Recently, I was interviewed for Calibre, the Public Mutual Funds members’ magazine.

One of the subjects I raised was mental health.

Although the pandemic devastated many lives, an unexpected upside is the more open discussion about mental health issues brought on by the effects of prolonged social isolation.

This is a complete pivot from the past, when anything related to mental health was swept under the carpet for fear of stigmatisation. I should know: working in a pressure-cooker corporate environment, I faced burnout at the tail end of my career and was struggling with mental health issues, but back then, talking about it was equivalent to professional suicide.

Thanks to a freak highway accident, however, I was fortunate to be able to quit honourably at the peak of my career and reinvent myself as a writer. How many more people are that “lucky”?

As a freelance journalist who specialised in travel writing, I was directly impacted by the pandemic. But because of my past experience of pivoting from ground zero, it was not too difficult to shift my mindset, once I had come to terms with the fact that my life might have changed irrevocably by COVID19.

I went on a learning and upskilling spree. I signed up for multiple online courses, including a free online course offered by Harvard, and am still learning new stuff every week. I levelled up my website creation knowledge significantly. I even learned to make cooking videos – and am now the proud owner of a kickass Youtube cooking channel ☺.

Thanks a million, Khor Hui Min for selecting me to be interviewed.