Story of Your Quarter Life

Jean grew up in a small town in Malaysia thinking she would become a doctor or a dentist. When she was offered a prestigious government scholarship that guaranteed her a placement into a medical course, she turned it down and embarked on a different path. Her journey of self-discovery took her to the US, through biomedical research labs and into the arms of computer science.

Before COVID-19 hit New Zealand, I spent Valentine’s Day 2020 in a dingy dive bar with beer, free food, and bad dancing. The evening culminates in an encounter that pushes my stalling relationship to a crossroads. Also featuring: a German dude who contends that men and women can’t just be friends, and two French girls who strongly believe otherwise.

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Matt Downham loves art. But he had one big problem: he’d freeze up around anything to do with art or creativity. In fact, for Matt, any encounter in daily life had the potential to set off a panic attack. To keep his anxiety under control, Matt shut himself out from much of everyday life: he couldn’t listen to music; he cut out TV and film. Still, the condition coloured every aspect of his life, pushing him as far as dropping out of university.

Now 32, Matt has spent half of his life working through this anxiety. He’s regained a sense of calm and confidence through meditation, and the very thing that triggered many of his panic attacks – art.

Jin Sim escaped the rat race in Singapore to embrace a life of travel, bike rides and rock climbing. But when travelling got so stressful to the point that he was going blind in one eye, he packed up his life abroad and returned home. Since then, he's been learning to hold onto the pieces of life that matter most to him and negotiating a culture he's grown up with but struggled to fit into.