In the Navy

In the Navy

And then... Covid happened.

Business suffered. Relationships soured. I went back to Singapore and served my scholarship bond with the Navy.

I told myself: maybe this chapter is over. Time for me to move on.

And I did. I worked hard at my job. Was a good ol’ ~ rat in the rat race ~.

But 3 years in, right after completing my submarines training course, I experienced a full-on Quarter Life Crisis. I took a good look at my life, and I realized one thing was for certain: I didn't like the Navy job.

I personally didn't enjoy it, nor found purpose or meaning in it.

I could rationalize why it would have meaning - the whole geo-political agenda behind having these assets, the strategic role we played in turning this iron coffin into a weapon of war, the pride that came with being a part of this pseudo-elite force... the list went on.

But that's all it was. Just a list. Just a rationalization.

Ultimately, it wasn't internalized. It wasn't personal for me. And trust me, I spent the better half of a year trying to internalize and truly believe this message of meaning, deep down. Needless to say, it didn't work.

While we were training, doing our drills, our commander would comment: "Eugene, you meet our mission outcomes, you keep us safe, but you sound like your soul has left your body."

It became a running joke among my batchmates ever since.

Yet, it came with a tinge of truth. Why did I sound soul-less? If anything, it was the total opposite of the kind of comments that I would get when I was talking about Rats to Riches, or cycling, or books. When I'm passionate about something, its super obvious. It emanates, oozes out, even. To sound soul-less meant something was definitely off.

I realized something else in that period of my life: In my free time, I kept coming back to the same thing - a half-finished game nobody asked me to make (the early prototypes for the game that would eventually become published as Wu).

So I asked myself those quarter life crisis questions everyone my age talks about: Is this the life I want to live? If I died tomorrow, what would I leave behind? What would I do for free, even if I was broke?