Is it alright if I run away for a while?

Today’s news are devastating. When it comes from our closest ones, it’s stressful and saddened. When it comes from the media, it’s confusing and biased. Social media, where it’s usually a place where people showing off their happiness, is showing more obituaries these days and isn’t “strong” enough to show the fake happiness. It used to be laughs, inspiration, pride or maybe envy at the least, but never too much of sadness like these days. So, what should we do?

I don’t know.

People are forced to focus on those devastating news these days. So when it comes to socializing, everything feels different. I just had a reunion with my high school classmates last weekend. Online, of course. The main topic was of course, the pandemic. How half of us were either currently affected or just survived from the virus. No fun topics, not much on some nostalgias, all was about how we tried to listened to those who’s affected. Not that it’s bad. I feel sorry and pray for their recovery. But, is it wrong if, just for awhile, we swift our mind to something less terrifying?

I’m not sure.

But I think that’s what I’m doing right now.

I wrote before that I’m currently somewhat obsessed with musical, especially when it comes to live musical performance, such as Broadway, West End, or anything. Not only I watch it over and over again, I listen to its albums, memorize my fav lines by heart, even spend a lot of times for belting out my fav songs. It’s totally okay, indeed. But there’s actually a reason why I keep staying in that obsession for more than 1 year : none of my friends or family shares the same obsession. It feels like I’m totally alone in this world where I can pour all my emotions without anyone hears about it. It feels like all the laugh, joy and happiness are only for me, not anybody else in my circle. Yes, it feels good to have all the joy for me and myself only. Sounds selfish? Yeah, I know it by heart. But, I really need all the happiness to be absorbed by my soul. I just want to enjoy something by myself. So, I run away to some fictional beauty that only I can enjoy it.

I also found myself into writing. Just small notes about a small fictional words. Not even part of the story in the book I’m currently writing. Just short notes, stories or thoughts of what-if. Mostly I found myself writing it on the break between meetings or before starting the day. Not that I’m gonna explore all those thoughts to be a story. It just feels so good to take a break from a reality. MY reality. I let my mind wanders. To a new world. Or to some other existing fictionized words that I change or add a bit parallel universe from it. As much as I can do just to spend times not staying in current reality. Yes, I run away from my real life. For a while, it feels so good.

Well, I don’t know if it’s actually helping my anxiety or it’s just a false hope. Or, purely a selfish act. Sometimes I feel bad about it because I realized I know little about my surrounding. It looks like I become ignorant to any kind of news. Or, even worse, when I know there were some of my friends affected by Covid-19, I didn’t do much thing. I only asked how they were doing, said a necessary pray for them to get well soon, but doing nothing to help them get through it. Not even checking them on in daily basis. There’s a thought in my mind that saying “I’m exhausted and stressful enough. I can’t even help myself. How can I help others?” It feels wrong, but I just let out a shrug and continue to do what I do in those fake happiness.

But, is it really fake if I really feel it?

Why it feels so wrong these days to let myself enjoying something I can only enjoy?

Is it wrong to run away from all of this? It’s just for a while, though, I promise.

10 Points for Reading Book! How Many Scores for Writing One?

I never thought keeping score would be this depressing. I even never thought that I would be keeping score for everything I’ve done during my break. Welcome to so-called “New Normal” my version.

I don’t know when it all started. I was a super flexible person. Go with the flow. Even when it comes to traveling, I only make lists for the places I’d like to visit. I’m a very punctual person, but I never arrange my day to day in a neat scheduler (except for meetings in work of course). Until recently. During this never ending pandemic/quarantine/stay at home time.

Somehow, there’s a slight anxiety or a terrible feeling when it comes to time for myself. Say that it’s weekend, or even in the evening during weekdays. I’m so scared that I would be doing such an “unproductive” things. I don’t even know what those things are, because, even worse, everything feels so wrong.

I started to make a mental note. A mental list on what I should do during the free time. The list always revolves around my hobbies or things that I love to do. Because I thought it will simply give me a content feeling. Like I’m progressing in something or achieving something. Like I can show to the world, “Hey, do whatever your want to do! But you can’t fuck with me!” The list also revolves around what thing I can learn during this stranded time. Or “produce” something. Like a page of coloring book, or a simple small painting, or a song to be mastered. So, every weekend, starting Friday night, I make a list. How many pages I have to read for a book I currently read (or maybe even finish it during the weekend), how many blog posts, how many TV series/movies that I could watch so I can take it out from my watchlist, how I should spend time for rearranging furniture/bookshelves, how many hours I should spend to play games in PlayStation, what kind of recipes I should try to learn, which songs I should learn, and so on, and so on.

Soon, it became like a chores. Something that if I didn’t do, I would blame myself. I always feel a regret every time I took a nap during weekend, because 1 hour nap could equal to 60 pages book read or 1 song to master with my Ukulele. I hate myself just for laying in bed for hours because my mind is just to tired with everything. What makes it worse, I curse myself just because I watch too many shows or play games longer, instead of reading books or writing. It’s getting difficult to enjoy what I used to enjoy because there’s a race in my head. It’s like I’m keeping score for all those activities I should just enjoy. How many scores you should give to read a book? is it higher than watching your fav show? or is it lower than writing this blog post?

Not to mention how time flies unusually fast these days. I can’t just believe we’ve been in 2^nd half of 2021 and 2019 feels like decades ago. Every day is just another day with the news of your closest friends being affected by Covid-19 or your loved one passed away. I woke up quite early everyday, never past 8 AM. But before I’d done anything, suddenly it’s past midday, and there goes the guilty feeling. “How come I haven’t done anything? Why did I spent another 1 hour just to watch YouTube? Why didn’t I start on writing my book instead? Why should I feel tired all the time? I don’t have time to feel tired!” These train of thoughts haunted me as the time passed. There’s a very big temptation to list down what I had done in a day. Just so I can assure myself that I don’t have to feel like a piece of trash laying on the ground doing nothing. It’s harsh, I know. But It’s true. And It’s getting harder every time.

I don’t know how this happened. Or why. Or how to stop it. Or should I stop it or not. Everything is so biased right now. We don’t know which information is right or whom to believe. It feels like we’re on our own battle and this kind of thoughts is enemy against the anxiety war. The war that everyone has on their own. Will it be over soon? Or does it normal to feel like this during this “new normal”? Because if it does so, then I don’t know what “enjoy” means anymore.

[Book Review] How to Give Up Plastic by Will McCallum (and my thoughts about how to do it here)

How to Give Up Plastic: A Guide to Changing the World, One Plastic Bottle at a Time by Will McCallum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a really practical and handy book for those who want to start to reduce or entirely give up using plastic. Even for someone who started reading it out of curiosity, I want to give myself a try now!

Here you can find how to smart small, or even how to smart ambitiously fighting over using plastic in our community. It’s a good to try. This book provide literally everything you need to know or prepare to start the movement. From your own bedroom to something bigger like your community, or even how to organize a protest.

View all my reviews

Reading this, i can even imagine it’s double the effort from what the writer write, as in my country, saving environment from plastic is still not being a main and favorite issue. I just realized how hard it would be to be a zero-plastic here in Indonesia. We just started the movement which now plastics are banned from any convenience store, mini-markets, supermarkets and even some of big restaurants chain. It’s a good start, indeed.

But then, I look around. My dressing table are full with plastic bottles. My makeups, lotions, shampoos, soaps are stored in a plastic-made storage. We don’t have many choice such as Lush in here, it’s even considered a luxurious thing. We don’t have drinking water. Our water tap is undrinkable and we need to rely so much on mineral waters. I don’t know if our government organizes or manages our trash in the landfill, whether there’s any movement for recycling the trash or not. Thus, I’m still concerned when it comes to sorting my household waste, coz’ I’m always being a skeptic that it’ll be still treated the same in the end.

God, It’ll be indeed a long journey. Anyone here in Indonesia could recommend me some of plastic free, organic stuff that I can use for my household? Local brand are much appreciated so we can support local business as well!

Am I Turning Into An Introvert?

Is it possible? Coz’ I feel like one now. Especially after a year stay at home due to this pandemic. A year with no traveling, meeting friends through video calls or doing groceries by online.

My office enacts the “Work From Home” since March 2020. Starting 2 weeks after that, It was the first time I have an anxiety. I was having a mild depression. I had insomnia for don’t know how many nights. I felt fatigued every night. My eyes became sore and keep excreting gunk whole day. Seeing screens never felt so exhausting and frustrating like then. Some of my close friends who know me try to reach me out coz they know for real that an Extrovert like me would felt so much stressed in this kind of situation. I can say the first 2 months was hard for me. I knew what to do, but it’d mean I had to go out of home, chill in a cafe/bar, meet some friends, etc, which are impossible to do. It felt like I didn’t have much choices and had to accept the truth that I’m going to lose my mind. What a sad, distressing and painful days of my life.

Then I started to read again. A hobby that was somehow forgotten for about more than a year. I remember I started with one of the book that saved my life last year : Filosofi Teras by Henry Manampiring. This book really helped me with the stress management. I learnt about Stoicism and practically since then I practice it day by day. Suddenly I found the way to be happy again in such challenging time. I read and I read. Nonfictions, fictions, histories, autobiographies. It helped my mind to have some rests from the reality and merge into many worlds books could offer. It gave me a lot of new perspectives and reminded me to keep being an open-minded, which really helped me to be grateful somehow. And most importantly, gave me lots lots of idea on how to strive in this situation. Very much needed indeed. I managed to read 24 books since March until the end of 2020.

The books I managed to finish from May – Dec 2020

Then, I started to write again. I remember I started it by writing a journal. From 5 minutes per day before starting to work, to 1 page minimum per day, then suddenly I began to write about my mind a lot. I wrote basically about everything. About things I found in works, or about books I read, and most likely what scared me the most those days. Somehow it helped me to rearrange my scrambled mind. I started to make list on what to achieve during the locked down. Then, I reactivated my blog. I joined a challenge to write everyday for 30 days (you can find my 30-days-writting-challenge here). Writing helped me to find a purpose in such limited situation.

Writings reminded me that I always have a target every year to learn something new. I decided to learned Spanish and Japanese. Also, I learned how to draw. The latter helped to face my old fears. And suddenly I have this second profile on Instagram here where I usually put two things I wanna learn during this time; drawing and story telling. I never imagined before that drawing would help to reduce my anxiety a lot. Sometimes I felt like I got into the zone and snoozing off from the rumble I had in my mind and suddenly felt the serenity within. I learned to appreciate more to the process than the result only. Now, I’m learning the next art I want to master; playing a music instrument. After a long call meeting, I tried to take a deep breath and spent 10 minutes to play or learn a song. It’s surprising me how 10 minutes can make mind and soul so refreshed!

I spent a long time feeling terrible about how unproductive I was being. Then, I spent time trying to forgive myself for all that judgment. Now, I’m just grateful for creativity, whenever it comes and in whatever form.”
Gavin Creel, one of my fav Broadway star, on how to cope during this pandemic that I can 100% relate

So, yeah, basically Reading, Writing and Arts really helped me this past 1 year. Then, I just realized, I’m getting more and more uninterested in going out and meeting people. Not only I’m still kinda afraid with the virus, but it’s like I feel that I can find more happiness and calmness here at home, by myself. When my office announced that the WFH is extended until further notice, there’s a part of me that saying “yaayy!”. Though I know, I’d be delighted seeing my friends again later, I’d be okay to stay like this for a little longer time until everything is much better. Am I turning into an Introvert? Ambivert? Or am I simply adapting? Any ways, I’m enjoying my life and grateful for it.

Day 4, Quote 4, by Bill Gates

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
Bill Gates

When I read this quote, I was super thrilled! Why? Because I totally can relate! Hahaha!

So, sorry before if it’s not an inspiring post from a quote (yea, like I ever write any inspiring posts. hahah!). I just want to share a silly story about my life, as a lazy person. Who feels affirmed and justified after reading the quote.

I am known among my friends that I’m much of an effortless person. When it’s suddenly raining, I won’t run because….I’ve been wet already, why would I run? And running on the rain is quite dangerous cause it could be slippery, isn’t it? Haha, I know, I know. It’s been always like that. If I don’t see it fits (the way I see it fits) or effective.

But, come to think of it, this thinking about found an effective way to do something has been started since I was a kid. I remember when I need to do some chores, I created a path in my mind. Like, which “route” I need to take so I don’t need to pass through the same place, in my own house, and do the chores based on that order. Like creating a circle line in my head, so it’d reduce the “production time” to finish all of it as fast as I could. Worse, (or maybe better?), I could be too judgy to other people when I think they should so things more effective way.

Anyway, It’s always been like that since then. Every time I do my work checklist, I always think which way to do it as fast as I could…simply because I’m too lazy to have overtime. All I can think is I want to have more spare time for other things. To have that so-called work-life balance. I know, in the other side, it could affect the result. But, as to do things fast is already being my nature, I’ll just need to focus on how to do the things right.