Roaring Twenties.

And a decade passed. Most things have changed to their dramatic extent, others remain as if time never elapsed. What the hell happened to the first half of our roaring twenties anyways?

Ever since I set foot on this adulthood land, I knew I wouldn’t have survived a day had I kept the horribly know-it-all attitude with me. I have reached a quarter now and by nearly everyone’s standards, I’m supposed to freak out. For some, it means your career should be soaring that you’re already leading a small team in foreign countries or at least you’re on your way to Oxford on a full ride. Or for some others, it is to settle in your cozy home with a tiny family you dearly love, or have a pet too, basically feel content about life as we all should, I think. Or, what, pursuing a nomadic life across Asia, East Europe, Latin America, or where the fuck ever right. I’d lie if I said I did not pass out sometimes grappling with questions of life that my younger-self thought was all figured out. I was wrong ladies and gents.

The first hard truth one must accept when sailing into this adulthood is this:

you are not who you’d think you’d become.

And I find that pretty tough to swallow. We end up in places we never even thought we’d ever be in, the same way it hurts your pride when someone asks, who even the hell do you think you are in the middle of important dinner with people so very, very important right. But I guess with time, that obsession of wanting more and more in life faded a bit. You kind of just, like, accepted it, as if to say it was time to let go of the whatever pride you had grown in your toxic childhood where everyone was so supportive towards everything you wanted. It’s now a constant pondering of either nah you’re a nobody or hey you’re actually greater than who you think you are. Somewhere between those two.

Why? Our views evolved. We may have read and watched shit that stopped us from doing what we once thought we loved. We’ve gone a lot deeper to discover more and more truth about ourselves. We got bored, we no longer like the old shit we used to be obsessed about.

The twenties is roaring indeed. Now every month you have dates marked so you’re not behind in car payment, insurance, mortgage, credit card and all the boring adult shit, I know, just all money headache right. Counterintuitively, I now care about things I used to shrug away because life was less hard when you’re less pressured to make difficult choices that affect the next 5-10 years of your life, or somebody outside yourself. It’s a non-stop calculator in the back of your head, constantly mitigating risk and managing priorities. That’s just one aspect of adulthood. Mental stability is another. You’re expected to be damn good at it, ten times better than yesterday.

I remember there were times it was so hard trying to be still when there are dogs biting your both legs, figuratively. I mean that’s just what adulthood means mostly, to be able to motherfucking sulk it up doesn’t matter if the dogs biting you come with a bunch of mosquitos too (sorry for a lot of animal references). You should feel ok regardless how many hits you are taking from all sides, how sometimes you’re sorry for the things you’re not even responsible for, all for the sake of your long-term sanity, and for the sake of being mature. I mean mature = giving zero fucks really about shit that don’t matter and bury the hatchet every second you are about to punch that wall so hard. Or sue someone’s ass.

Being in the roaring twenties also have brought me ample proof of how life is differently similar from time to time. Like these:

  1. Confidence can regress in some parts, for instance now I no longer have the audacity I used to have and love a lifetime ago, to speak in public and just dominate the damn room. I’d rather watch let someone else do the talking and only step in when needed, or asked to.
  2. Finding the right hobby is the hobby. One day you’re excited to code in a new language, the next day speaking Mandarin fluently or mastering the next-level shit of everything from diving, surfing, Muaythai or whatever. Or develop a do-nothing routine more extensively than ever. Watching funny standup comedians being genius and all.
  3. There’s another new adult who entered our adult group and can’t shut up about being an adult trying to out-old everyone in the room.
  4. I seem to have lost my appetite in a long list of things to which extent I fear it might be early signs of growing apathy. You know when it’s getting a lot harder to genuinely be excited about something, even faking it could often feel enforced. Man I get seriously bored fast and often feels like ‘i’ve seen this somewhere and it’s bad man’. Yea, that.
  5. Whatever, like any stupid young adult, we all want to edit life. To take some parts out and replace them with decent shit. Hehehe. But I wanna believe I don’t regret anything in my life but I also kinda want to.
  6. I’m always tired. I love diving deep into sports but shit travelling now to me is a deep longing to be comforted in a nice room secluded from shit I hate. And I’ve grown so much hate for shit tons of things now. It is not good.
  7. I’ve grown bitter. For whatever reason, I lost some of the saint traits I had along the way. Like now when people see a highly-accomplished individual, or for putting people before me, it is not something I see or feel in myself anymore.
  8. Sounds cliche. My trajectory forward of course appears increasingly uncertain. It’s just sliding into one thing after another, whichever way the wind is blowing for now.
  9. Music? same old me. only stick to what I know. some curios asses who found my ass on spotify texted “why are u listening to this same playlist literally everyday?” Coz I can and love them.
  10. I still love to grind. Just in much smaller scale, coz Id rather be lazy on the beach or soak in cold river. There are times my friends and I rent a place just to not talk to each other for the 24 hours or more.
  11. I am not fast anymore.
  12. weird shit attracts me more.
  13. u feel shitty all the time. thrown against the wall. in theory you know damn fine to not lash out but, go help us, it is so hard. i bit my tongue a lot.

Guess that’s all a quick recap Ive been wanting to do since……last chritsmas or new year but, uh, life right. So, be back soon when I’m less lazy.

I wanna be a pilot.

I remember at about 4 or 5 years old, a boy would repeat himself “mau jadi pilot” whenever someone asked him the world’s most overrated question for children.

My uncle who was a farmer in Sumbawa would take me to our farm just 10m off the runway of the only airport there. In that 40-something degree, we sat and saw the first iron bird I’d seen flying above me and ready to make a landing. It passed me by fast I held on to my uncle’s arms against the wind so strong I even thought I could fly.

I could play that moment over and over in my head. An astonished boy surviving the idea that something could actually fly (no I was not introduced to Newton’s theory yet). Ever since, I remember collecting all used papers at home and started making those paper planes and took one with me and flew it on my way back home from kindergarten, while attempting the ‘whir’ sounds.

Flying wasn’t really a mode of transport a working class family could afford back then let alone it was 2 years after the crisis. So my grandpa and grandma took me and my sister to Java for the first time on a bus. In the course of that 30-hour ride, I slept on their lap sometimes waking up beautiful stars, other times at sea on a big ferry carrying our big buses and trucks. That time I knew I was in love with this big floating thing on the free ocean. Ever since, all I’d ever done was trying to recreate the ferry out of boxes. I was just busy imagining and playing. Suddenly I stopped telling people I wanted to become a pilot.

A few years forward, with the rise of local superhero movies like Saras and Panji Milenium, I was a new boy wanting to become the Superman (I had 5 shirts that had wings). This age I was at, my aunt who raised me for some years would always shake me in bed very early and asked “there’s a big mess at the market! are you gonna help save the world today?!” and there I was jumping out of bed excited to be a hero with my wing shirt already put on. My aunt made me feel extremely welcome with whoever it was I aspired to be, even at that age.

From my grandpa to great women, each took turn to welcome all of my dreams, whatever, and however strange they might be.

And then schooling happened. I learned that I wanted to become an entrepreneur so I could make a lot of money and helped build a theme park for the big family I was a part of and friends I cared about.

And then it was a singer. Everywhere I went, my father and everyone would ask me to sing parts of whatever adult songs that were trending that time. I was so certain I wanted to become a professional singer I even pursued this path quite seriously until I was about 15. A lot happened. My life fluctuated dramatically.

And I went to see some parts of the world and decided I wanted to become a lawyer. Or an environmental engineer. At one point it was a full-time activist. A smart tech startup founder (how all this computer science trap began). Sometimes it is a spy I wanted to become and get rid of the already established identity. But here comes the big but we’ve heard a million times: you can be anything in this world, but not everything, for life is damn short. But I say fuck it, for life is short, make sure you do everything in your power to know yourself so damn well and try everything that scares you that you don’t ever wish to have lived this life differently tomorrow.

…

At 25 where most people think they know what they’ve always wanted, or a clearer idea of who they are, I’m still busy reinventing and experimenting with myself. For the most part, I believe I know myself more than what a people reader could tell me. I’m just a work-in-progress that is far from finished. Even for people whom we’ve met and known who tell you they’ve found their passion a lifetime ago might still switch careers on the last minute, hop on that last train when nobody’s watching, move oceans away and work on a new identity tomorrow, and god knows what. Because it’s another world’s greatest BS when someone walks on earth and acts as if they had everything figured out.

The world is a small and big place. For the hungry ones, it’s a thick-ass book to explore and understand. The only constant is change am I ryte?

Keep fucking reinventing.