Life for me, recently, has taken a turn for the confusing (avoiding the word "worse").
Back in December, I lost my beloved dog. He had been with me for 15 long years. People who know me well will definitely know him, and he had become more than a family member to me. He witnessed my growth, from an overweight primary school kid to an "educational refugee" who only came home for a few weeks a year. A lot of my life changed in those 15 years, but he was always a beacon of stability, the one I'd always ask my mom to send pictures of, or video call in my most difficult moments.
After the manic week of graduation came an eventful two weeks in New York. It was fun, and full of a wide range of emotions. After that, though, things seemed to spiral in the most unexpected fashion. Funnily enough, what was not expected came, and what was expected has yet to arrive.
For the first part, out of the blue, I learned a secret my family had been hiding from me. In retrospect, it was not something catastrophic. Nobody died, and nothing changed about the good memories. But it certainly caught me by surprise.
For the second part, for some inexplicable reason, my EAD card never arrived, despite the fact that I submitted the paperwork back in October without any delay. For those who are not US-based, it is essentially a card you apply for near or after graduation to receive a work permit. Even more bizarre was that it was approved in late December, making it a nearly two-and-a-half-month wait, longer than any case I could dig up on Reddit. With each passing day, it is an understatement to say my sanity took a hit. The thought of losing what I had worked so hard for over four years never left my head. I became more withdrawn, and tried as much as I could to avoid conversations outside my inner circle, since at some point they would always circle back to the fact that I was not in New York yet and the card had still not arrived. That one problem created a mountain of others: weekly calls with my soon-to-be manager to push back my start date, subleasing my NYC apartment, thinking about refreshing my resume and bracing myself for interviews all over again. It truly sucks when you did nothing wrong and life just deals you a bad hand.
But then I regrouped. I dedicated my free time, which I came to realize would become extremely rare once I was in the industry grind, to things I genuinely cared about. I started reading, and learning about programming frameworks and concepts I had never had the chance to explore before. That made me realize a lot of things. I realized how much I love this profession: the art of diving deep into technology, the art of being able to create something, and reading through layers of documentation to turn a vision into reality (hence this site). Got to give credit to my friend Claude, who helped me through a lot of it. There is, of course, stilll a lot to learn and improve, proven by the low quality of the images attached to this post.
That said, I feel more confident now. Not necessarily about getting the card soon, though I really hope so, but rather about the fact that whatever happens, I should be okay. I still have that fire in me. I still have the love, and the desire to move forward. My mind is still strong enough to manage those negative thoughts and feelings, and at the end of the day, I can turn a bad stretch into a productive one. Even when I cannot, I still feel the satisfaction of going down fighting and seeing the progress I have made. I can still pick myself up from a bad place, figure out the next step, and then the one after that.
So it has indeed been a difficult period. I would be honest that sometimes I feel homesick, missing my parents and my home. But more than that, I feel grateful for the people around me, those who have been with me since I was a naughty high school student, and those who have become family on this foreign soil. Your support means a lot to me, and I will never take it for granted.
So whatever happens, your boy will keep fighting. It is never over until I say it is.
Much love,
Son.