Tag: Writing

An omen for friendship

This past week, it felt like I was running on an empty tank and a faulty engine. I was slow to wake in the mornings and distracted myself with doomscrolling or mindless mobile games. Finishing tasks was an uphill battle. The air around me was heavy; I kept finding myself holding my breath for some reason. Sadness followed me around. By midweek, I pinpointed the source of my woe. I was anxious, grieving and lonely.

Before the week started, I had just finished writing an essay. It was a personal achievement of some sort. I hadn’t written a reflective essay for years. But the beauty of the act of writing also became my downfall. Writing is a medium of thinking and feeling, and I kept thinking about the problems I encapsulated in my essay and feeling anxious even after I finished writing it.

Amid this hum of anxiety, somehow, as I returned to work after the holidays, a sobering and long-overdue realization dawned on me: To be a responsible leader, I can’t expect friendship from my team. For someone who craves deep connection with the people I spend time with, and boy do I spend most of my hours with people I work with, this realization took some life force away from me.

—

It’s Sunday evening, and I’ve found solace and lightness. I’ve been forcing myself this week to get out there and find the connections I crave so deeply, and the universe presented me with gifts.

An hour and a half drive to Depok to attend a lecture got me a hug from a friend and a coffee date. “Let’s catch up,” she says. My heart swelled when she marked the event in her calendar as self-care, family and friends.

A visit to the Palmerah area for a meeting turned into a reunion with a trusted mentor and an old friend. “You can lean on us; we don’t expect you to be anything but Odit”.

A video call with an old friend, back and forth update texts with another.

A cozy brunch at a friend’s apartment became another reunion event, which made me feel glad I fought my inclination to flake.

—

This morning, after years of ignoring Maria Popova’s newsletter in my inbox, I opened it and read her writing about Simone de Beauvoir’s deep love for her friend Zaza. It sent me down a rabbit hole of The Marginalian, and I found she is publishing a deck of divination cards. It’s a fascinating project. She would use an old 19th-century ornithology book written by James Audubon, illustrated by his wife. Maria would read it at night before bed and in the morning would cut words into a divination.

Maria said she doesn’t believe in signs, but she believes in omens. I’m with her on that. As I was grieving unattainable friendships and strengthening the ones I have, I received her divination.

Reading her and discovering her Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days was an omen for me that I would fill my love cup with friendship, which I did and will continue to do.






I plan to shorten my five-yearly blogging schedule

To those who subscribe to my updates, apologies for the sudden flurry of posts entering your inbox. I am updating my personal website and posted some Op-eds that I have published in a couple of publications between 2016 and 2021. Eeck…, I know I have been terrible at maintaining this.

I remember in 2018, I wrote a blog post here after keeping it dormant for five years. And the last post before today was from December 2018! I really did not plan a five-yearly posting schedule.

Perhaps, that’s my personal development and growth cycle. I seem unmotivated to write blog posts on personal reflection or updates when I’m feeling stressed.

I remember the years between 2014 and 2018 were stressful and challenging as I worked to launch The Conversation Indonesia. It was only when I felt like I could finally breathe with the launch of The Conversation Indonesia, I felt compelled to finally share an update on what I had been doing for the past five years.

But I quickly found that managing and growing an organization amid a pandemic and personal grief is also stressful and challenging. It has been a transformative and painful growing process, which somehow took me another five years to graduate.

So, consider my writing this blog post a sign that I’m feeling well and content. I hope that my growth-stress cycle will be shorter or that I will continue to write during stressful periods. Perhaps, if I actually reflect through writing it would not take me five years to gain some wisdom and insight.

Await my next post soon!

Happy Nyepi for Balinese Hindu and happy fasting to Muslims around the world.