32 Going On 23 : So Many Questions To Answer

Hello abandoned blogs! 

(source : here)

One quick story first. So after abandoning this blog for almost one freakin year, this blog finally retaliated on me just now and decided to give me a little scare earlier by not giving me any access to it since I am now using a new device (my old laptop, that I usually used to access my blog, has stopped working couple of months ago and since then, I have never used this new laptop to access my blog. Thanks to that, Google stubbornly refused to give me access to the blog since it did not recognize this device and I could not access the email address I used to sign up for this blog). I swear, I almost cried 😭 I mean, I know this is not some kind of major blog that is actually useful for me in anyway (you know, other than this being one of my media to self deprecatingly whine about my life) and I write very rarely here (I believe I only write here one time this year), but this is like the only blog that I actually use and come back from time to time since 2010 and the thought of letting this one go after all those years and all those thoughts and all those writings to make another blog and start writing again kinda freaked me out. It's kinda similar to waking up with an amnesia and having to start building your forgotten identity from the scratch again (maybe. I don't know. I have never had amnesia in my life before)

But I finally found a way to access this blog again and here I am! 

Phew. 

Okay, let's get back what I want to write.

I don't actually have any important things to write as nothing important is going on in my life (as per usual) but I figured that I have to somehow kick start my brain into working after being in a snooze mode for so long. There are a couple of things that I need to do in my near future and I kinda need my brain to work properly and in order to make that happen, I need to warm up my brain and force myself to focus and concentrate and do something with my laptop other than watching too many videos or reading too many drama recaps. Hence, this blog post. 

But then, what to write? Again, I have nothing important to write because I literally have nothing going on in my life that could be super important. I'm not even in one of those somber mood I usually have to whine about my life and do nothing about it. So after spending a couple days wondering what I could write (and don't get me wrong. Spending a couple days wondering what to write does not mean that I am being totally serious about writing. It just means the thought about writing only comes intermittently between watching videos, reading drama recaps and working), I decided to write a little something out of respect to my birthday that took place almost a month ago. I am now officially 32 years old.

Writing my own age kinda gives me the chill. I am old 😝

How it feels to be old (source : here)

But here's the thing, being old does not mean I have it all together. On the contrary, my life has never possessed so many existential questions that keep haunting me every single days like now, waiting in the back of my mind for them be solved or answered in some ways.  I usually ignore all these questions altogether (a decision which would backfire on me from time to time as it usually keeps me awake at night), but I figured I should just try to formulate some kind of responses towards those questions for once and write it into a blog post - a birthday reflective journal, if you'd like. 

Without further due, here are some of those questions: 

1. How does it feel to be 32?

You know, it actually feels weird.

For real (source : here)

Truth to be told, I have never imagined myself being 32 before. When I was way, way younger (like, still going to high school younger), the oldest I have ever imagined myself being was 27 years old. And like any other high-schoolers, I imagined myself to have a bright blinding future by the age of 27 with house, marriage and children to boot. Of course, I have none of that at the moment 😛 I have never once imagined myself being 32 years old as a government employee with small salary still living in a rented room in Jakarta with no career, marriage or dating prospect in the horizon. And this is where it gets weird because, well, I'm okay. I feel okay. Being 32 is okay.

Hello there, young little shits (source : here)

Of course, I have concerns (many of them) and there are things I need to start thinking about seriously because time waits for no one and I have to keep my life priorities straight. Of course, all of these adult stuffs sometimes keep me awake at night and refuse to let me sleep peacefully. Of course, sometimes I feel insecure about myself and life in general and compare myself with many of my friends that seem to have their life figured out. Of course, there are some life decisions that I regret and make me wish that I took science class more seriously so I could have built a time machine to fix all my past mistakes. Of course, my current self is still not the best I wanted to be and there are things I wish to change but despite all of that, I still feel okay.

(or at least that's what I've been telling myself to get me sleep at night 😂)

My reality (source: here)

I guess, as many things in life, being older has both its downside and upside. You can just google all the downsides (slowing metabolism, fear to get out of comfort zone and adult acnes are REAL!), so I'm just going to talk about the upsides. For me personally, the biggest advantages of being older is probably the fact that it kinda calms me down, emotion-wise. Growing up, I have been struggling a lot with social anxiety/social fear (am still not completely sure how to name this thing I always have as I have never once been to a psychologist) and there were times where things got so much harder. But I guess, time really does help and with each of life experiences I gained along the journey, I think I am getting better and better at handling social situation or interaction which used to give me a hard time before. I'm not saying it's totally disappeared as it's going to be a part of who I am (even now) but being older kinda helps me to put a lot of things in perspective and helps me moving forward one step at a time so much better. So cheers to being older.

Shake it like you're old (source : here)

2. Do you want to get married? Why are you not married?

The ONE question everyone and their parents wants to know 😜 You know, I used to answer 'sure' every-time someone asked me this question. My parents want me to get married, almost all of my friends and everyone else in this world are married so marriage sounds like a surefire thing to do in the future. But here's the thing - I did think about this question seriously one night and my mind got really murky because I could not completely and sincerely say for sure that I want to get married. I mean, yes I do want to get married sometimes but the reasons behind this wish are mostly practical in nature. In my mind, marriage has a lot of things to do with property ownership - I need to be married because I desperately need someone to share mortgage with or own property together because it's dangerous for a woman like me to be living alone. Plus I need someone to fix the lamp, bathroom and the kitchen because my mind cannot be bothered to worry about plumbings and all that jazz. And it would be so much better if my spouse can drive.

But that's not what marriages supposed to be, right? I mean, marriages are supposed to be about love and affection and commitment. Otherwise, all those roles I just mentioned can just be filled by someone who gives bigger salary, security officers and drivers respectively.   

This is where it gets really confusing for me because truth to be told, romantic feelings are something that I'm not entirely sure about. The best way I could explain this is by saying that marriage is like any organization or company in the world - you need to have certain characteristics to fit in into the culture or the concept of marriages. Thus, there are some people who are compatible to the idea of marriages and some people who are not (yet?) compatible. And one of the most prominent characteristics probably the ability to initiate romantic feeling which personally, still a completely uncharted territory for me so I do have this niggling suspicion that I belong in the latter category.

Romantic feelings? Gross (source : here)

Furthermore, I also believe, at the very least, marriage requires advanced communication and social skills which is still a work in progress for me. I mean, building a healthy and functional relationship requires me to be brave enough to put myself out there in the world and experience all different things that this beautiful world could offer but the prospect of talking to strangers have been and, still is, a struggle for me. There, I put it in writings for anyone to read - I am too awkward to build a healthy romantic relationship 😝 In addition to being socially awkward to a very painful degree, my insecurities and my tendency to overthink does not help my case either. To be completely honest, I have never been in any serious relationship for as long as I have lived. Sure, I did have dates (and even a couple of dangerous dates that could get me in serious trouble. As serious as being disowned by my own family) but none of those dates meant or sparked something for me. For now, there are always walls between me and any prospect of romantic relationships because I cannot, for the love of God, completely trust any human beings in this world.

Note that I write human beings because this is an important point that I am going to be talking next. Me not being married has nothing to do with my sexuality. There, I said it.

Strangely enough, I have received many questions/accusations of some sort about my sexuality (most of the times, people suspected me of being gay), which has always been both amusing and perplexing at the same time since, well, how does being not married have to do with sexuality? I mean, there are people with different sexual orientations in this whole wide world and those people have no problem building romantic relationships (yes, plural) and even get married! This is why every single time someone suspected my sexuality, I'd just looked at them and wonder - how does one get so stupid? Like, seriously. How is it possible for someone to be that stupid?

Dummies. Dummies everywhere (source: here)

So yeah. Being single has nothing to do with sexuality. I am just way too pathetic and have problem connecting romantically with anyone in this world.

Well, maybe not the flashing (source : here)

3. But seriously though. Do you want to get married? 

More than just wanting or having desires to be married, the concept of marriages kinda makes me curious because it would take a very special person to be able to encourage me to step out of my shell and convince me that I'm able to build a healthy, functional and romantic relationship with that particular person. I have never met anyone like that before so it kinda makes me curious in so many levels - what kind of person he would be? Would I be able to meet him in this lifetime? Or have I met him before and just passed him because of my shortcomings as a human being? Would I ever stopped being so insecure and anxious in life and be someone that are marriageable? Would marriage make my life better?

I really have a lot of curiosity in life and marriage certainly is an interesting mystery. 

I am so curious yeaaaahhhh (source: here)

4. How do you see yourself in the future? Say, five years into the future? 

Now this is an interesting question. And a terrifying one because really, I don't know. This is the kind of question I constantly ask myself and since the answers never present themselves immediately, this question becomes one of the biggest burden on my shoulder and keeps me awake at the night. In the last five years, I have been avoiding this question continuously by putting myself firmly in the middle of stupid comfort zone where it gets me literally nowhere. I know, more than anyone, that I have to stop running around in circles and do something about my life because time waits no one.

Time to change!! (source: here)

In regards to that, I do have several things I wish to do in the near future. 

First of all, work. I've been working as a government employee for the last 10 years *gasp* and my current workplace is certainly not going to be nominated as the best workplace ever in this lifetime. The atmosphere there is absolutely toxic and for me personally, the worst thing about working there is that there are so very little opportunities for self development or career advancement because if you have no one to back you up, you will always end up in the bottom of the food chain. So I definitely need to move away from there - either by moving back close to my parents, finding another opportunity to study abroad or finding another place to work outside the government. 

COMING SOON (source: here)

Secondly, study. I've always been a studious person in nature so I've been looking around for another opportunity to study (hopefully, abroad). I've had several next study options in mind - either business intelligence or further study in psychology to get my psychologist degree.  So yeah, definitely looking around for the next exciting opportunity to study.

Thirdly, writing. Just like everything in my life, I have been putting writing on hold for the last five years. I think the last time I've done serious writing was like, I don't know, four years ago? Other than being stuck in the comfort zone, I guess writing has become really complicated for me as there's this unspoken pressure that I give to myself to publish another books.  I'm scared that my next work is not going to be good enough and that there would be no publishers wanting to publish my works anymore. 

But five years is a very long time to stop myself from writing and I've been missing writing so much. Regardless of whether my next work is going to be published commercially or not, I really want to get back to writing and build so many fictional worlds. I'm going to start this soon. Very soon. 

What to write what to write (source: here)

That's about it! Phew. 

I finished one post!!! Celebrate!!!! (source: here)

Cheers,

Si Mbak. 

  

   

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