Well, it’s been quite a year haven’t it.
This will probably be a short recap wouldn’t it. It shouldn’t be, but it will. It’s 7:32 as I am writing this, a mukeris (musyawarah kerja istimewa) is happening this morning in order to tackle the issue of BOE’s lack of leader for the next year due to the last chosen leader being stricken and cut offed from the organization due to sexual assault (a situation that I do not wish to comment on at this moment).
My brain is foggy. It have not stopped being foggy for the last month or so. What’s new, eh? I’m writing this out of obligation to myself, to see what have happened in the last year, but the world really is not in the mood to give me time to rest. The finals of the 5th semester have not been kind to me. It has been an hard and arduous process, what with my executive function seemingly throwing itself out of the window and into the metaphorical sea of anxiety, forcing me to dredge in it every second I try to reclaim it. It was not nice, and it was not good. I didn’t finish 5 of my papers, out of 8. I do not know what the consequences of that is at this very moment. Probably not gonna pass most of my class. I don’t know. I’ll let you all know soon. Anxiety ridden too, that part of me.
I don’t know how to write this. I thought I do. I really do. But I guess just like everything this month, this one is done with minimal preparation and with minimal quality. Not on purpose, but just out of strict… reality, I guess. Let’s start by month, shall we?
January
I started joining Twitter around October/November last year, but January was really when things starts getting good. It’s when I started posting and interacting more with the people there. It was in retrospect a very fun laden month. I started the whole “Do 100 Interesting Things, 100 Times” and it was fun for a while (until I stopped caring about indexing stuff and just doing things but that’s a story for another time). It was filled with a lot of exploration, and it was the only month in which I had the time (or the will) to actually write a recap of, which you can read here.
February
February was a big month! After a lot of friction with my parents, unable to exit the house out of my own volition, I decided that it is prime time for me to move out and live on my own! I moved to the Lotus House in Depok, near my university, where I stayed for until the middle of September. Quite long it was, 7 month? Not a bad record for my first time living alone.
It was an experience. Living alone. I’ve never lived alone before that. Heck, I’ve never lived with less than a family near me for almost my entire life. It has always been communal living for all I know, most of the time living with more than one nuclear family in the same house (with the most was me living with more than 10 family in the same house). With living alone comes me being able to hang out with friends, which, heh, while are more abundant than previously was definitely not enough. My social needs are extremely strong it seems.
Other than that, notable thing to note is probably the fact that I started trying to sew this month! It was part of my ongoing journey of aesthetic which starts from me being able to control the aesthetic of my body, the most visible form of aesthetic. I’ll have to write another post dedicated to my thoughts about it as it is not just about look, but it’s everything that permeates the entire world in the crevices that is left by both logic and ethics. A very important undertone that have informed a lot of my thought process in the months to come.
March
You know, I don’t know what happened in march 🙂
Nothing… sorta happens in March. Not that I didn’t do anything, it’s just that there are a lot of little, micro, things, that happened in march, but no one big thing happened. Which I guess make sense since this was the month in which I fully was on my own for the first time. Most of the problems I was having this month was actually very technical and specific like remembering to buy water and shower gel because no one is there to do it for me or tell me to do them. You know, things you learn when you start living alone.
Which is why this is going to be where I’m writing down a few notes on living alone. Living alone fucking ROCKS/SUCKS. It’s literally the best and worst of both world. It’s my first having my own room and being in a space where I could expect absolute privacy and boy does that feel good. It still didn’t hit me until a few more month in but I could totally do anything (within the rules) in that place and it kinda expanded my space of awareness and being to more than just myself but also the room (in an [[Alexander Technique]] way). I’m currently living back at my family’s home and for the first time I have my own room here and I’m applying what I’ve learned during my time living alone and making sure that I have my own space.
April
A very sad thing happened in April. Lia Eden, the leader of the religious community that I was a part of for most of my childhood, passed away. She was a lovely lady, a grandmother figure to me, and her passing pulled me back into the community as a part of my soul yearns to understand what it really was that she shared to the people there, what was it that is keeping them so devout and faithful to the journey, as it is the bedrock of who I am until this days.
I learned a lot about Eden that month, but I learned even more about myself. About the spiritual journey that I was going through. The way Eden’s teaching shaped my way of thinking, but more importantly the way I view life from an ethical and moral perspective. I also had a lot of discussions with my family about their experience in Eden, all which is different as it was each their own spiritual journey.
May you rest in peace Bunda Lia.
May
BIRTH DAY MONTH! I AM OFFICIALLY 20!
Which is, uh… weird. It was a weird birthday experience, since it was the first one I’m spending not with my parents. I spent the first minute (literally the first minute at 00:00) drinking at Milen’s place with a few friends, being sorta hangover I returned back to my place to take a shower before going to Grand Indonesia to eat sushi with Abby my uncle-friend, treating him and myself some unagi and sushi, and then going to Eden to treat my friends and family there some big long pizza.
I had a few thoughts about being 20, born straight out of my reflection of Eden. If my first 10 years was spent in Eden, then the next 10 was spent with my family, then this next 10 will be spending with myself and the world. The first 10 years was an exploration of Ethics, the second 10 years was an exploration of Logics, and the next 10 years is an exploration of Aesthetic. It fits so perfectly to just run with it.
My 20’s is a time of exploration of aesthetic. Whatever that may mean. A big theme for a big time. May my 20’s be a fun ride.
June
I met up with Indonesian mutual for the first time! This is a big deal! Joining twitter have always had a social part of it to me. I was lonely. I needed friends, especially during the pandemic. And so it was extremely weird to me when one of my mutuals turned out to be Indonesian and asked if I wanted to hang out with his friends and it opened the floodgate to meeting other new Indonesian friends.
It’s weird. Indonesian twitter is weird. It’s a lot more like normal twitter, you know, the cesspool of politic and emotion and takes. It ruins the sanctity of my TL, but at the same time it’s warm like home. It is what it is. I’ve made a lot of friends, but I don’t know if ruining my time on twitter is worth it. Who knows.
July
Had a lot of fun hosting an Interintellect salon with @ZacYapJQ where we talked about Ivan Illich’s book Deschooling Society with a few people. It’s a fun experience hosting and it has been always been in my mind to host another salon once my brain is not up to speed.
I’ve also had one of the most impactful call of this year, a call with the wonderful wonderous @EggProphet.
August
I wrote something in August. A Letter To You: 00:37.
It’s a heartfelt letter. I felt miserable in August. Nay, it’s a culmination of a lot of things. It’s like I’m finally in touch with a deep resonating void, and it came out uncontrolled and painfully so as I don’t have a place for where they could go.
For the first time, we, I, us, have lost faith in a lot of things. No longer does things beat the drums of the heart, no longer does the golden blood fills our vein, for all things we talk is in the future, an interesting one, but one no where near me.
I think, the problem, is, putting too much expectation, and hope, on the future. The future is nebulous oh dear me, it is ever changing, for the ebbs and flow of nature are beyond the greatest mortals comprehension. Stories of the future are wonderful, alas we get stuck in them
A Letter To You: 00:37 – Nobu Hibiki (2021)
It hurts. It really hurts. And that’s part of the journey. This year, have been a month of discovery and retouching with my inner self, with the primal, and it hurts. It really hurts. And it never stops hurting. It haven’t til now. But it was worthwhile. It really was worth the work. Felt like a plug opened, and all the sludge is out.
September
I got an internship! I’m interning at Yanuar Nugroho’s Nalar Institute for a currently unspecified amount of time. The job is mostly going to be video editing but I’m all up for all sort of things. This new internship also prompted me to move so Yogyakarta for a certain amount of time in order for me to be able to better interact with my mentor. The move was also important for me because being stuck in a 3×4 room for extended amount of time without the ability to meet people was hurting my soul and I needed to GET OUT of where I was staying.
It’s also marks the first time I’m going to the gym! It’s fun, completely different type of exercise compared to the usual I used to do (basketball, dancing, swimming). Goal is to chisel my body because maybe if I’m hot girls will like me, but also just for general confidence building.
October
I did a sabatical from twitter and tried writing daily and doing daily videos, but I only got to only like 5 lmao. As you can see, this recap is steadily becoming less and less coherent the nearer to the time of writing is, because my memory have been extremely fuzzy and my mind have become so thin that I can’t properly think of what happened. So many things happened, nothing big and explosive, mostly because everything was big and explosive. All emotions are real at all time and all of them are powerful.
Not gonna lie this is a pretty terrible recap. I’m sorry future me. I’ll try to do a better recap soon. Maybe. I don’t know. I just want to get something out in case it never happens. Here’s a few notable tweets from october.
brain is on transit mode therefore it is allowed to think anything it want without repercussions because it will be stopped by me having to stop being in transit and i guess i can say that i feel pretty lonely even if i spent a very nice day hanging out in cafés with frends
— Hibiki-sama (@nobu_hibiki) October 30, 2021
do i need to intentionally sin to feel the beauty of redemption?
— Hibiki-sama (@nobu_hibiki) October 23, 2021
November
I returned home in November. The world was so bleak, nay, my mind was so bleak. It was even worse than it was back in August. By now I’m having anxiety attacks every night. I can’t sleep. I’m restless. My body pains. My heart ache. My brain tears itself apart. But at the same time, the high has never been higher. The bliss that I feel during the few time it happens was the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. The realization of the samurai way, the online movie date that was initiated by the other side, the internalization of fashion, the extreme lows seems to be causing the extreme high, or maybe vice versa.
And November also marks a time of plenty of real life connections. I hanged out with Amir a lot, met up with more IRL mutuals, hanged out with a girl. It was extremely fun, and, well, part of me think that maybe it’s an image of what the future holds for me. That the high and lows are gonna be so much more. No longer do I need to cause them, for I have set off an unstoppable domino of excitement that what I need to do know is to create and manufacture stability, one built from the ground up for my own use.
December
And here comes the month. This year is ending terribly. I hate it. I hate how the world seems to be ending around me. The people I care about the things I cared about all going up in flames. I’m sorry that my lack of social grace is hurting people. I swear I’ll never do it again. I promise.
I failed to do so many things. And I don’t know how to move forward. Or maybe, I do. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. Who knows.
What’s Next?
For all the pain that I can write here, I must say that I succeeded in the plans I started last year. This year was certainly, Interesting. I accumulate so much experience and knowledge, more than I know what to do with. So many possibilities, the optionality is starting to devour me.
Hence why here I am to declare the Theme of 2022, following CGP Grey’s wonderful yearly theme system.
2022 is the year of Collapsing Optionality.
What does it mean? Well, it means that in choices where one increase my possibilities and one reduces it, I should probably choose the one that reduces it. The goal is then to learn how to pick properly, choosing my battles, standing my ground for what I want.
Now what do I want? That is, dear reader, a question future me will have to answer. For I do not know.
Happy new year.
May 2022 brings the best for us.
