A 'Loveless' Valentine

Hello to all you lovebirds and lonely hearts out there. As you all know, today is Valentine's Day, a day that many of us have mixed feelings about. I've actually made a post about this specific holiday a few years back and what I said in there still holds true for me, so check that out here if you like.

Anyhow, this year's Valentine's Day has remained largely unchanged from prior years, in that I am still single. Except, for the first time in my life, I'm actually okay with that. If you've read my previous post you might be thinking "wait a minute, back then you already said you liked being single!" To be more precise, I was actually making the case that being of single status isn't necessarily all bad. And to be honest, I think I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince any potential readers at the time. I still meant what I said back then, and I was definitely grateful for the other kinds of love I had in my life, but being the helpless romantic that I was, it still felt like something was missing. For the next few years, I let Valentine's Day come and go without getting too wrapped up about its significance; but in the back of my mind I was still actively waiting to find that special someone.

This year for whatever reason, I'm learning to just accept that I'm single, and probably will be for a while. It's quite a liberating feeling, really. No more anxiously waiting and wondering if I'll ever find someone. No more bitterness every time that I don't. I'm embracing my singleness and enjoying it to the fullest! This doesn't mean that I've given up on finding a nice girl somewhere down the line; I've simply stopped waiting. Happy Valentine's Day.

Life In Limbo

From the very start I had had reservations about my enrollment in the DAP program at UBC, and about my future career path in accounting. It had been years since I studied a mathematically inclined subject. Throughout my undergraduate career I had deliberately distanced myself from the realm of business and science and focused my efforts on the arts because I knew my own strengths and weaknesses, and tried to tailor my studies toward the former. To be fair I was perfectly competent with most subjects in high school, regardless of their nature. But with math and the sciences, I felt like I was nearing my limit even back in senior year. And so returning to the world of numbers after such a long time was quite a jarring experience.

In my own mind, I had intended the DAP program to be a placeholder; something to keep me busy while I searched for my true calling, or even just a better alternative. I figured, if worse comes to worse, at least I'd still have accounting to fall back on. With this mentality in my head, I went through the early stages of the program putting in the same amount of effort as I did with my undergraduate studies. But as it turned out, the subject and intensity of the courses were harder than I had ever anticipated; much harder. Before I knew it, I was falling behind on even the lower level courses, and long story short, by the time the 3rd semester rolled around, my performance was so poor that I no longer met the minimum requirements to stay in the program. There was, however, a way for me to appeal the decision by submitting a formal letter. This letter, aside from giving me a chance to continue in DAP, was also a chance for me to sit back and seriously consider if this was the right program for me. At the time, I already had a pretty good feeling that this discipline was not a natural fit for me; but personal doubts and fears clouded my judgement, and made me second-guess myself. In the end, I convinced myself and the DAP office that if I really put in the effort and fully applied myself then there will be a marked improvement in my grades. And so, I dove back into the world of accounting head-first; determined not to let history repeat itself...