A few minutes ago, I turned 26 years old. But I was not happy about it. In fact, for the past year or so since I hit 25, I haven't been happy about a lot of things. I think that they call this the quarter life crisis. So to mark this momentous occasion, I decided to list down 26 signs that I'm experiencing my quarter life crisis.


I don't think this list will reflect on everyone's lives, but if it does, please accept my humblest of fistbumps.

1. Friends my age are posting about proposing to their significant others with bling bling rings almost daily on Facebook.

2. Another batch of friends my age are posting about their newborn babies on Facebook.

3. Yet another batch of friends my age are posting about bringing their 5 year old kids along on picnics and Tesco grocery runs on Facebook.

4. In the meantime, I'm sitting in front of Facebook

5. Relatives always seem super interested in my "future" plans. I don't even plan for what I'll be having for my next meal.

6. Relatives always offer me their "I eat salt more than you eat rice" advice on marriage, work, miscellaneous things about life.

7. I don't want to listen to relatives advising me on things.

8. My friends are all doing the healthy lifestyle thing; where they all go to the gym, eat clean and worry about their cholesterol, sugar and blood pressures.

9. I just want to eat what I like without feeling pressured (pun intended)

10. I am stuck between a place where I don't know whether I want to finally grow up, or just forever stay a budak.

11. Yet, I have a blog called Life of Budak. Yes, I am mostly confused about what I want in life.

12. Most of my friends have already gotten their own place while I am still staying with my parents.

13. I'm pretty sure my parents are looking forward to not seeing me in their house every day, complaining about why the WIFI isn't working.

14. Like Cinderella, I can't stay out past 12am anymore without feeling like my carriage is going to turn back into a pumpkin.

15. I prefer to spend my weekends holed up at home with nothing more than my trusty PS4 (YES I HAVE A PS4 AT LAST!) controller for comfort.

16. I always feel like my life has stagnated in a never ending circle of eat, sleep, play, work.

17. I constantly want to just drop everything and travel the world...

18. ...but I have no money to do so because I don't know where all my money is gone to.

19. I want to take up so many things, start all these projects, but I never have the guts or the drive to start.

20. I am constantly jealous of famous people my age or younger. Like Taylor Swift is only 27 and Adele is 28 and look where they are in life.

21. I feel like literally everyone else is more successful than me.

22. I always keep thinking of what I want to do, where I will be, what will I be doing in the next 10 years.

23. I don't know what I want to do, where I will be, what will I be doing in the next 10 years.

24. I constantly romanticize the nostalgia of my schooling days.

25. I'm always comparing myself to my parents when they were my age. How did they ever manage to get married by 27 and have a kid the following year?!

26. I feel like I have a lot to complain about, especially when I'm writing 26 signs of me experiencing a quarter life crisis.

Cheerios!

A little over two months ago, something unexpected happened. I lost my blog, Sarcasm Puh-leeze. While this scenario pales in comparison to the real issues in life, I was still left absolutely devastated. Overnight, I lost almost 8 years worth of pictures, writings, memories and other random foolishness. Tens of thousands of hours of writing disappeared in a flash.

It was a loss comparable to losing a life partner.

I wrote hundreds of emails to every channel Blogger and Google had. I pleaded for them to return me my precious, my life's work. Please give me back my memories, I wrote in an email to Google, even though I knew that the unfeeling algorithm's running the place would care little for a human plea.

Then I stopped writing altogether. For the first time in 8 years, I went almost a month without writing.

It was during my time in London that I managed to clear my mind and get over the loss of the old blog. I decided to start a new blog.


This was a chance for me to build something totally new after 8 years of sticking with the standard templates provided. This was my chance to build a new vision of what I wanted to do with my blog, and with my writing.

And so, Life Of Budak is born. I chose the name Life Of Budak because I want to show people that it's okay to embrace the childlike imagination part of me, a part that I have struggled to contain as I walked out into the working world. I want my blog to reflect this childlike nature within me, the budak side of me, and to provide an outlet for me to express my thoughts on anything and everything.

So here's to a new beginning, and a chance to show the real Life of Budak.


Cheerios!