ainsoofiyah

5th of July is the day I’ve always been counting down to since the new year. It’s the day to celebrate myself for being one year wiser, more experienced, and more learned than the year before. It’s the day people shower you with extra love. Family, friends, you feel legit spending on yourself, all the discounts and vouchers from retail stores rolling into your inbox. 

But this year, when people wished “Happy Birthday,” something inside me wanted to scream, stop. I was in denial. As much as I wanted to feel celebrated, the number 30 dreaded me. I wish I could stay 29 forever, when I could still be experimental without feeling guilty for it. I felt defeated for being unable to fulfill what 17-year-old me had visualized for the adult version of me. 

My 17-year-old self saw me at age 30 as wiser, calmer, more in control, and mentally stable. I was supposed to work my ass off, hold a senior position, write a thesis to complete my PhD’s, and have my own family to call home. But in reality, I’m just as lost, running in circles, experimenting with this and that, only to start back where I began. And the harder I pedal, the more I tire myself out, but my journey doesn’t seem to go far. I’m not able to achieve the goal I set thirteen years ago, only to get distracted by the butterflies and trees and stray far from the original lane I’d carved at 17. 

Seven months into 2026, I thought I could achieve everything in that time frame. But seven months came sooner than I realized, and not even half has been achieved. With another five months left, will I still have time to sprint and tick off all the things I wanted to do this year? I do want to do something momentous. Something that, when I look back at my 30s, I know I did. I learned something. That even if I may not be consistent in doing it, I want my old self to remember and cherish that I did something worth experiencing as 30-year-old Ain Soofiyah. 

And so I created my birth-month calendar, to cherish every day of my 30s instead of dreading every second of it. I slipped some of my bucket list into my monthly calendar to check off. Filling every day of the month with things that make me happy, so that I go through every single day with excitement, not anxiety. 

I stepped out of my comfort zone. Went through that interview that I’ve always hated. Opened myself up to new people, even though part of me wished to hide at the back of the shelves. The schedule was imperfectly done. Some I did. Some I didn’t. 

Buying myself fresh flowers with coffee delivered to my office is cute. But adding 1x the price for the delivery fee? So not worth it. 

But I didn’t regret forcing myself to open the door to trying, stepping into crazy and uncertain possibilities. Of being judged. Of being rejected. Of being bad at something and failing. Because from those failures, I learned more. I encountered more opportunities. And that’s how I realized the importance of giving myself a chance. 

It was a six-week programme. Every week, we were asked personal and vulnerable questions to share among the group. Part of me wanted to hide at the very corner of the room. I felt shameless sharing my aspirations when I’m nowhere near the goal. What are your aspirations, challenges, expectations, setbacks? What if I’m the only one behind among my peers? 

Ts Najwa, my mentor, is such an amazing lady, and I particularly love how the woman she is today is made up of all the seemingly random things she chose to do when she was younger. She is now a senior manager with a Master’s in Business Administration and is currently completing her Master’s in Counseling and Mental Health. She didn’t stop there. She does scuba diving as a hobby and always finds channels to keep contributing to society. Her path is not as linear as you might expect from someone with an engineering background, but she is always open to every opportunity, and that has opened every door to her future. And a younger her, not knowing what her future held, couldn’t have known where those doors would lead. 

And the mentoring group wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I’m proud to be among these young and ambitious ladies. These ladies inspired me to achieve more, to be the version of myself that I’m proud of. 

I used to wish I could remove my past years. To me, they were an embarrassment, and perhaps that’s why I’ve been seeing my life as stagnant: part of me refused to acknowledge them. In my LinkedIn profile, I refused to include experiences that I thought were an embarrassment. I mentally excluded years because they didn’t fit my grand ideal plan. 

But seeking a mentor taught me that I did learn something, however small it was, and I shouldn’t be ashamed of it. My coach taught me to reframe them, and I realized my experiences had actually given me the skills employers are looking for, and the exact skills I could leverage for my salary expectations. They might not be what my younger self is proud of, but my future self will thank me for the tiny bricks I’m building. 

And so, I wrote down all my working experiences and took pride in them: what I did and what skills I earned from each experience. 

Sure, I’m not what my 17-year-old imagined I’m supposed to be. A lady with a stable corporate 9-to-5 job who has figured her life out. 

But did she imagine she would learn horse riding and even join a dressage competition? 

Did she even imagine she would once lose her spark in reading and fall in love with it all over again? 

Did she imagine she would once be offered free Korean classes and complete a Korean book? 

17-year-old me would be astounded if she knew her 30-year-old self had the courage to hit the gym, let alone learn kickboxing for a month. 

17-year-old me thought that success was granted. 

30-year-old me learned setbacks are certain. 

And maybe that is what growing up actually gave me: not the certainty I thought I would have, but the resilience to keep going when life doesn’t follow the plan. 

I didn’t become who she expected. 

But I became someone she couldn’t have imagined.