Trickling Sand

Today, the name of my blog is changing from the very unique and creative “Felix’s Blog” 🤣 to “Trickling Sand”! This change has been in the making for several years.

Something There

When my firstborn, Adele, was born, I started this personal blog. I didn’t really have a goal for the blog at the time and just wanted to have a place where I can share my musings with my family and friends. It was part journal, part personal news, and part stream of consciousness. As I continued to write, the writer in me grew. I subsequently started a now defunct investing blog called The Catholic Investor. There, I wrote upwards of 100 blog posts in the span of two and a half years. There was something there, something there in my heart…

As I progressed through my 30s and my children multiplied, a sense of urgency grew. The urgency to do what was still a question. I started a side business, called Nutcase Design, with my two good friends, the two Matts, selling laser engraved phone cases. That business, like many small businesses, ended as quickly as it had started. I’m still extremely fond of the memories, including and especially selling more than 700 phone cases on LivingSocial and not really having a plan on how to fulfill those orders in a short timeframe. My basement quickly became a sweatshop and we had lots of fun during that time. We ended up losing some money in the business, but I’d like to see it as spending money on a good experience and many good memories. There was an itch, a yearning of sorts…and Nutcase was an attempt to scratch that itch.

Jellyfish

Reflecting back to my earlier days, I didn’t really have a plan going into adulthood. Unlike my older brother, Eric, whom I have always and continue to look up to, I didn’t really have any clear idea of what I wanted be or what I wanted to achieve when I grew up. Since I was somewhat good in drawing in my early teens, I thought it would be just fine to become an architect (a profession related to the arts that is not typically associated with “starving artists”, ’cause being Chinese, we have to be practical, right??), not knowing a single thing about buildings and such. In the summer between grade 9 and 10, I met my longtime buddy, Matthew (not to be mistaken with the 2 other Matts with whom I started Nutcase… Why so many Matthews in my life? Lol!). He introduced the world of cars to me and I fell in love with those sleek machines. That was the start of my journey into engineering.

For my undergraduate program, I enrolled in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Toronto. There, I excelled academically and as a result, I thought I should stay in academia. I did a research masters, which taught me that I was a rather poor researcher, as that profession required a great level of discipline, which I did not have. So, I applied for and got a job at ATS, which I absolutely LOVED! I met many brilliant people there and worked on some amazing projects involving computer vision, robots, and lasers! When I decided that I wasn’t progressing quickly enough in my career, I decided to jump ship to Ainsworth (now acquired by GDI) to do business process design, which eventually morphed into the IT role that I’m currently playing. At GDI, aside from ERPs, HVAC systems, field service management, and SQL queries, I learned a tremendous amount about the softer skills including change management, negotiation, and people management. I’m proud to say that I’m turning out to be a pretty good manager (or at least that’s what my team tells me…hope they’re not lying)!

Although my career path ended up fairly well up to this point, I can’t say I had put too much strategic thought into it. At every step of the way, ever since my first plan of becoming an architect, the thought was simply, “Hey, what do I like? Let’s do that!” Knowing what I know now, I would have done things differently in my teens and early 20s. Unfortunately for me, my career is at least halfway over, now that I’m squarely in my mid-40s.

Up to this point in time, I think you can describe me as a jellyfish. While a jellyfish can certainly swim, it often just drifts around, getting carried by the ocean currents, which is why you see them on the shore sometimes. A more positive way to see it is that throughout my life, God’s invisible hand has been moving me along and I’m just happy to comply with His will! Two of my favourite cliches are “there is no such thing as luck” and “everything happens for a reason”. The Lord has brought me to this moment in time and space for His purpose. The question, therefore, is, “What?…What is the purpose that I’m supposed to fulfill?”

Trickling Sand

I suppose it is good to ask these existential questions, questions regarding meaning and purpose. My recommendation, however, is perhaps to ask them a little earlier in life. Here, I finally arrive at the purpose, not of my life, but of this post. That is to explain the new name of this blog.

Years ago, I had reflected on the passage of time and have had many conversations with friends about this topic. No, time does not slow down. In fact, it continues to accelerate in my subjective mind. Just yesterday, I read something on X. It went something like this, “For most of their lives, you will know your children as adults. There is a magical time when they are still children. Be present.” Man, that hit hard. How many times have I rushed the kids to bed so that I can sit on my own bed and doom scroll on my phone? How many times would I rather be…writing on my blog (?)…than to play with them?

And so, such is life. Time waits for no one. If you were ever forced to watch sand slowly trickle down an hourglass, you would bemoan how slow the process is, but before you know it, the sand has completely travelled to the bottom of the hourglass. This, then, is the theme of this blog. It’s a constant reminder for myself to live with intentionality, to waste little time, and to cherish what is in front of me.

Finally, we come back to the itch, the yearning that I described above. Of course, all of us have felt that yearning; it is one of the most fundamental human conditions. Philosophers, over the centuries, have pondered the meaning of life and many of us continue to ponder. The Catholic Church succinctly addresses this topic in the first paragraph of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” There you have it, the meaning of life summarized in one sentence. But…what does “sharing in his blessed life” mean? Of course, for many of us, we will spend our entire life reflecting on how we manifest that in our lives. I have heard that it could mean increasing our own capacity to love, as “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Whatever it is, I believe it requires a personal discovery of God and understanding how that discovery is manifested into your life, your mission. That is also the purpose of this blog, to be a self reflection of what God calls me to do. And so, I invite you to continue with me on this journey we call life, and to explore what our vocation is.