Turning 40, a New Chapter: Why I Am Writing Again
earworm: [S Club 7 – Bring It All Back]
A reflection on turning 40, realising that I have what I want, and building the next chapter with intention.
Waiting for our turn at the vet clinic with my 17-year-old senior puppy. She was always my very happy puppy. Photo by my husband.
Published: 25 August 2026 | Reading time: 7 min | Category: Personal
“Thirty-seven seconds well used is a lifetime."
— Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium by Suzanne Weyn
We make plans, but life happens.
For the past few years, I've been unusually quiet on social media, not because nothing was happening. It was because too much was happening.
So why am I back on social media? Eventually, I realised something: Silence has a cost.
There are many people who have checked in over the years simply to ask how I've been, especially friends who are overseas. I realised they weren't looking for achievements. They simply wanted to know that I was okay. Someone even texted me “I thought you died; you’ve been quiet for so long”. Yeah, true story. Haha.
For me, writing has always been food for my soul, but my 30s were simply a very busy period for me. Returning to writing doesn't feel like starting something new. It feels like coming home.
I first began blogging in 2000 when I was just 14, thanks to my IRC friend Dré. We had met as nine-character nicknames (if you know what I’m talking about then you will know that @ and # had different meanings in IRC, lol) on IRC in 2000, back when IRC and ICQ ("uh-oh!") were still part of everyday internet life. He introduced me to Blogger.com when there were other popular sites such as LiveJournal and Diaryland. Later, Blogger invited early users to try Gmail when Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and RocketMail were still dominant, so that’s how I got the Gmail username of “celest” in 2003.
So I wrote on Blogger/Blogspot from 2000 to 2015, way before generative AI was a thing — from 14 to 29. Sometimes friends would ask me to write about certain topics that they were curious about such as my 10-day Bali solo female traveller trip in 2014, when I was 28, followed by my one-month Cambridge CELTA experience at International House Bangkok and what it was like to be a female full-contact martial artist in 2015, when I was 29. From 2016 to early 2026, I was certainly still writing, but mostly for work in several schools and for my postgraduate studies.
My 30s were busier than I expected
When I turned 30, I knew I wanted to study and work very hard in my 30s. However, I had greatly underestimated how much time and effort I would have to put into working full-time, studying part-time, and changing jobs. Throughout my 30s, my career took me through lecturing, teaching, assessment design, curriculum development, para-counselling, and women empowerment.
While working as a full-time polytechnic lecturer and later on full-time assessment-related roles, I completed the WSQ Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA) part-time, followed by a Master of Education (Educational Assessment) part-time. Instead of taking the coursework-only Master of Education route, I chose to write a 10,000-word dissertation on “Examining Online Formative Assessment in a Digital Literacy Module Using the Rasch Model”in place of two coursework modules – long before generative AI became part of everyday life.
Somewhere along the way, I was just too exhausted to go on social media. There was always one more: one more make-up class, one more consultation session, one more para-counselling session, one more meeting, one more person to help. I was already catching up on sleep on many cab and Grab rides; my one-way work commute was usually 1.5 hours while my one-way commute to NIE was 2 hours via public transport.
Then life took another turn
Right when I was finishing up my NIE dissertation, life took another turn: I unexpectedly fell in love. Both of us were resigned to not marrying at that point because we were older (past this arbitrary threshold of 35 for women and 40 for men), but things just happened. We got married in less than a year – me at 37 and him at 42.
The day we registered our marriage, with our senior puppy - then 15 years old - by our side.
Because he had been based in Taipei for more than a decade, we almost relocated to Taiwan together.
However, our vet told us that our fifteen-year-old Japanese Spitz - who eventually lived to 18 years and 3 months - might not survive the flight to Taipei, although her health had been fine when she was fourteen. It was as if my senior puppy knew she was going somewhere far away, so her health suddenly deteriorated. Granted, I had been trying to crate-train her for several weeks, but she would always scratch the cage door with her front paw after five minutes – how was she supposed to stay in it for 10 hours in the cargo section of an aeroplane by herself?
So, we made the decision to stay in Singapore. We did not want to start the marriage with a dead dog. It meant accepting the loss of a five-digit sum through cancelled flights, relocation arrangements and a year's apartment rental that I had painstakingly searched for on Taiwan's 591 property website – in traditional Mandarin, no less! Husband had patiently taught me how to navigate the 591 property website interface while we chatted via Zoom and video calls for a couple of months, and we spent many hours discussing apartments that we thought might become our new home. We had been dating long-distance during the COVID restrictions, so I couldn't simply fly over to Taipei to visit him.
In the end, he returned to Taipei shortly after our ROM because he was only halfway through the lease on his rental apartment there and needed time to relocate back to Singapore. I stayed in Singapore, so for several months, we became a long-distance married couple. Our next challenge was to look for housing so we could finally be physically together – a process that took us more than a year.
Mundane is exciting
In our new home, thoughtfully designed by my husband. His mood board helped guide our renovation journey with our interior designer. She was 17 years old here – and still my very happy puppy.
After that long house search, we had three-month extension by the previous owners, Home Improvement Project (HIP) works, and finally post-Chinese New Year renovation. By the time we moved into our new home, one year of Minimum Occupancy Period (MOP) was up. Haha. Then we had to air out the built-in carpentry and move our stuff.
Most importantly, in the midst of all these major life changes, we got to spend precious time with our super-senior dog during the final chapter of her life. The typical lifespan of a Japanese Spitz is 12 to 16 years old. Our vet later told us that our dog was the first dog she had seen to survive a pressure sore (at 17 years old, no less) and that later on, she miraculously survived a near-heart attack right after we had moved into our new home.
If you've ever cared for a super-senior dog or cat—especially one who could no longer stand or sit independently – you'll understand how much time and care is required. Caring for her became part of the rhythm of every day: hand-feeding almost every meal, carrying her to drink water, helping her relieve herself, turning her regularly to protect her skin, massaging muscles that ached from lying down, and eventually administering her medication and subcut fluids. Once she could no longer walk, she also developed separation anxiety and needed a human nearby. Thankfully, she had three humans who could adjust their routines around her.
Then I realised: Mundane is exciting.
Sometimes all I needed was to bury my face in her fluffy white coat, and somehow everything felt alright again. Even at 18, her fluffy white coat smelled exactly as I remembered it when I first brought her home at four months old. Her eyesight and hearing remained intact until her very last breath. “She can see you; she can also judge you!” our vet joked in the month before we put her to sleep. She grew up with me from the age of 22 to 40. She was there through my entire young adulthood. Undergrad, postgrad and teaching certificates. Job changes. Heartbreaks. Marriage. Family celebrations. The beginnings of Iron Flora. Perhaps most unexpectedly, she became our matchmaker – that is a story for another day. I have always believed in one simple idea: Love me, love my dog. Both literally and figuratively.
I am also grateful for the friends who have cared for their own super-senior dogs and sent their well wishes to us. It meant a lot. Adjusting to our new routines was the toughest part.
Our awesome vet looked after our senior puppy from the age of 11 until her last breath at 18 years and 3 months. We are looking forward to welcoming another female Japanese Spitz puppy from Australia someday, but they are currently in low supply, so we will just see how things go.
The puppy chooses you, right?
Something else was quietly taking shape
Iron Flora in action, bringing together confidence, awareness, composure and practical self-defence.
Along the way, something else was quietly taking shape. I designed and facilitated a Women Empowerment workshop at Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), which unexpectedly became an eight-session programme, turning Iron Flora into something real. As I later discovered while looking through old teaching notes, however, its roots stretched much further back than I had realised:Why the Name Iron Flora – Strength and Gentleness Can Coexist
Coming home to writing
Turning 40 doesn't feel like starting over. It feels like returning to something I have always loved – writing. This time, I'll be sharing my experiences about teaching, assessment, gardening, cooking, Iron Flora, and the quiet lessons life has taught me along the way.
Maybe I'll read this again when I'm 50 in 2036 and smile. Haha.
If one person leaves knowing a little more than before, then this was worth sharing.
I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it.
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