my story
hey there, i'm jade!
I’m a 23-year-old girl from Singapore, with a love for all things style, beauty, decor, and personal growth.
I created this space to share my personal guides to doing life, as I document my own journey and experiences.
While that’s probably all the information you need to get a sense of what this site is about, and you can go on exploring the blog posts I’ve written, I thought I’d share with you the why’s and how’s I got into this.
burning out at a young age
I spent over a decade of my youth doing things I thought I needed to to build a successful life — getting good grades at school, securing internships at big companies, and sacrificing parts of myself in the name of productivity.
In 2022, after 4.5 gruelling years in university, I graduated with two degrees under a full ride scholarship, only to realise I was more lost than ever.
My hair was falling out in bunches from the stress, I was plagued with chronic headaches from the all nighters I pulled, and I felt an overall sense of dread towards entering the corporate world.
The future I had worked so hard for didn’t seem particularly appealing to me anymore, and I found myself unwilling to tie myself down to a job where I would only chase the dreams of others, while neglecting my own.
It felt like I had started running a race without checking if the prize was something I actually wanted.
I knew there was still time to turn my life around, but something had to change.
what happened next?
I did what every Asian parent wouldn’t want their child to do. I took an indefinite break from the rat race, turned my back squarely on hustle culture, and decided to take some serious time off.
For six whole months, I allowed myself to explore my interests fully. I started freelance writing, travelled a little, and spent many nights spiralling over the uncertainty of my future.
Along the way, I picked up a habit of journalling to try and make sense of the thoughts that were swirling around in my head and note down the valuable insights I was learning from self-help gurus…until one day, it clicked.
This was what I felt the best doing: expressing myself through my words, in a raw, unfiltered manner. So, why not take that and turn it into something meaningful?
WHY a blog?
While I had written thousands of articles for a local news journalism companies and several business clients, I had never dared to put out any content that I had total control, ownership, and most importantly, interest over.
The blog spawned out of a need to challenge myself in the self-limiting belief that I couldn’t succeed outside of a structured entity.
I also wanted to create a space where I could express my creative side, meet others who are on a similar path, and build something that I could call my own.
While I’m still unabashedly new to all this, I’m more excited than ever to start this new chapter of my life.