Goh Ling Yong : The User Manual for a Person I No Longer Am - Goh Ling Yong
The Moleskine notebook felt alien in my hands, a relic from a different civilization. Its black faux-leather cover was cracked at the spine, and the elastic band had long since lost its tension, hanging loose like a tired sigh. I found it in a box labeled “Old Projects,” buried beneath a fossilized hard drive and a tangle of obsolete charging cables. It wasn’t a journal, not really. It was an operating system.
Flipping through the brittle, cream-colored pages, I saw the ghost of a man I barely recognized, but whose handwriting was unmistakably my own. It was a script of furious efficiency, tiny and cramped, every millimeter of paper colonized by tasks, flowcharts, and productivity mantras. “Optimize morning caffeine intake (trial A/B testing).” “Re-read Seneca; extract actionable stoicism.” “Draft five-year plan (Q3 revision).”
It was a user manual, I realized, for a machine that ran on anxiety and ambition. A machine that had my face and my name, but whose core programming has since been wiped. And as I sat there on the floor of my dusty storeroom, I felt a strange urge to read the instructions, to understand the design flaws and outdated features of the person I fought so hard to be, and then, thankfully, failed at being.
Section 1: Quick Start Guide
Model: GLY-2015 (Codename: “The Architect”)
Power Source: External validation, caffeine, fear of obscurity.
Primary Function: To achieve. The specific nature of the achievement was secondary to the act of achieving itself.
To operate the GLY-2015, one did not need to understand its inner workings. In fact, it was designed to discourage such inquiry. The interface was simple, polished, and predictable.
- Initiate Interaction: Begin with a question about his current project or a recent accomplishment. The unit will respond with well-rehearsed, humble-sounding summaries of its workload. This is its preferred mode of social engagement.
- Provide Input: The unit processes data in the form of problems to be solved, systems to be optimized, or goals to be conquered. Emotional or ambiguous input may cause the system to lag or revert to a default “active listening” script while it searches for a tangible problem to address.
- Expect Output: The unit will generate plans, solutions, and neatly organized lists. It can be relied upon for productivity hacks, book recommendations (non-fiction only), and a relentless, forward-moving optimism that is both impressive and, in hindsight, utterly hollow.
This was the person I presented to the world: a well-oiled machine of competence. Friends saw me as the reliable one, the one who had it all figured out. Colleagues saw a tireless engine of output. I saw myself as a project to be managed, a timeline to be met. The Architect. I was building a life, brick by painful, meticulous brick, without ever stopping to ask if I wanted to live in the house I was constructing.
Section 2: Core Features & Operating Instructions
The GLY-2015 came pre-installed with several key features that, at the time, I considered upgrades.
Feature: Emotional Invisibility Cloak. This was a passive-aggressive defense mechanism that rendered all complex feelings—sadness, fear, doubt, profound loneliness—undetectable to external users. A friend’s painful breakup would be met with a five-point plan for “post-relationship personal growth.” A family member’s illness was a logistical challenge to be managed. My own grief over a loss was sublimated into a 100-hour work week. The cloak worked by converting the messy, high-bandwidth data of human emotion into the clean, low-bandwidth data of tasks. It was ruthlessly effective.
Feature: The Future-Focus Lens. This default setting kept the unit’s perspective permanently locked five to ten years in the future. The present moment was merely a stepping stone, a blurry and inconvenient necessity on the path to a hypothetical, better-organized tomorrow. Joy was deferred. Rest was a liability. Relationships were evaluated on their long-term strategic value. This lens ensured that the machine never had to confront the emptiness of its present, because it was always staring at a dazzling, imaginary horizon.
Operating Instructions for Social Gatherings:
- Arrive on time, but with a plausible reason to leave early (“big presentation tomorrow”).
- Position yourself near the periphery, allowing for easy observation and minimal deep engagement.
- Maintain a 2:1 ratio of asking questions to talking about yourself. When you must talk about yourself, revert to Project Status Updates (see Quick Start Guide).
- Identify the most “productive” person in the room and engage them in a discussion about industry trends.
- Deploy one (1) self-deprecating but ultimately self-aggrandizing anecdote.
- Execute departure protocol.
Reading this now, it seems comical, pathetic. But at the time, it was survival. It was the only way I knew how to navigate a world that felt chaotic and terrifying. If I could control my inputs and outputs, if I could turn my life into a predictable algorithm, I believed I could not be hurt.
Section 3: Troubleshooting & System Warnings
Of course, the machine was riddled with bugs. The manual I was mentally reconstructing had a long and troubling troubleshooting section.
Error Code 404: Emotional Intimacy Not Found.
- Symptom: Unit powers down or becomes unresponsive when confronted with genuine vulnerability from another person. May deflect with humor, unsolicited advice, or a sudden need to check emails.
- Cause: Deep-seated programming that equates vulnerability with systemic weakness.
- Flawed Solution: Reroute all processing power to work-related tasks. Initiate a new, ambitious project. The distraction should reset the system within 24-48 hours.
Error: Spontaneous Despair Loop.
- Symptom: Late at night, when external stimuli are low, the unit may enter a recursive loop of self-criticism and existential dread. The Future-Focus Lens occasionally flickers, revealing the stark, unadorned present.
- Cause: A critical flaw in the core operating system; a conflict between the desire for meaning and the pursuit of mere achievement.
- Flawed Solution: Manually override with sleep-aid medication or 3-4 hours of mindless internet browsing. Do not, under any circumstances, allow the unit to remain idle with its own thoughts.
These were the patches and workarounds I used to keep the machine running. But they were just that: patches. They didn’t fix the fundamental design flaws. And every user manual has a warnings section. Mine was written in the fine print I chose to ignore for years.
WARNING: High Risk of Relational Failure. This unit is not designed for partnership. Its core programming prioritizes productivity over presence. It will remember anniversaries and birthdays by calendar alert but forget the sound of your laughter. It will offer to fix your problems but will be incapable of simply sitting with you in your pain. Prolonged use in an intimate setting will result in the corrosion of trust and the eventual, inevitable system failure of the relationship.
WARNING: Warranty Void If Subjected to Stillness. This model requires constant motion. Rest is not a feature; it is a system error. If left idle, the machine’s internal noise—the whirring of anxieties, the grinding of unmet expectations—becomes deafening. The warranty on its projected happiness is immediately voided upon any attempt at meditation, quiet reflection, or purposeless vacationing.
I ignored these warnings until the day the entire system crashed. It wasn’t a single, dramatic explosion. It was more like a slow, grinding hardware failure. It came in the form of a panic attack on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning, my heart hammering against my ribs as I stared at a color-coded spreadsheet that suddenly felt like a page of ancient, indecipherable text. All the systems, all the carefully constructed routines and defenses, went offline at once.
The Architect was buried in the rubble of his own creation. The machine was broken. And for the first time in a decade, I was terrifyingly, wonderfully, still.
Section 4: Discontinuation Notice & Legacy Support
You can’t repair a machine like that. You can only salvage it for parts. The GLY-2015 has been officially discontinued. There will be no new versions, no software updates. It’s a legacy product, an artifact of a life lived on someone else’s terms—the terms of a scared young man who believed his worth was something to be earned, proven, and displayed.
The new model is a messier piece of equipment. It’s slower, less efficient. It has no user manual. Its operating instructions change daily. It gets overwhelmed in crowds sometimes. It cries during sad movies. It spends entire afternoons doing nothing more productive than watching the way the light filters through the leaves of the tree outside the window.
But it has new features I wouldn’t trade for anything. It has a capacity for presence. It can listen without trying to solve. It has a beta version of a feature called “Self-Compassion,” which is still buggy but shows promise. Its primary power source is no longer external validation, but a fragile, growing core of internal acceptance.
I closed the old Moleskine notebook and put it back in the box. I don’t need it anymore, but I won’t throw it away. It’s a reminder. A warning. And in a strange way, a map. Not of where to go, but of how far I’ve come. It’s the user manual for a person I no longer am, and my gratitude for his retirement is exceeded only by my compassion for the fear that built him. The warranty on that old life has long since expired, and I have finally learned that the best things in this one come with no guarantee at all.
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