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01
Essays
You Don’t Have to Explain Why You’re Different
I used to call it social awareness. Often it was fear: the habit of making myself easier to explain.
We have to keep going
Between the start and the finish sits the long middle, and the only way across it is one more step, taken on purpose.
Have no future
A sentence you hear everywhere now, said without anger. About a generation doing everything right and still standing still.
What kind of country are we living in?
Sometimes I look at Indonesia and genuinely wonder: what kind of country are we living in? Between hope and exhaustion, the same patterns keep repeating.
Be patient with everything
A poster on my wall says four impossible things. After years of ignoring it, I learned they were instructions, not decoration.
Why do I have to care about people's opinions?
You are allowed to care a little, and about very few people. Here is the difference between caring and performing.
02
Notes
Someone to talk
I have someone to talk to. It is not a miracle. It is the best ordinary thing I own.
Love the Land, not the Landlords
Loving the country and defending its government are two different things, and it took me years to stop letting the second borrow the first.
I Miss My Mom
It has been years since my mother died. I still have days when the first person I want to tell is her.
Good Morning, same old pattern
Same morning, same route, same faces, until one dark shop finally made me look.
The first ordinary evening
A house becomes a home the moment you stop treating it like a project.
03
Work
Life at Work Is Boring
Work does not have to entertain you, complete you, or become your identity. Sometimes it only has to be work.
Why do people always make everything so complicated?
Every unnecessary step in a workplace has a story behind it, and most of those stories are about fear. Simplicity, it turns out, is an act of courage.
Your coworkers are not your friends
The people you work with can be wonderful company. They are still not the ones who owe you their life.
Let them talk
Someone will always have an opinion. The finished work is the only reply worth sending.
The shelf.
For the hours
that are yours.
A good book or a film that stays with you. A few personal favourites from our shelf.
All recommendations