Life Chapter: Tide of Opportunity
On the first of January 2026, after celebrating New Year’s Eve at a friend’s house, I woke up. I laid in bed and started to reflect. While I was laying there, I grabbed my phone and played my favorite song, “Simple Man” by Shinedown. It’s a cover, the original is by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I listened to the lyrics while thinking about the weight of the new year.
I had tears in my eyes. I wasn’t crying, just silent tears rolling down my cheeks. It felt like an emotional release. Like something finally letting go.
The reason I hate December is because it brings a lot of weight. It’s the end of a year, and it forces me to face things I’d rather avoid. I often think about what I lost: friends, time, opportunity, and the life I thought I would have by now. Kids, a wife, my dream job, better drawing skills. There’s more to it than this, and it’s still hard to explain to people who don’t share this feeling.
December seems to pull everything I lost into one single month, the pinnacle of it. Then midnight hits on December 31, followed by relief. And the next morning I ask myself: what’s next? As if the new year itself is a symbol of a fresh start.
And here are some of my future prospects
I hope to be able to move out this year, however difficult it will be financially. I know that for the first years, traveling won’t be in the cards for me unless I find a solution.
I also want to buy a second camera so I can try doing wedding photography and earn extra money that way. I would like to fix my teeth too, although everyone keeps telling me they’re fine and charming. I don’t like them though.
And my weight. I lost 8 kg last year, that’s great, but I want to lose more. This, and moving out, are things I really want this year.
All of this looks simple on paper, but it’s not. Traveling is part of who I am, and I’m going to struggle with that sacrifice. Still, living alone would make me more independent, more capable, and more in control of my own life.
As I laid there thinking all this, I thought of an old quote. I heard or read once, but it stuck with me:
There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
I’ll try to explain it in simple English.
Sometimes life gives you a moment where the door is actually open. If you walk through it, it can change where you end up. If you don’t, you don’t stay “safe” or neutral, you slowly end up stuck.
That tide is also in our hands. Life might present chances, but we still create them in our daily lives. So I’ll create my own tide and navigate my own ship. I’m planning to make this year mine, and I know I will fail, and fail, and fail again in some areas, but I refuse to sink.
Pic i took in new zealand 2017