Friday.

How am I today? Oh, I just feel like I’m drowning, as per usual. I try to always remember what my favourite little group of expats in Thailand would say: “The first year away is always the hardest. You’re still caught up in all the shit you left behind. You still don’t know who you are or where you are or what you’re even doing. But rest assured, you’ll find your way around in time, just like the rest of us did.”

I don’t feel like I’m finding my way. I feel like I’m way in over my head and I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.

This week I have definitely felt the weight of my old life weighing upon me. I don’t know why I am getting so triggered by everything this week. I just keep having flashbacks and night terrors about the situations and people I left behind. I’m just not on my A-game right now.

I should be more excited than I am. Unfortunately, I can only think of how upset and angry my family will be, and wonder how they will conspire to sabotage it, and how I am going to manifest the money I need to chase this relatively new dream.

I feel very conflicted right now. I’ve struggled so hard to find a place in Hong Kong just to live and now I’m just going to give it up so I can run off somewhere new and take the exact same gamble on housing and employment to pursue a degree that I have no real way to pay for?

Well, I guess the way I’ve seen it, there is no pay off in this world anymore. You just have to do what you have to do to survive.

It’s just hard. I feel like every day I’m just sitting there like, “I know there is more to life than sitting on rooftops sipping wine and writing about all of the ridiculous people I randomly meet. I just don’t know how to switch out of this mode into money-making mode. My only real skill other than writing and creative, critical thinking is making drinks. What am I doing here? What am I doing anywhere? Everywhere I go, it will always be the same.”

If only I could wrangle me one of these hot fintech bros that keep walking by and then I would never have to worry about money ever again. I could just have a nice apartment with a roof of my own located somewhere within and just write. Alas, they look good on the outside, but the reality is they are all just one ketamine-fueled crash out away from ending up on the street.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. I had to stop checking out Neighbor Guy after I saw some chick carrying a bag of takeout go into his apartment the other day. She had a key. So now I’ve just started avoiding him by taking the stairwells again. Always the same story with these guys, isn’t it? I really must see that witch under the bridge about breaking whatever curse this is.

Well, I’ve checked on flight prices and they’re not great. If I want to fly to the US and then to Dublin, it’s like $1500-$2000 and I have to deal with ALL of the insanity. Upside: 12 hour layover in Tokyo, which I’ve never been to.

Meanwhile, good guy Ireland is keeping flight prices to Dublin from SEA very low. I’m looking at $500-$800 there, depending on which hub I go through.

Istanbul is probably best. They probably just fly over Mainland China and then up through the Stans. Skip the GCC entirely. That’s a hell of a flight though. And I don’t get the luxuries of Emirates or Qatar Airways for the long-haul. Disappointing.

I just don’t know what else to do. I’m not getting anywhere with my job hunt. AI just eats my applications. Besides, I have terrible luck with jobs. I always end up working for and with the worst people. Starbucks is the brightest, shiniest example. I will never forget how my co-workers treated me after my father died. Pure human garbage, the whole lot of them. I am convinced that most of Gen-Z is dysfunctional and rotten to the core.

So now I am trying to work through my actual, literal fear of going back to work after what happened with Starbucks and with the South African company that brought me to HK in the first place. I really have terrible anxiety about working with other people now. I’m just afraid I will be targeted and vilified for defending myself and then I have to sit back and watch as my source of income and health insurance is ripped away, yet again, just so someone else can make some kind of temporary gains.

So I do realize that people in the corporate world only get increasingly more psychotic from here. The world we live in is a terrible place. I just don’t want to be around monstrous people like that anymore. Like I literally just cannot do it. I have no tolerance for it anymore. It’s so much easier to just hide in my room and sleep and pretend the world doesn’t exist outside of my blog or my notebook.

I know it’s a problem. I just don’t know how to solve it. I only know that I’m out here all on my own and that I am the only person who can solve it. I’m just… not solving it. I don’t think I want to solve it. I think I just want to hop that flight to Ireland and run away to a magical fairy land where I can write in a castle overlooking the sea.

Yes, right, that sounds very realistic, Betsey. Let us all know how that goes for you when you find yourself broke and homeless and left alone out on the street in the rain.

I swear to you, my fear of being homeless is seriously the only thing motivating me at times. I refuse to live in a tent or sleep on a bench. But I am also an Artiste and I live to create and I don’t know how else to live aside from Creation.

And no one likes me. I suck at networking and socializing. Everyone always ends up hating me. I’m definitely going to die alone on the street in the rain.

Oh god, I think I might have an anxiety attack. God help me.

I’m sure it would probably help a lot if I just went for a walk and ate something aside from 7/11 snacks and ramen noodles.

🙁 🙁 🙁