(maybe delulu) manifesting

Last night I put on a grown-up dress, slapped on some nice makeup and stick-on nails, and went to a New Year’s Eve party with a buffet dinner where I was happy to eat very good roast beef but also—exciting for a person whose palate is at least partly still about seven years old—onion rings and chicken tenders. With loud background music of old-but-gold classics, we ate, chatted and gossiped ferociously into 2025. 

I’m not a “new year, new me” sort of person. I don’t believe in milestones like that; I usually like my milestones to be sneaky and unforeseen. Some of the things I’d thought would have made a significant difference to my life—like graduating with a Masters degree—haven’t really done that much. Then there are little moments—like showing up to a postgraduate quiz night at the student union and being the only person at the table to know that the Famous Five was four kids and a dog, thus making an impression on another journalism postgrad by the name of Calum—that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time but went on to change my life in profound ways. (Reader, in case you don’t already know, I married him.)

This is why I tend not to make New Year resolutions. I know that I’m very unlikely to actually achieve them; the novelty would have worn off by February and I probably won’t even remember them by May. That said, there’s probably no harm doing some manifesting, so I thought I’d write down some aspirations/goals that I have for this year—not to pile more pressure on myself, but to create a record of the hopes that I have for the near future, so I can be reminded of what’s important and why. Everyone needs something to keep us looking forward, right?

Manifesting in 2025

I want my family to be together and stable.

July 2025 will bring our 11th (!!!) wedding anniversary. In this past decade there hasn’t been a period where we’ve really been able to settle down: I couldn’t get a spousal visa in his country, then he couldn’t get one in mine—not a long-term enough one that would allow him to work and start a career here, anyway. We’ve been at the mercy of stupid political promises, of authoritarianism and harassment, of bullshit bureaucracy, industry meltdown and the global economic climate. We’ve weathered so much together—Calum has had to put up with way, waaaay more Singapore-related nonsense than he should ever have had to encounter in one lifetime—and in 2025 I really hope and pray that we can arrive at a place where we don’t feel like things are so precarious all the time. I want us to have somewhere to call home together with our three spoiled cats. I want to be able to sit on the sofa together at the end of the day, even if we can never quite agree on what to put on the TV. I want to be able to have meals together, to be able to talk in person instead of over text and spotty phone calls, to tease our furkids, to go to bed at different times because of different sleep schedules yet feel content because we’re under the same roof.

I want to write about my grandfather.

I can never really remember which year my granddad died and always have to check. (I just did it again; it was 2021.) Sometimes it feels like it’s been forever, like I’ve grown so accustomed to a life without Kong Kong that it feels totally fine and natural. Other times it feels like he was just here, and his absence is too fresh.

Last year, some time after the flurry of activity accompanying the launch of my first book settled down, I picked up on a suggestion that Calum made and started working on a new writing project about my grandfather. My relationship with Kong Kong is another one made up of tiny, seemingly throwaway moments that turned out to have, both subtly and overtly, shaped my life. This writing project—perhaps a book, perhaps something else—feels like another one of those interactions with my granddad that will lead me down new paths, even though I can’t hold his hand anymore.

I don’t know if this is something I will achieve in 2025; as I’ve learnt from The Singapore I Recognise, personal writing projects take much longer than I would like them to, because other responsibilities and obligations always get in the way, and no deadline is more elastic than the one I set for myself. But I want to try my best to get as much written as possible as soon as possible, because I can already feel the memories of Kong Kong morphing in my mind, and it makes me want to reach out and grab on to whatever I can.

I want to make We, The Citizens better than it’s ever been.

I started We, The Citizens in 2018 the way I start most projects: on a whim. It just came into my head that a newsletter focused on aspects of Singapore that don’t otherwise get much attention would be a good idea. In the very first issue, I wrote that “I’m going to try this for the next three months and see how it works out”. This coming April will be the newsletter’s seventh birthday. In a life where I struggle to establish routines and form habits, I’ve plugged away at this most weeks for the past 2,440 days.

I’m really proud of this newsletter. It’s not just a job; it’s become a real part of my life that has grown with me. Now that I’m re-reading it, I realise that, in that first issue, I linked to the response that Singapore’s ambassador to the US had written to my op-ed in The New York Times—the very response that later inspired the title for my first book. There are probably many more such examples: things mentioned in my newsletter that took root in my head and sprouted in other work, other projects and other possibilities. Sometimes subscribers tell me that they learn a lot about Singapore while reading We, The Citizens. I love hearing that because I’m learning, too, through writing it.

I’m not sure how much bandwidth I will end up having in 2025 to build this newsletter, because I still have other work with Mekong Review and the Transformative Justice Collective that I want to keep doing. But I need to recognise that We, The Citizens is my baby and it has a lot of potential and I should get to work on my baby as much as I work on things for others!

I don’t really know what “better than it’s ever been” actually means right now. More subscribers? More paying (not the most important but still very important) subscribers? Branching out into activities and events? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

What I do know, though, is that I’d like to write more special issues so that paying subscribers have a bit more bang for their buck and I set aside time to look more closely at issues that I’m interested in. I miss writing reported features about Singapore, even though I spent so much of 2024 unable to conjure up the energy to work on them. I also want to reboot the mini-mentorship to find more aspiring writers who want to write about/report on Singapore!

So there it is: three big things that I’d like to have achieved by the end of 2025. They might seem like very practical, work-like things—once again I hear my former therapist say, “You’ve talked a lot about what you do, but not how you feel”—but while reflecting last night and this morning I realised that these things are, in many ways, also deeply connected with my inner life and hope for healing from burnout. They’re about my loves, my gains and losses, my sense of purpose and meaning. I know I need to learn to be more present and in touch with my feelings rather than just work work work all the time, but these three big things feel intimately connected to a quest for emotional honesty and authenticity too.

To be with the person I want to be with.

To write the words I want to write about the big loves that made me who I am.

To do the work that allows me to live according to my principles and keep my conscience clear.

This is what I hope for my 2025.

~ vibes ~

Countless trials, mistakes and fights
Piled up on a teary night
That all ends today, so I smile
Like the days are on fire
I run to this end of story, it won’t be a sad ending
I know that on the final page there will be an incredible plot twist
What if these expectations just explode and fall apart?
I hope this terrifying anxiety is just a dream that will disappear when I wake up
— ‘Hold my hand’, Han