Twenty-five (or, the boulder on the road)

I am never one to celebrate birthdays — cakes, candles, gifts, presents, even an annual self reflection are a rarity. The way I celebrate my birthday has evolved from bringing cakes back in pre-school, to lunch treats during school years, and now a flurry of LINE stickers in my family’s group chat and short Instagram direct messages from my friends. There would be the occasional long cheesy post by the husband (then boyfriend), or sometimes the sweet messages from closest friends.

This year, however, was different.

For heaven knows what reason, since the beginning of this year I have been feeling very… contemplative. Very aware that my birthday was coming in a month’s time, and that it would be my twenty-fifth. I didn’t know why, but I just dreaded it so. No, it’s not because I’m a year closer to dying (because everyday when we wake up we’re one day closer to dying?) nor is it because I feel old — it’s just, like, if I can evade it, I would.

Consoling me like a good husband that he is, Andhika said the magic words: oh, it’s just your quarter-life crisis.

Okay, first of all, bold of people to assume that we’d all live to 100 years old (Cahya, get off twitter!).

Second of all, oh.

It first began as a simple realization that being twenty-five is not-so-young anymore. Twenty-five is that age when the world internationally recognizes you as a full-fledged adult: youth railcards in Europe ends at twenty-five, many of the youth competitions and conferences set twenty-five as the age limit, and no more $5 off for your museum admission ticket because hey! you’re not young anymore!

If the world could, it would send me a letter that says “Congratulations, you’ve passed your probation on becoming an adult,” magically delivered to my bedside table to be opened at 00.00 on my birthday. (It can be helpful if it can then send me a list of things I need to do as a full-fledged adult, starting with once-and-for-all clear instructions on how to do my taxes because taxes).

This realization then started to grow into fear and insecurity. You’re twenty-five now, my brain said, so you better get your shit together. I began comparing: the up-and-coming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and many of the new wave of Indonesia’s hopeful/would-be legislators) is just four years older, many of the world’s innovative companies were built by their founders at my age, and so many others create a positive impact in the society by creating grassroot organizations, write eloquently on a cause of their choosing, voicing out injustice and the likes. Malala Yousafzai is twenty-one and a Nobel laureate (although to be fair, you can’t expect everyone to be a Malala). These people seeped through my brain and got me thinking: what have I achieved?

Turning twenty-five felt to me like a pit stop for me to decide whether I want to live the rest of my life as an ass-kicking, rocking person or as a passable, but nonetheless happy person. I spent my childhood till my university years thinking I would be…something, someone memorable. Forged by the reality of life and having traded views with people of different backgrounds, I have now realized that really, most of us will most likely be passable and mediocre — but by no means is it wrong, nor sad.

I guess I can attribute this to having matured, coming to terms that there’s so much more in life than having your name printed in the newspaper or a certificate, winning an award or being associated with superlatives.

As someone who has spent most of my life pegging my self-esteem and achievement on how young I am, it’s pretty shocking to lose this predicate. My life was full of being “the youngest” — two years younger than my peers, the youngest person in my class of 2010, the youngest graduate, the youngest employee in my first workplace, the youngest employee in my current workplace, the youngest person to be interviewed by this panel of directors I got them asking “I’m sorry but you’re 19, what the hell are you doing here working?”. Now I’ve run out of titles to be grabbed — there’s no pride and no such thing as the youngest person in this apartment block? There’s a bit of panic and stress seeing waves of new recruits at work being born in 1996. (Okay, that sounded more stupid in writing)

All of a sudden, I felt worthless and less significant compared to my glory days a few years back.

It took me a few weeks of self reflection (and frantic texts to friends — you know who you are) on what it means to grow older, what (or more precisely, whether) specific metrics measure one’s success in life, what makes me happy and such to be at peace with myself again. At the end of the day, there are no wise words to part or mindblowing revelations to make — it is just what it is. People grow old, you grow old and there’s nothing you can do about it but accept it. Embrace it. As a wise friend said, self-acceptance matters.

If I had to re-do my life all over again, perhaps I would whisper to my younger self to stop obsessing over age-based life targets and pegging your self-esteem to how young and achieving you are. Age shouldn’t define you and most definitely shouldn’t limit you on what you believe you can achieve.

Having this conversation in my head, I can’t help but mockingly jeer to myself that all this is just a sorry excuse for being mediocre and not living up to my high school dream of being “someone big”. To her I say: yeah and so what! So what if I fail or if I didn’t win a national prize by the age twenty-five — it shouldn’t, doesn’t and wouldn’t deter me to keep trying anyway.

Twenty-five is just a big, massive boulder on the road called life. And I’m not just going to make a u-turn or shrug as I find a way around it; I’m going to climb it and jump over it gleefully.

Happy twenty-five, me.

On being married.

A lot has happened since the last time I was able to commit to myself to sit down, open my laptop, and jolt something down in this dusty, neglected site.

(To be fair I did write in other medium (hence not mentally burdened by the “write more” goal of 2017 I imposed upon myself) which you can find here. That bit is actually quite cool — I convinced myself to participate in a 15-days writing competition about energy, my field of work where I am passionate about, and apparently got selected as a finalist! Two of the articles I cross-posted on Kompasiana also got featured in their homepage, Twitter, and Facebook which made me excited and nervous at the same time, as these babies got viewed by thousands pairs of eyes. Anyhow, that’s a side story.)

Early last year I got engaged — and in the process of convincing myself that this isn’t a decision I would regret, I wrote down my thoughts hoping that those words would serve as a reminder should I start to falter and freak out (it did help, by the way).

To cut the story short (and no, I won’t delve into the vendor-hunting bits of it), we got married on the eleventh of November last year and as of writing we’ve been married for half a year (shy of one day!).

This is the clichéd part of the blog post where I say “time flies”.

—–

If you ask me, then, how does it feel being married?

To be perfectly frank with you, it feels nice. It is indeed a very anticlimatic and boring choice of word, but it does feel nice.

I used to freak out at the thought of being committed to someone “for the rest of my life” (paraphrasing my engagement post), but many of these days when I see Andhika doing house chores or simply sitting there with his laptop open, I feel grateful that he’d be there for the rest of my life. (A-year-ago-me would feel icky typing that, but well as I said, you can’t logic your way out on this subject.)

It feels nice that someone understands that the number one thing you hate most is doing laundry, and that he’d willingly do it for you. Likewise, I have to understand that he has… different anatomy leading to sleep apnea and rendering you to wake up due to his loud snores.

It feels nice that you can discuss on which Hyrule shrine you should go to next, and hours later in the middle of the night discuss your Individual Development Plan for work and plan your careers together. Sharing notes and lessons learned from our own mentoring sessions are quite productive, too!

And as there won’t be rainbows without rains, there were, of course, down days — those that are more than petty fights over failed dishes and small daily annoyance. I think it’s inevitable — after all you are putting two people with different personalities together in an extended period of time. I still stand by my opinion from years back that these fights will only make you stronger.

We spent more than half of our married months so far being physically apart from each other. I got an assignment in Singapore (another big life update from the past year!) and have been working here since January. This role also requires me to travel quite a bit. Likewise, Andhika’s new job (in which he moved job partially to find a workable arrangement to join me in Singapore!) requires him to travel every now and then, too. This, on top of the first few months of the year where he was still based in Jakarta ends up in us meeting only on few weekends and not more. Some people frowned at this thought of me working abroad and us living separately — certainly not ideal for a newlywed, they thought. However, Andhika and I had agreed before getting married that the marriage should not restrict us in our career and that we’ll find a way to work it out. And after all, there isn’t one model ideal type of marriage and more often than not, overthinking about what others expect you to do don’t get you very far.

More than one person warned me that being married will limit and prohibit you — from reaching your goals, from taking daring decisions, from hanging out with your friends, … and the list goes on.

I would beg to differ. If any, I feel like it expands us. And in a crazier way still, I feel like it grounds us, giving us a firm standing — and in turn propelling you to roam, fly higher. It gives you assurance that there’ll always be something, someone there to return to and catch you should you fall. It strengthens and heals, at once.

—–

 

I was Afraid.

I was afraid.

I will be lying if I tell you that yesterday, when a terrorist attack in front of Sarinah happened and afterwards, I was not.

I was afraid. I was afraid that there could be another bomb, that there could be more lives taken, that there could be more mothers out there that lost their sons and daughters, that there could be more children that would have one less parent.

I passed Sarinah in the morning of 14 January 2016 on my way to a meeting in Bunderan HI area, where my taxi stopped in the red traffic light and people getting off the busway en route to their office. It was a normal morning. I even thought of going to the Starbucks that morning. So, having learned later on the day that the very normal crossroad I passed through was the ground zero for some open gunfire, bombs, and grenades, it was nauseating. I lost my appetite for lunch that day, and was surprised that such thing could happen to my city.

It was also surprising for me how my fellow Jakartans reacted to the attack. It was initially fear (obviously, especially some of us were in the vicinity of Sarinah), and then a sense of unity (for which I applaud), and then spirit to “fight” back (for which I really admire). The hashtags came, from #PrayForJakarta (which I personally think, wouldn’t really affect the exchange rate) to #IndonesiaKuat (strong Indonesia) to #KamiTidakTakut (we are not afraid).

Being in the digital age that we are, of course there are plentiful of memes and stories that arose, the most famous one being the satay vendor that are seen 100 m away from ground zero, already selling the food with a lot of customers waiting for their plates to be served. The point of that post was to show that we, Indonesians, are not afraid. And the day will continue to be normal afterwards.

But for me, the day didn’t. I have calmed down, but I kept my alertness up. If the agendas were not urgent, I didn’t end up going.

An attack did happen, a bomb did blow up, people did die – these are the reasons why I refuse to laugh about the attack.

What I thought was: yes, I should not be drowned in terror because that’s exactly what terrorist attacks are for, but I should not also be careless and take the attack lightly.

And I am writing and sharing my two cents just to spread the message to my fellow Jakartans, we do stand together and united, but please, please also keep in mind that yesterday was real. Although arguably in a smaller scale than what happened in Paris, it was still a terrorist attack. Please don’t let your guard down, please always be mindful of your safety and security.

I’m not trying to exaggerate anything, neither am I understating it.

A terrorist attack is not a small matter.

Stay safe.

Space

Dearest,

You’re a star! You’re a ray of sunshine! You’re as gentle as the moonlight! You’re earth- you’re home!

You’re home.

On judgments & stereotypes: admitting that I love K-Pop.

When I was in high school, I used to dismiss and sometimes laugh at my friends who love K-Pop. For me, a group of men doing synchronized dancing with matching uniform is just too weird and feminine. The girls were too weirdly dressed and the stigma of plastic surgery made me appreciate them less. Granted, their songs might be catchy, but it was not a strong enough pull noting the “plasticity” and the “femininity” factor of K-Pop.

This was until I entered university and the Hallyu wave (or the Korean craze) hit many parts of Asia, including the university that I was studying in. My (male) friend introduced me to Girls’ Generation or SNSD – and boy, karma does exist, it didn’t take me too long to like them and their seemingly perfect legs. It was just a short hype, no longer than two months or so. However, not long after, out of curiosity I heard the more upbeat songs of GD & TOP (of Big Bang). I started with the song “High High” and really, it hooked me almost instantly! I really loved the song (from a musical perspective) (and not to mention TOP’s ultra-sharp jaw line…) and slowly I found their music to be…acceptable.

Cutting the story short, my encounter with SNSD and GD & TOP led me to the world of K-Pop. Surely the synchronized dancing is still pretty much there in the industry, so does the rumors of plastic surgery, and debates about the slavery-like contract of the idols and the immense pressure of Korean showbiz industry – but I got hooked. I find it to be very entertaining at times and I just simply enjoy it.

I have lived days where I would watch SNSD’s The Boys and their live version of Genie over and over again, ship YongSeo in We Got Married, went crazy over Jung Yong Hwa (of CNBlue). Now, I am a HUGE (all-caps, no regrets) fan of Winner (#teamMino), am patiently waiting for Big Bang’s “D” series to be launched in a few hours, am an avid listener of 2NE1, and (you guessed it) a YG stan.

Although I can tell you Song Minho’s birthday (30 March 1993) or the history behind “Banmal Song” (Goguma Couple!), up to this moment I have never really proclaimed or identified myself as a diehard K-Pop fan. I even distanced myself from being labeled as the “K-Pop fan”. When I told my friend that I like a Korean boy group, I spent about a minute or two explaining why I like their songs and how this band is the “okay part of K-Pop industry” and “it’s not what you think it is”.

I have always tried to justify my liking of K-Pop.

I don’t want people to know that I like K-Pop.

The reason behind that is that I don’t want people’s perception around me to change. I’ve always thought and observed that K-Pop has this negative stigma that if you like K-Pop, you are a superficial person that can be really freaky at times who loves feminine guys and plastic girls. It’s almost as if you’re not cool anymore. And I don’t want people to label me as the freaky fangirl.

Truth be told, when I shared something related to K-Pop be it in the real world or in my social networking sites, people would have various responses. Some were positive, some were neutral, but it’s the negative responses that got stuck with me. Some people did say “huh, never thought that you’re that kind of person who likes K-Pop. I thought you’re more of the cool girl who likes Western music”. Some said “what???? What on earth are you doing liking K-Pop??” Some would go as far as “are you really serious now? Do you need me to pour mercury into you so that you’ll come to your senses?” Thus with fear of being mocked at, I shut myself.

I shut myself and conveyed the message that I like Julie London and Ella Fitzgerald (fyi, I honestly do) so that people would still think I’m the okay girl. It is sad that I have to partially conceal myself so that it will be more acceptable to people.

I succumbed to public stereotypes and I let people’s judgment dictate what I do and what I project to the society.

It took me perhaps a couple of years or so to finally realize that my hiding and denying of my musical preference (for God’s sake it’s just a simple thing – music!) is me rejecting a part of me. How would I expect people to be okay with it whereas at the same time me myself is busy denying it? I rejected, looked down and laughed at myself for something that I honestly enjoy! I was not even at peace with myself!

For something as seemingly simple as a favorite artist or musical preference, it was such a drama (ahem, I just made a 804 words long blogpost above to admit that I like K-Pop) and it made me realize how evil judgmental behavior could be. Extending it beyond musical preference, I realized how our millions of little daily activities and decision making is heavily impacted by fear of other people’s judgment or perception on us – what we are wearing today (will this make me look fat? Is this cardigan outdated already? What if people think this is a cheap dress?), what we tweeted or posted in the social networking sites (will this tweet make me look witty? I don’t want to sound stupid or superficial. Is this post consistent with the hipster image I’ve been trying to portray?), what we post in our blog (will this blogpost make my friends laugh at me?).

Let the avid cosplayer cosplay their favorite character; let our romantic, poetic friend post their pages long poem; let our girl friends who love make up do a make up vlog in YouTube; let our activist friends support the cause they believe in. Really, your life is yours to enjoy – don’t let people limit them for you.

K-Pop is just an analogy. Every day, everyone is dealing with stereotypes and judgments. It’s tiring, useless and vain to keep up with what people are expecting us to do. I have finally came to terms with myself –

And finally admitting, I love K-Pop.

P.S.: through this post, please allow me apologize to my high school friends whom I used to laugh at for liking K-Pop. *bows*

P.P.S.: here’s one of my favorite performances of Winner (especially love that first song – Go Up):