Introductions

It must have been about a month ago when I raced against the clock to launch this site. I didn't want to disappoint my coach, but more importantly, I didn't want to disappoint myself.  I know, I know... What's new about that, eh?

There comes a point of time in everyone's life when certain decisions need to be made, and I think I'm in that phase of life where the words 'turbulence', 'chaos', and 'storm' will be used often. I'm holding on for dear life hoping that I will come out the other side necessarily scathed, and with the facial expression that reads 'I know better now'. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but I cannot leave my life in the hands of the prescribed order any longer. If this all sounds vague, think The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, and me standing at the divergence, deep in thought.

My life's goal condensed into one sentence on the inside of a fortune cookie would read: Strip self of inherited baggage and self-actualize without needing parents approval. Typed out in the open, it seems like an impossibly daunting task, but should I fail, then I fail the generations that will grow from the ashes of my burnt aspirations. I want to leave this planet a little better, and I can only do that if I am allowed to do (maybe even strive?) what I believe I do best: write.

The start of Q2 2021 marked the halfway point of my coaching sessions. Yes, you heard right. Coaching. Before I left Jogja, I signed up for a whole year of it with a person whom I believed would guide me to the self I knew I wanted to be.  

They made me write.

They made me write fiction.

They made me write fiction consistently.

They made me write fiction consistently, except they didn't make me do anything. I did it all by myself. They believed in me, and that was what I needed. That is what I still need. I need someone to believe in me, to stand in where I myself cannot.

There was one thing I was sure of: I could not do it on my own, and that if I didn't invest the time, energy, and money into doing it now, I would become that woman from The Lumineers music video 'Sleep On The Floor'. When the beautiful blonde man whispers "If you don't leave now, you'll never make it out," to her right before leaving, I run after him like she does, except I actually do.

Did you know I used to write a blog? I remember when I was 17, staring straight into the oversized iMac screen placed awkwardly in the dry kitchen for the whole world to see me 'meeting' strangers on the internet (which was why I was mostly at it late into the night), accompanied by a steaming cup of tea, writing about the men who validated me... and showed me their penis. I'm not sure if I actually wrote that in hindsight, but I should have. I still remember the joy I experienced in learning that Tara (whom I would go on to meeting a few months later at a new school) was flashed by the same Shane from Canada. What a thing to bond over...

I also wrote a series of blogs over my time in medical school. From the early days of surviving arduous lectures, to the more exciting ones in labour wards, and the 'land above the sea'. It all seems like such a long time ago now that I was dedicated to penning my thoughts for whatever purpose I saw fit then. It's a damn shame that my wordsmithing has been reduced to sporadic appearances on my bipolar Instagram account, becoming an accoutrement to the selfies of the many vacant facial expressions I wore at my office job where I made minimum wage and questioned my existence, but what are we if not indecisive (and rightly so), tireless in our incessant channel-surfing, hell bent in finding a program that we're contented to watching in this television carousel that is life?

Did any of that make any sense? I guess it doesn't need to. This is not the place for sense to be made, if anything, it's a home for the relevant (or not) musings that comes with wanting to tread down the road not taken. So... Join me on my journey towards 'figuring it out', as I continue to disappoint my parents by ignoring my housemanship/ become-a-doctor application, and try to make it as a full-time freelance writer so I can make a sh*t ton of money and move to French Polynesia.

That last part was a joke.

(Or was it?)

We're now two thirds of the way into Q2, and I've launched the site (April: check!), I've moved out (May: check!), and I'm well on my way to securing gigs that will pay me actual human money (June: almost check!). If Nala Designs had not immediately fired me upon learning that I had come into contact with a confirmed Covid positive case, I would already have achieved all the Q2 goals, but that's a story for another day, and you know what? You might actually get to hear it, because this time I'm here to stay.