Life and timeline: Things that don't happened at the "right time"?

Its the question that I don't have the answer for.

I may have not been updating my blog as much and as thorough as I was back in my uni days. Mostly due to work.

To some it up, first 3 years of working, I honestly was trying to excel in my field. Be a good engineer and all. Working late nights, playing badminton with colleagues, or having dinner with them on one of those nights.

I will only get home around 9-10pm.  

I don't have a boyfriend, I don't have other sports/activities that I do, other than that office badminton games. And my weekends are, believe it or not, for sleep and TV series. I would sleep very late on Friday nights just watching any TV series or repeating old series until around 4/5am. Then sleep the whole Saturday. I wont get out of the bed (or house) until Sunday. I will get up from bed on Sunday afternoon to get some food, maybe do laundry or wash my car.

During this period, I stream football matches and even went out to watch big matches outside on my own. Even early morning Champions League games.

Life is only about working - social interaction also only involving colleagues (and housemates whom also committed in their respective jobs)

Its not until 2015 that I started to be able to do other thing outside working - climbing.

I've always wanted to climb since my uni days, but only in 2015 that  I finally found a friend to go with and to help me improve. Climbing is addictive, and sports in general releases serotonin, makes you happy and encouraging friends are more appealing as oppose to hard and demanding environment in my day job.

I started to shift my priority and my life revolves around climbing, what I ate, what I do everyday is figuring out how to improve my climbing, my job become the means of supporting my expensive harness and shoes and I looked forward to weekends to climb again.

Then my boyfriend (husband now) came into my life again, we got married and I have another reason for losing interest in  my 9-5 job even more. My husband supports my climbing, and marrying someone who supports you means you no longer have to rely on other friends to go with you cos sometimes when they have other things to do, I cant climb too. Ever since I got married I no longer have the trouble finding friends to go.

So I no longer wanted to spend 2 hours in the car, no longer willing to work more than 5.30pm, I just want to go back home and go climbing with him.

Another thing about being married, all social barriers you have when you are single are gone.

I have more confident getting to know new people.

For the first 1 year I went to the climbing gym, my eyes are only on the rope, the wall and the climber  if I'm belaying, the route and the wall if I'm climbing. I didn't make any eye contact with other people there. My introvert self, my lack of self confident and social skills get the best of me.

There's a lot of aspect in social skills I failed to get comfortable to so I just let it go and focus on the climb.

But after I got married, I no longer cared what that new person think of me, if they doesn't like me, cos at the end of the day, I have my husband with me. 

So I started to socialize, talk to people and widen my climbing connection.

And when you know a lot of people, you're no longer shy to socialize and go to climbing events and comps, I always have my husband's company with me wherever I go.

Talking about competitions, in 2015 my friend did asked me to join comps, cos he said it could expose me to the climbing community and makes me want to climb better.
But I thought is too far fetched of an idea. I just started climbing, and there must be hundreds of better girl climbers out there. Plus I don't like when everyone's looking at me and being in the crowd.
I know my friend enjoy being in comps, he live for those cheers from crowds and the spotlights.

Fast forward to 2017, we started going to the local comps, and I personally want to get to know other girls who currently competing and currently active in climbing. I realized that there's not a lot of girls that climb in Malaysia, and even less of them compete, and I thought that there might be hundreds better girl climbers than me.

Earlier this year there are National Selection for Athletes to represent Malaysia in the Asian game this August.

So I went to watch the selection.
To my surprise, only 12 girls compete for the selection, (as oppose to 25 men)
2 of them literally kids (below 12yo) but dont get me wrong, they ARE talented and strong, its just they are competing with grown adults.

So now I know there's not much girls in Malaysian climbing scene.
And I'm not that far off from those girls.
This really got me thinking, If I've started climbing years ago in my uni days, I probably had the chance to represent the country!
But no, I only started climbing in my late twenties.

I know it's not just me.
After the games, those girls who represented Malaysia told me, Malaysian girl climbers are wayy older than say Singaporean girls who averages 17-20 years old. While Malaysian girls are in their mid to late 20s.

To ease my mind, I would say its the exposure of the sports itself.
Sports climbing it's not a famous sports in Malaysia yet.
In Singapore the girls has been exposed to climbing since they were 7-8.
Malaysian girls only started climbing in uni.

I don't even start in uni, I started when I was already working.

It's easy to blame fate when we missed opportunities in our lives.

But, hopefully I could find a way, to make the best omelette out of that broken egg.

InsyaAllah.