Fuck around and find out

My motto for 2025

There is one trait that characterizes Hong Kong expats well: they love spontaneous weekend trips.

I noticed this when I first arrived in Hong Kong in 2014 as a student from Indonesia (Rupiah is a weak af currency). How could people just… decide on Friday morning that they want to fly off that evening and come back Monday morning? Are people just that reckless with their money? Whatever happened to calendars? Do they conveniently never have plans on the weekend?

Spontaneity was not in the Becky vernacular. My parents raised me to make decisions based on what would give me the most options, which translates to the “safest” choice. In high school, I picked the science track because it gave me a higher chance to get into university. In university, I majored in business and finance because it made me more employable. In adulthood, I worked my way into corporate because it gave me job security.

At 28, I’m reaping the rewards of this safe path. I’m not worried about rent, food, or much else in life. So in 2024, I thought I’d enjoy myself and say yes to a little bit of fun, aka activities that early-twenties Becky thought would be chaotic. I went clubbing on a work night and painting my nails in a dai paai dong, Hong Kong’s version of street-side hawker centres. I stayed out till 4am singing karaoke and eating dim sum. I flew to Taipei to see a drag show. I lost my sandals because I was enjoying being barefoot on a junk boat, enjoying the wet breeze south of Hong Kong Island, preoccupied by laughter and silly jokes to notice when those sandals were likely blown away.

They were chaotic events, but I had so much fun that made the shenanigans worth it. I wondered: what else have I missed out on? What was the trade off for being such a stickler for security? Do I need all of this rigidness in my twenties? Isn’t this decade meant for exploration, making mistakes, and recovering from those mistakes?

In 2025, the last year of my twenties, I want to fuck around and find out.

Not in an “I’m going to make stupid mistakes that might seriously harm people” kind of way. But in a “just going around and exploring what’s out there” kind of way that would give stuck up 18-year-old Becky multiple heart attacks. Instead of being wary of what lurks in the shadows of those scary-looking bushes, I’ll take some twisty detours because a distant tree looks interesting.

In other words, I want to take a lighter approach to life. I’ve been so serious, putting way too much weight on my decisions. In October, I told my friend that I will cut out alcohol for two months leading up to Hyrox, a cardio-and-weights fitness race. She deadass looked me in the eye and said, “You rarely drink and when you do, it’s two glasses max. Cutting out alcohol isn’t going to give you that much more of an advantage.”

She was right. Most decisions aren’t that consequential. I’ve been treating every little action as if it’s life or death. But 2025 will be a bit more unserious, a bit less permanent, a bit more “fuck around and find out”.

After all, exploring doesn’t mean that I have to commit to something. If I try a new hobby and I don’t like it, I’m allowed to backtrack on it. I’m here to “find out”, aren’t I? If I went camping for a weekend and didn’t enjoy it, I can always stick to an indoor activity the next weekend. No new venture needs to be forever. I can easily trace back my steps and return to the path I was currently on before detouring for that pretty tree.

Last Saturday, I went out for a close friend’s birthday. In true Becky fashion, I left my Sunday calendar blank in case I got hungover. Because I knew I had the capacity to recover, I went all out. I took my friends to my new favourite bar where I knew the bartender and we would get many rounds of free shots. We got tipsy, danced, hugged each other, and told each other how much we missed hanging out. We danced and played beer pong till 4am. I slept the whole day on Sunday, not hungover (bless up) but just catching up on the necessary hours of sleep. I didn’t do anything productive: I didn’t edit a Substack essay, I didn’t tidy up my Notion or Roam pages, I didn’t annotate a podcast.

Boring Becky can let loose after all!

My partner Jin told me that she’s keeping an eye out for spontaneous weekend flights. Not gonna lie, my stomach still struggles to digest this. How can we be that reckless? How do we have the money?

But I am carrying these assumptions from the person I was a decade ago. I have savings now because I have a job. I can afford this.

Maybe I’ll love spontaneous weekend trips. Maybe I won’t.

Just gotta fuck around and find out.

Thank you to friends who encouraged this chaotic new attitude:

Rik

,

Zeyad Mahran

,

Matthew Argyle

,

Lily | 5459.eth

,

Kevin Hsu

.

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My 2024 phrase was “journey to the center of the self”, inspired by, “journey to the center of the earth”. Through weekly essays (52 of them! they’re all on this substack), morning pages, therapy, and hard conversations, I’ve managed to:

• Print my art book

• Write a book about creativity (thank you to everyone who read the manuscript and provided feedback! The editing commences)

• Write what would be a memoir maybe someday (I’m keeping those 5 chapters hidden for now)

• Learned that my existence is worthy even if I’m not useful (woah this got deep all of a sudden)

• Reconnect with my parents (I cut them out for 2 years - this is its own story), including stepping away from a codependent dynamic with my mom

• My fiancée met my parents (mygod!)

• Reframing my relationship with money

• Took 5AM painting classes (never again)

• Missed a flight (never again)

• Saw 11 Ru Girls (and saw my reigning queen Nymphia Wind 3x!!)

• Co-led Interbank, a peer network of financial services firms in HK championing LGBTQ+

• Had my first adult friendship fight (it sucks but I learned why I’m so conflict-averse and trying to get better at it)

• Embracing relying on friends vs just myself (my therapist Angie calls this “hyperindependence”)

• Did some future-casting work to see where I wanna go (Angie kickstarted this in a session using cards with values on them to see what are important to me, then imagine what it would be like if I dial “fun” up 10%, for example)

• Restarted my YouTube channel (kinda. gonna take this one easy)

• Challenged myself physically by doing Hyrox. Turns out having a target helps to meet my goal of exercising 5-6x/week.

• Got addicted to Pokémon Go and Pokémon Sleep before abandoning them completely

• Fell into a Thai lesbian series rabbit hole (I blame Jin)

• 2x editor for Write of Passage

• Saw Taylor Swift and reexperienced 13yo Becky as a fully grown ass adult

• Took an expressive journaling course with

  Erin Nolan
  (check her stuff out!!)

• Started monthly logs on Substack

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