange, isn’t it? We begin these experiences knowing they will end, yet somehow we are never quite ready when they do.

    • The Courage to Be Kind
      by ChihSang

      I watched White Bird recently, and I expected to be moved by the story. What I didn’t expect was how much one idea would stay with me afterward: kindness can require courage.

      The story takes us back to Nazi-occupied France, where Sara, a young Jewish girl, is forced into hiding after her family is taken away. A classmate, Julien, chooses to protect her, even though doing so puts his own life and his family’s lives at tremendous risk. What struck me wasn’t simply that he was kind. It was that he had to make a choice. He could have looked away. He could have told himself that it wasn’t his problem. Instead, he chose to stand beside someone who was being persecuted.

      That made me think about how we often talk about kindness as though it is always easy. We imagine kindness as helping someone carry something, buying a coffee for a stranger, checking on a friend, or simply saying something nice. Those things matter, but there are moments when kindness asks something much more difficult from us. It asks us to stand beside someone when doing so is uncomfortable, unpopular, or even frightening.

    • This Time, I Wish You Were Here
      by ChihSang

      I’m on another journey. Another road, another destination, another opportunity to see something new. I’ve done this before. I’ve travelled alone, explored unfamiliar places, enjoyed the freedom of making my own decisions, and discovered that I can be perfectly happy in my own company. For a long time, I thought that was enough. And in many ways, it was.

      But this time feels different.

      As I drive along, watching the scenery change and the autumn colours stretch across the landscape, I find myself thinking about how much nicer it would be to have someone beside me. Not because I’m lonely or incapable of enjoying the experience on my own, but because there are moments that seem to ask to be shared. A beautiful view that makes you turn to the passenger seat. A funny sign along the highway that would make you laugh. A little restaurant discovered by accident, where the food might be terrible but the memory would be wonderful because we found it together.

      And then I remember that you’re not here.

    Journey to Healing Blog

    This is a healing travel blog about leaving before you disappear. After burnout, long weeks, and darker thoughts than I knew how to name, I took a sabbatical and went travelling not to chase destinations, but to sit with the in-between moments. The long drives. The quiet nights. The conversations, songs, and breakdowns that don’t make postcards but change you anyway. I’m not here to tell you where to go. I’m here to tell you what it feels like to keep going when you’re tired, numb, healing, and slowly unexpectedly finding joy again. How I will try to heal being burnt out.

    Latest

    • The End of My Journey to Healing
      by ChihSang

      When I started writing these blogs, I didn’t know where they would lead.

      I wasn’t trying to build a brand or gather followers. I wasn’t trying to become a writer. I was simply trying to make sense of what had happened to me.

      Burnout had taken away more than my energy. It had quietly stolen pieces of my identity. For years, I had measured my worth through productivity, responsibility, and achievement. When those things no longer sustained me, I was left with a question that felt both frightening and liberating:

      Who am I without all of that?

    • Aging With Style
      by ChihSang

      I watched Tuner today, and as I watched Dustin Hoffman on screen, I found myself thinking back to The Graduate, the film that introduced him to the world nearly sixty years ago.

      I remember watching The Graduate when I was young. Back then, Dustin Hoffman was the awkward young man trying to figure out his place in the world. Today, he’s the older man, carrying the wisdom, regrets, and quiet confidence that only time can bring. It made me stop and ask myself a question.

      Where did all those years go?

    • The Curtain Has Closed. Now What?
      by ChihSang

      The curtain has been drawn on this chapter.

      Eight performances.
      Months of writing.
      Countless rehearsals.
      Moments of doubt, excitement, exhaustion, and joy.

      And just like that, it’s over.

      For so long, every day revolved around one goal: the Fringe Festival. Every decision, every rehearsal, every social media post, every forgotten line, every late-night rewrite pointed toward opening night and the performances that followed.

      Now the calendar is suddenly quiet.
      It’s a strange feeling.

    • The Last Show
      by ChihSang

      Today is my final Fringe performance.

      It’s hard to believe that after months of writing, rehearsing, doubting, rewriting, promoting, and counting down the days, this chapter is about to come to an end.

      People have asked me how the experience has been.
      If I had to choose three words, they would be these:

      Wonderful.
      Exciting.
      Exhausting.

      Live theatre is unlike anything I’ve ever done. Every audience brings a different energy. Some laugh in places I never expected. Some become so quiet that you can almost hear them thinking. Every performance has taken on a life of its own, reminding me that theatre isn’t something you simply perform; it’s something you create together with the audience.

    • The First Show Is Behind Me
      by ChihSang

      It’s done.

      The first performance of my Fringe show is officially behind me.

      For months, I imagined what opening night would feel like. I replayed every possible scenario in my head. Would I remember my lines? Would the bubbles cooperate? Would people laugh at the right moments? Would the story connect? Every rehearsal carried the quiet pressure of preparing for that one performance.

      And then, almost without realizing it, it was over.

    My In Tuned Life Blog (Pre Journey)

    I am not a musician or musically talented, however songs have been the best trigger for reminiscing my history.  When I hear a song, I can flashback to a period of my life not thought of for a very long time.

    • “No one is to blame” – Howard Jones & “Que Sera Sera” – Doris Day
      by ChihSang

      Today, I (or Soleil) caught myself wanting to find fault in our health industry.
      To point fingers. To question decisions. To ask, “Who’s to blame?”

      But then I was reminded of the song “No One Is to Blame” by Howard Jones.

      What if… no one is?

    • “Smile” – Nat King Cole
      by ChihSang

      I’m at the Blackpool Magic Convention, watching a brilliant mime act part of a larger magic show.

      No cards.
      No coins.
      No grand illusion.
      No obvious “tricks”.

      Just presence. Timing. Expression. Silence.

    • “In My Life” — The Beatles
      by ChihSang

      We were in China when my daughters started humming a tune, trying to Shazam it and come up empty. The melody felt familiar to me, but the words wouldn’t surface right away. Then it came to me, quietly and clearly: “There are places I remember…”

    • “I Got You Babe” – Sonny & Cher& “My Way” – Frank Sinatra
      by ChihSang

      These two songs remind me of my support group on a cruise a group of strangers who, for a brief time, became something more. We arrived from different places, carrying different stories, yet somehow found common ground through shared moments on a ship.

    • “Always Something There to Remind Me” — Naked Eyes
      by Derick

      I grew up hearing this song in the 80s, but this week it stopped me in a way it never had before. As a kid, the melody was catchy, almost light something that played in the background of a life still mostly intact. Back then, I hadn’t lost anyone worth being reminded of.

    Wordkle Blog

    This is a blog about wordkle. Strategies, game play and any thoughts in between.

    Latest

    • To Hint or Not to Hint: The Wordkle Dilemma
      by Wordkle Master

      To hint, or not to hint: that is the question.
      Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the blanks and blunders of outrageous guesses,
      Or to take clues against a sea of letters, and by solving, end them.

      Alright, alright — enough Shakespeare. But if you’ve ever played Wordkle, you know the drama is real. Four words. Nine guesses. No mercy. And in the middle of it all stands a tiny button, glowing with quiet promise: Hint.

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