The Dynamics of Personal Boundary

As we grow older, we’re selecting our values and principles which are changing from time to time. What meant to us when we were 10s may no longer affects us in our 20s. Our perspective towards certain things may change in many ways.

As our values are getting more dynamic, our circle of people may also change. We tend to hang out with people who has similar frequency and value towards life. Not necessarily though, yet personally I’d like to hang out with people who like to compromise and respect my personal boundary.

I’m still learning in setting my own personal boundary and respecting others boundary, but one thing I learned is that one’s personal boundary could be fluid through the time. By observing others and my experience, I learned that human values can be flexible due to different environments and social circle. This is not a problem actually, but learning how to respect someone’s personal boundary could be tricky.

Coping Inferiority through Adlerian Psychology and Johari Window Model

As a sensitive person, I tend to be more aware of myself, especially what other people perceive about myself. Sometimes, a little bit too much. Frankly,  I really envy of people who can easily ignore other people’s perception since this hyper-self awareness can lead into anxiety and unnecessary insecurity.

During our 20s, the possibility of us having projects with some strangers is quite high. In meeting different types of individual, we need to maintain certain boundary to ourselves and others. This is why freshgraduates like me tend to make mistake, or untactful approach in understanding ourselves, especially in choosing to what extent we limit our personal boundary.

Observing myself for couple of weeks, I’ve been anxious possibly because there are lots of changes happening recently. It’s quite overwhelming to part with some people and then suddenly new individuals came and resulted a brand new environment. It seems  I lost control of myself in dealing with others, and specifically my own autonomy.

What’s the cause? I have huge hunch this is about my inferiority.

Currently, I’m reading some books related to Adlerian psychology. One aspect discussed is the feeling of inferiority. The reason why people tend to be inferior toward others is not merely because we aren’t confident enough. However, it’s due to our tendency to compare ourselves to others. According to Adler, all problems in our society is all about interpersonal matters.

The Collisions: What happened and Unplanned Decisions

2019 will end in another month then 2020 emerges. It’s a bit scary to see time has an extraordinary ability to stretch that fast in my time frame. As usual, I always wrote a recap of what had happened in a year, and this is it.

Different from the previous 2018 recap, I’ll write this as a narrative. For me, 2019 has been a unique year since it’s my first year of my post-graduate experience. 2018 is all about me getting out of my university, but 2019 has been exciting yet confusing at the same time.

I take a look at my annual target written in 2018, and some of them are checked.  One of them sounds a bit cheesy: being a dedicated and loved teacher. Frankly, I didn’t feel that I’ve already succeeded to become one, but I’ve been trying. I know there are no perfect teachers in this world, but so far I’ve tried my best to take this role seriously and passionately as other teachers in many sides of the world have done.

In the beginning of the 2019, I didn’t expect to get an appraisal as one of the helpful staffs and received an honorable mention despite of my first year as a full time service teacher. It was an honour, yet a responsibility to bear for that names. In the middle of 2019, my previous supervisor suggested me to join a teacher competition, and somehow I made it to top 3 nationals. I was able to attend a national conference where my corporate’s leaders gather and experienced an unforgettable moments in Batam and Singapore. Bad news, I didn’t win as the teacher of the year, yet it was a great learning experience to participate as a newbie in front of national company leaders from around Indonesia. I’ve been always curious of being a leader in certain institution, and to receive such exposure I was extremely thrilled.

Besides my close friends were married and it’s hard to catch up with them, I also encountered new individuals and get to know them more. It was lonely, as it’s always adulting promised to be, but things are not as terrible as I thought.

Yet, all above was part of the bright side in 2019. The rest of what happened is a bit blurry and gloomy.

Accepting Hard Truth: Our Temporary Timeline

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”- George Orwell

Like everybody else, I’m just one of those young adults who’s struggling to face adulthood in early 20s. Things sometimes messed up, but then it’ll get better as time heals. It is kinda like a cycle always happening every month. My toxic positivity side told me for every problem has solutions. Then I realized that this cycle gets intense, and I became aware that it is just how it is. There’s some point in life that we can’t fix anything, instead, all we do is just accepting what have happened.

One thing hit me the most recently is another realisation of hard truth: all is nothing but temporary. For 2 years my family have had fun raising our 3-year-old cat, then suddenly I heard he got hit by a car and died eventually. When my Mum texted me, I was in the middle of teaching, but I needed to manage my feeling as professional as possible and tried to be cheerful as usual. The next day, I literally cried for 5 hours non-stop still couldn’t believe what’s going on.

Recently, I also felt how time is more valuable than before. Some may say time is money, but for me time is MORE than money. A year ago, I felt catching up with friends wasn’t as difficult as now. The period when most of my friends had started a new life. Some chose to be busy workers, some chose to be busy to-be-Moms, even some decided to move to different cities. This is the moment when Keane’s Everybody’s Changing became my life soundtrack.

Maybe this is the saddest of hard truths I have to accept: no matter how important we are to our friends and the other way around, we’ll eventually part in certain ways. Maybe some end beautifully, but some may not. I heard that to feel lonely and perceive everybody’s leaving at certain point during the 20s is the process of how adulting works. I’ve read bunch of books about adulting (silly, I know) most of them are telling me to enjoy the ride. There’s nothing to do than embracing this phase and move on. Live a new life with more refreshed soul.

But, we all know books are just books, aren’t we?

I think I’ve lost several people that I value the most though gladly I still have my family cheering for me in my hometown. These days it’s really hard even to have just quick phone calls or mid-night chatting with my close friends. Personally, I don’t care how packed my schedule is, but I’ll make extra effort to keep in touch with people even it sacrifices my sleeping time. Sadly, another truth said: no one exactly cares about you. Maybe I should be more considerate or maybe I shouldn’t have tried at all.

They might be one of my priorities, but not the other way.

As I went through this, I think I still can see the bright side that time is very valuable than I thought. I really value 2-5 minutes call with my Mum or a quick chat with college friends more than before. Even one-hour-karaoke with the right people feels like luxury (thanks to F and A). A couple of days ago, my friend told me that his new office is actually near my boarding house in West Jakarta. Of course, I was thrilled to hear that, hoping we may hangout easily after work. After all, one thing I learned is that we often take for granted little things in our life. And now, I’m happy that I need to appreciate more and be grateful to little things no matter how trivial it is.

Besides, now I realized that many of new positive individuals have come to my life. Even though I rarely spend my time with those who’re far away from me, I still have chances to have fun with people I get to know lately in the beginning of 2019. Although our timeline is temporary, let’s cheer and be grateful to the people that we have today. Also, a couple of months later after my cat died there were 2 cats came to my house and my family frequently feed them even though they still miss our old cat, Cipo, now and then.

We may lost, but I believe we’ll find another sun to bring the bright in our lives.

 

 

 

Midnight Venting

These are those days when my self-esteem falls down as usual in my life pattern.

It is always like this.

I lost my passion. I lost my grip to write again. I lost..myself and the dream within it.

It is the time when I really need someone to hear my vent. My uneasiness. My worriness. My anger. My sadness. Even.. a lil bit happiness from watching some Korean drama episodes. Now, it takes only 2 minutes to 2 a.m. And I miss myself.

When I was busy with activities and my college routines I longed for holiday. To rest myself. To take time for writing any piece that I want to write.However, it was not as I expected back then. Things turned out to be messed. I turned to be messed up. 

Untuk Adikku

Dek,

malam ini apakah kamu sudah mengerjakan PR?

apakah kamu ada ujian besok?

apakah kamu bahagia dengan dunia sekolah barumu?

Aku bisa berkata pada “adik-adik”ku lain untuk rajin belajar, tapi mengucapkannya padamu rasanya tak pernah.

Dek,

apa kau mulai suka dengan anak perempuan?

Siapa?

apa kau mulai nakal untuk mengetahui sesuatu yang seharusnya kamu simpan untuk nanti?

Hiper—

Ada saat dimana aku merasa gagap. Merasa bodoh. Merasa payah.

Semua orang pasti pernah.

Mungkin aku selalu merasa bisa. Narsistik kah?

Ah, entahlah.

Ketika aku merasa payah, segeralah aku maki diri. Padahal tidak perlu—

Rasanya pandanganku atas kesempurnaan dan segala sesuatu yang ideal sudah melampaui garis, lalu..

akhirnya ku mati kutu

Hiper-sensorik,

Hyper-speculation,

Ah, tuhkan!

Aku harus banyak belajar—

Three Birthday Galz

Left: 21 yo               Center: 20 yo                        Right:24 yo

                                   6th September      7th September                  7th September

(So happy to have some kind of surprise with you all my new fam)

Contemplating My Major

“Why I took English Major?”

The question has been quivering inside my head lately. After doing Community Outreach in a month, I learned lots of thing. One of them is the need to find my future career.

“What do I want to be?”

Another question appeared.

Then I remained silent through the days. I don’t know it’s too late or not, but I became worry thinking this matter. Through this two years, I’ve never ever been sure of what will I do next in post-university life. I think I have some good skills in teaching, but I want more than that. I want more than teaching.

I also want to travel, meeting other people, gaining new experience, volunteer to a community. Yes! There are many to-do lists in my mind!

Okay, I’ve already taken English Major, so what’s next?

“Why I study language?”

At some point, I think I am interested in linguistics field. In my opinion, linguistics is an unique science. There are not much numbers in there, which I really love to study, and I can explore and imagine the possibility of languages can do. However, new questions appear.

“Do I want to be a linguist?”

Let’s be Humanized!

Everything seems different in the third term in college. In this term, I learnt a lot about life lessons during the lectures. Because I was majoring science when I was in high school, I had never learnt about human studies, such as sociology or anthropology. However, now, I study culture, literature, and philosophy. Of course, it is because I’m a student of faculty of humanities. Somehow, by attending so many lectures that I took for this term, I began to think reflectively about us as human. Then one question appear: Are we machines or humans?

I’ve been wondering about this issue during this term. Maybe this is not what people think or most of students think these days, but suddenly the question appear in the middle of Research Methods class. The lecturer, Mr.Junaedi, said that we are modern people. We want everything fast, we want everything instant, we want do things with less effort, and we want to make everything to be practical and efficient. In addition, we also spend more time in the outdoor rather than in our houses. Now, we are busy with ourselves and pay less attention to our families. What do you think? Are those represents you?

For me, I am. Home is not like home anymore. Nowadays, home is just a dwelling not a house. Look at the apartments that are built around us. Houses are replaced by simple compartments whose price are high. Less windows, no terrace, no backyard, functional design, and all the elements of a house seem decreased.

Inevitable, in this millennium era invented technology becomes part of our life. Indirectly, internet and smartphones are our ‘God’ in everyday life. Most of modern people use smartphone to communicate and make our job done faster. In addition, there are many applications, such as social media and games are invented. However, those applications —unconsciously— are distracting us. For example, some people tend to care their cyber life rather than their real life. The more we get in touch in Internet make us isolated. As a result, we are likely to be machines without feeling. Like robots, even zombies.

By writing this journal, I don’t mean to preach or teach. I know that we as humans both have flaws and beauty in the same time.  Overall, I just want to say: Let’s be humanized!