2010 was not a easy year at all for me. A lot of failures, chaos, unfortunate happenings, and so on. Yet, it's the only year I was able to overcome many obstacles and prepare for what's ahead. On the real note, I didn't like 2010 overall. Yet, the only reason why I came to love it is the fact that it really taught me the knowledge and wisdom I'll desperately need for the years to come.
I guess the big highlights of 2010 was me basically failing in almost all aspects of life and going through the unluckiest and most unfortunate events overall. I got kicked out STEM cuz of my temper problems after miraculously being able to go, had a tarnished image at church, had a really bad relationship with my dad once I got kicked out of STEM cuz I told him that I sacrificed an internship to do STEM, had to rearrange my entire schedule and ended up having the most ridiculous spring quarter of my life, woke up everyday pissed off during that time span, threw huge temper tantrums, lost quite a few friendships, getting judged out of nowhere, starting smoking again after quitting for a year, getting my recomm leadership app rejected, struggled to find my normal personality after being so lost in life, hopes of grad school ended along with the CPA license since dad retired and can't support me (also realized that a CPA career wasn't for me), found out that my family's really struggling financially to the point where we might have to move real soon, and I can't believe I still could write more to this chaos but I'll end it here.
All this, all these failures, all these events leading to another event, it was seriously by far so tough to deal with, especially with people around you knowing it.
I asked God why all this had to happen. I asked God was this necessary. I asked God why did it have to be me. Last week while listening to my ipod and lying on my bed for a good 2 hours reflecting and reminiscing deeply, all those memories and flashes of 2010 blended together and God finally showed me why all this had to happen, why it was necessary, and why it had to happen to me.
1. I got kicked out of STEM because of a huge anger issue deep inside me. I think because of my rough childhood, it all built up and I ended up becoming a heartless and merciless person. Even if I was given another chance for STEM, maybe things might have been different, but it definitely wouldn't have solved the core problem that was deep inside of me. What I learned was that the only permanent cure to anger is love. I had so many relational problems with people, and I found it so hard to love people that hurt me deeply from the past. Even though people that hurt me might have caused me to become an angry person, the only way I can fix my angry self was to overcome those mental attacks. I prayed with little faith at first for this to be made possible. But slowly, I was able to start new friendships. And eventually, I was able to start friendships with those I thought it would have been virtually impossible to make peace with after the magnitude of clashing and fighting in the past. I can look back and say getting kicked out of STEM was horrifying, but the end result to it was far greater in joy and treasure than the nightmares.
2. I got my recomm leadership app rejected because I lacked so much maturity and was pretty much a bad example for the younger class. Honestly, it was pretty much common sense to say that "What kind of a Recomm leader would smoke cigarettes and is completely obnoxious at times?" At first, I really did have the heart to serve Irvine Recomm until I realized that I can't really put it to use unless I clean out the negatives on what taints the things inside my very heart. I started smoking after quitting for a year cuz of all the stress and depression I received earlier, and this was by far the most addicting I ever got it to. It put me to over 6 year mark of smoking, and quitting smoking was starting to become like a very unlikely fairy tale story. So bad to the point where one day I smoked six cigarettes in a row without realizing anything until Wesley told me straight up that it was frkn serious. And even bad to the point where my dad came up to me and asked how many packs I was smoking since he saw my credit card bill, which showed that I spent $200 one month on just cigarettes and replaced it with food pretty much. Quitting after an addiction this horrifying was probably the toughest challenge in terms of fighting my flesh. But one thing I learned most valuable was how powerful accountability, prayer, and especially the Word really is. Reading the Bible can really strengthen your flesh through words of wisdom and having your friends praying and looking out for you encourages you to keep on fighting. It's been a good 2 and a half months now since I've been off it. There's been some times where I was so close to falling, but was able to overcome those piercing temptations. Thus, I saw why I got my leadership app rejected. I wasn't ready at all until I was able to overcome cleaning out what was in my heart first the hard way.
3. Recently I found out that my family's struggling financially for the first time. I remember my mom constantly telling me to pray for my dad because he was coming home loaded with stress and frustration from a really slow business cycle. One day it got bad to the point where dad told mom that he couldn't feel the right side of his body because of how pissed off and stressed out he was. And on Thanksgiving day, it was then dad finally told the family that he's going to retire and that we're going to have to move soon to a smaller home. What made it worse was that I found out that dad couldn't support me at all with grad school and my road to getting a CPA license. Then I researched on alternate ways to get a CPA, but after reading about what a CPA career is really like, I decided that getting $50K in debt cuz of grad school for a CPA career I wouldn't enjoy like the frustration dad was going through wasn't really worth it after all.
This one really threw a huge curveball at me. I felt like I wasted all those times I was getting ready for the GMAT's and sending all these internship resumes to get an accounting internship/job. I really prayed hard for this one, and God showed why this had to happen. After majoring in Business Economics with a minor in Intl Studies, I took classes such as Calculus, Statistics, Economic Theory, Finance, Econometrics, and all these classes which I thought would be completely useless. Yet, these classes also would have been completely pointless if I were to go to USC grad school of accounting since accounting and economics are not really related. Then I said to myself, "What kind of a frkn jobs are out there that's related to like Econometrics, Econ theory, and Finance?" Decided to google and research it out of stupidity, and I was shocked by the perfect answer. There actually is a job out there that uses all the classes that I thought I would find no use to life. Ironically, this job is called an actuary (sounds funny, cuz I was like there "actually" is a job like that???") What made it a really clear answer was that I didn't need to go to grad school for this, and after researching this job, I realized that this is a job that I'll not only enjoy, but something I can really master through hard work. I've made a commitment to pursue this job to help my family financially and also glorify God's name by being a really hard kingdom worker. I really hope God will speak and work through me as I work with nonchristians in the working field as well.
Hahah that was quite a reflection. I've also decided to write this on my blogspot instead of my Tumblr since I wanted to keep more personal and deeper things on here anyway. I don't know if anyone would read anything this long, but for those that did hahah wow, thanks for caring. Also for those that read it (a very few I suppose), please keep me in prayers. Even though it was a rough year of 2010, I can look back smiling at it and enter the new year prepared for what's ahead.
