I didn’t always have the determination or perspective on life that you see portrayed in these posts.

While I can't go back and change my past, I can heal and ensure I don't become a horrible person myself. But a lot of this involved unlearning the things that I shouldn't allow to be normal.

Throughout my primary and high school years, I had a lot of interests, but I didn’t have much of an opinion on anything. Then even when I attended the University of New South Wales for my Bachelor of International Studies, I had zero interest in listening to the politics they were trying to teach there. I did not care much about the pro-capitalist stance taught in my International Business major, but I also didn't seek out information on any anti-capitalist stance either. It all simply was what it was.

Even at the end of my studies, when I was working in the alumni department, I didn’t think much about what was going on around me. I didn’t care about their methods of raising funds and how much effort they put into getting into the good graces of wealthy former students.

In fact, I was generally apathetic for most of my life and shrugged my shoulders at the questionable and immoral practices that are considered normal. Perhaps it was in part due to the shambles of my own personal life. I had yet to be in a supportive relationship and my family had never been good role models in any shape or form, so I was so busy just trying to survive that I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to think about the bigger picture.

Now in hindsight, I’m more than mildly grossed out by how pro-status quo the education system I went through has been. But by the time I started showing interest in how the world works, I was no longer a customer of the education system.

When exactly that began, I can’t say for sure. But at some point, that apathy started to melt away. Over time, I grew a greater desire to understand the world around me on a deeper level than any of the basic knowledge the education system could provide. For this, I can safely thank those closest to me who were also going through a similar personal revolution. It’s been kind of like the intellectual version of having a gym buddy — a person who helps to keep us motivated and inspired and is there on the journey with us.

The more I read and learned, the more I started viewing the world through a more critical lens and started understanding how everything worked. There were some books that helped my understanding leap forward quicker than others (such as these), but it took a lot of time and effort. There were times when the knowledge itself was frustrating and exhausting because it bothered me that things seemed so hopeless, and I felt so powerless to make change for the better.

But the people who gave up by deciding to just be angry at the world and the people in it made me angry, too. So I try very hard to not be one of those people because I have a lot of experience hearing how they view the world.

Perhaps my eternal caution stems from spending too much time around individuals who aren’t exactly great people. For example, those who become increasingly arrogant with even the slightest bit of success, those who are bitter towards anyone more successful than themselves, two-faced people who will say things behind others’ backs that they would never say to their faces, and so on. I have also encountered those who manipulate the truth through technicalities, omitting information and phrasing things in a certain way so they can claim to hate liars and that they don’t lie, but in reality, they have no idea how to tell the truth either.

Sometimes, these people have been impossible to avoid, whether that’s because they were guardians of mine and I was too young to go anywhere else, related to someone I was in a relationship with, someone I worked with, a friend of a friend, and so on. Sometimes, they were avoidable, but my naive self actually took them at face value instead of reading between the lines. Removing such people from my life has always been a difficult process. But fortunately, those are all from the past, and I've learned to appreciate what's important since then.

It wasn’t just political economy I was reading either; it was everything I could get my hands on. My quest for knowledge explored physics, chemistry, biology, history, culture, warfare, psychology, engineering, and more. Through those studies, I learnt how important knowledge across all areas is, especially history.

Anyone who tells you that history is boring doesn’t know anything about history. At times it’s so much more absurd and dramatic than anything that exists in popular movies and series. Plus if we shed this simplistic notion of good and evil, the nuance and potential lessons learned are great and many.

History also shows how much of a struggle furthering knowledge has been. There are so many things we know today and take for granted that great minds before us fought for.

It took me most of my life to get here. But I'm confident enough in myself that if anyone accuses me of not actually trying enough, I instantly know they're full of shit. I can recognise when someone is arguing disingenuously with me and hasn't put any thought into their point. I can tell when someone selectively listens to what I say and filters out all the things they don't want to hear. All of this crap, people don't get it past me anymore.

Ultimately, there has never been simply one thing that helped me get to where I am now — it’s a culmination of years of effort. It's a combination of me never giving up and having people around me who were more than just warm bodies fulfilling a socialising meter.

I want to help others do the same. I can't live their lives for them, but I can be a guide.