deyawosa

There were this little competition going to happened in my Korean class. It was a fun words game and an essay writing competition. My friend from this class keep saying that I should sign myself up and let’s see how much my Korean skill has improved from the last time I try to guess; is my Korean is actually good or bad?

After a little bit of thinking and reckless decision making, I decided to join the competition even though I knew I’m not qualified enough to make even a simplest essay in Korean. But because I thought this was a good challenge for me and something to make me keep studying Korean, I ended up in the situation where I write 1 Korean essay at least everyday as a form of practice. People seemed like taking this competition as something fun and not serious, while there I was, really want to tested my Korean skill and practiced really hard several weeks before the actual competition. 

Nobody asked for my “full concentration” on this competition. I did it to myself, I made it hard for myself. But to be honest, I quite enjoy the feeling of studying and preparing for a competition, which is something I haven’t feel after college earlier this year. I make this competition really important for me, that’s why I pour more than 90% percent of my effort in it. On the competition day, I almost didn’t make it because I was running out of time. But a teacher there were willing to give me some extra time just because I already done with the essay in pencil, and all I need to at last was copy all of the essay into the answer sheet with pen. It was stressful, my hands were trembling, but at least I finished it and pretty proud with the finish product.

Just several days after that essay competition ended, I joined a video competition from the same Korean class. I also put a lot of effort in it, but I feel like the end result was not the best and I don’t really hoping to win on that one. Nevertheless, I’m quite proud of myself who’s able to joined 2 competitions in a month, which is something I’d never did in high school or college.

Now, those 2 competitions are already ended and I’m currently waiting for the results. To be honest, I’m a pretty competitive person so when I join a competition, I compete with winning as my goal. Not that I’m all crazy about winning, but I want to make sure that I have a good chance of winning by putting my best effort on it. So, being a competitive person myself, I put almost all of my energy on studying, preparing, and practicing for those 2 “probably not so serious” competition and I enjoy the process.

But now that I’m done with it and there’s nothing I can do anymore, I feel helpless and empty. If you read some of my previous journals, you’d probably know that I’m currently dealing with some mental problem (probably depression and sadness? I haven’t got myself medically checked yet but I’m guessing it’s one of them or both). So by keep my mind busy with those competitions for several weeks, I manage to keep my mental problems aside and it was pretty nice. Whenever I feel like I was going to cry or get too deep in my own though, I could just practice my Korean or edit some videos. Now that the “goal” is no longer there, I have no “real” reason to be productive anymore. The sadness and depressions are coming back slowly and I don’t like it.

I now it might sound silly for some people, about how by keeping myself busy I got less stress and feel less sad. But I think the competitive side of me make it possible. I’m so focused on the competition that I forgot I was sad. Isn’t it amazing? As the “competition” no longer there, those bad feelings are coming back to me now. Just several hours ago I was crying in a public bathroom in a famous shopping mall. I was so embarrassed because there’s a cleaning lady there but I just can’t stop the tears. I never expected that by finally finishing something, rather than feeling “accomplishment” of “fulfilled”, I feeling sad instead because I have nothing to look forward to anymore.

I think I need some time to make this feelings gone. While waiting for the competition result announcement, I’d probably watching some funny TV show or YouTube videos. I hope I can find a new goal for me to look forward to, so I could feel a little bit better and forget about the sadness.

I work from home. That means I can work while munching on my favourite snacks, I can check on my social media while working without my boss watching, I don’t need to take a bath and put on makeup every morning just to look decent for work, and I can go to the toilet whenever I want. Although my work hour are set, I could still do pretty much all of the things that ‘conventional’ employee can’t. 

For the first 3-4 months of working, I found that my company is really nice to give us such comfortable work hours and benefits. Because almost every employees work from their own home, we don’t have to meet each other and could just work freely online, as long as we got the job done. 

But after the 6th month, I started to feel like this position is holding me. I can’t meet with my friend because our schedule are very different (I work on weekend too), I can’t have a proper holiday or rest time because I need to bring my laptop all the time and be ready whenever the company need me, I can’t talk with people or meet new friends because I’m always at home there’s only a tiny chance for me to go out and meet people.

I become lonely, I become restless, I missed a lot of chances and events. Whenever I see my Twitter timeline or the Instagram Story, people seems to always have a great time and went to every events I could possibly imagine. While I’m here in my bedroom working in my pajama without even washing my face. Yeah, of course I know that all the photos and videos on social media are curated by the owner of the account to only show the highlights of their live. But for me, I don’t have any highlights. I couldn’t even curated any parts of my usual life.

I started to hate people who seems to have more fun than me. I hate every updates, every tweets, every new post from people that I followed. I hate everything. I even hate my own friends. I feel like the most pathetic person on earth. Even my Mom could have her own fun time with her friends sometimes. I couldn’t even bring myself to ask my friend to hang out with me. Because I was afraid that I would become a burden. That my friends are having a hard time to meet me. That they actually don’t want to meet me anymore. That they live right now, without me by their side, are so much fulfilling already. That they don’t and would never need me anymore.

This leads to me feeling sad and depressed all the time. I couldn’t bring myself to eat, even go to the toilet is very hard (remember that I work from home, so the kitchen and the toilet is less than 200m away but I still couldn’t bring myself to go). I would starve myself, then I became very weak and have no strength to go outside my room. I became very sensitive and would got angry at everyone for the tiniest problem. Just 2 days ago, I shouted at my Mom because the water in our bathroom was died although I knew that it’s not even her fault.

I also felt something similar back as a freshman. I need to finish a lot of tasks from uni classes but I couldn’t even bring myself to order food for myself. I shut myself for more than 2 weeks and never went to my classes. My friends started to feel sceptical towards me because I keep telling them that I was sick and couldn’t go to the classes, while in fact I was just too depressed. In the end, they started to distrust me, and for this whole time I always think that I deserves it.

To be honest, I knew that everything that I did and feel is wrong and I shouldn’t be this way. But I want to acknowledge that what I feel is real, and my sadness and depression is real. I never go to any psychologist to get myself checked about my mental health, but I knew something is wrong with me.

Because I hate it so much, I never throw myself into anything related to politic. I voted for our representative in the government carelessly. I thought the only person important enough for me -- someone who would rather sleep than to watch those politicians debates every night on TV -- to actually care about is the President. I’s never want to know more about other people in DPR, MPR, or anyone related to that. I thought having a ‘good’ president is enough to make our country better for at least the next 5 years.

But then the reality hits me. As the university students hit the streets and try to voice our demands, it made me realised a lot of things. About how our democracy system is ruined, how people in those sits in DPR are trying to make their way out of trouble for themselves by sacrificing the rights of us, the people. About how privileged I am that I could realised about this compare to other people on the street who could do nothing but begging just to live another day. About how wrong I was for not allowing myself to know more about our politics and people behind it. About how I should’ve been more careful with my decisions and my votes. That I should fight now.

The spirit is burning inside me. I would scroll through Twitter and retweeting all the tweets that I thought would give a big impact to our government. I would keep my eyes on online news platform to read about the current situation. 

Then, I realised. I actually did nothing. I knew nothing about law, politics, government, or the actual situation. I’m just some girl working from home and do anything in particular to support the movement. I’m just a pathetic young-adult who choose to work despite all these massive chaos. All I do was ‘pretending’ that I actually care and support all of these.

The ‘old’ me who choose to play save and limit my own knowledge about the issue is crawling back at me. I want to stop that old me. I want to change myself. I want to help us much as I can. I want out politics and government to change.

So one of things I could do right now is to thank you.

Thank you to every students marching on the streets, voicing our demands. 

Thank you for everyone supporting the movements on the field, for taking care of them medically or emotionally. 

Thank you for everyone providing logistic as simple as a bottle of water. 

Thank you for everyone who’s at work to keep the economy going in the middle of the mass protest. 

Thank you for every tweets and posts that keep the spirit alive. 

Thank you for everyone documenting the event and the crime they did to us.

Thank you to you, who fight for us.

Now, I will try my best too.

It’s called minus2percent. I want my channel to be the place where I can share things that I like, to keep me being productive and making more arts & crafts, also to “push” myself to learn more things (like languages and other artsy stuff).

If you read one of my blog post from some time ago, you’d know that I’ve been wanting to have my own YouTube channel for a long time. But I’ve always been doubting my capabilities and my own worth so I keep delaying and forcing myself to just never make it happen. But 2 months ago, something weird happened and I decided that I need to stop doubting and only thinking about certain ideas in my brain but never make it come to life. Now is my time to challenge myself.

I don’t really advertise my channel to other social media platform that I have, mostly because I still have that slight doubt and embarrassment. Also, I’m not ready to let my friends and family to see it, yet. I will let them know later in the future, but probably not soon.

Please check out my channel and watch a video or two! If you like the kind of contents I make, please also consider subscribing to my channel!

Here is the latest video that I just upload yesterday for a bit of a taste :)

So last year i decided to stop my "plan" to continue my study aboard, mostly for my parents' sake. They hate the idea of me living alone in a completely foreign country (even though i said i'm okay with it). So i stopped searching for scholarships or exchange programs. And following that, i actually failed one of the most important class last year so it also have a big impact on my decision, because most of the scholarship program requires student to have a high GPA score and i'm kind of struggling on that, so more reason for me to cancel my plan to continue my study abroad. My parents wants me to continue my study in the same university i'm attending now, but i'm still not sure about it. maybe will think about it as i try to graduate this semester.

Although i drop the idea of studying abroad, i made myself to be a participant of a certain international design competition last semester. The competition allowed me to visit Malaysia on February and later, South Korea on August. I also made a lot of new friends from all around Asia. It was a very interesting and super fun experiences and i'm looking forward to visit Korea soon!

I'm also like to watch vlogs and listen to some podcasts by some illustrators and creative people lately. Most of them are freelancer artists. And maybe because i watch too much of it, i kinda want to pursue it as my future job. I'm still not sure if i 100% want to be a freelancer artist, but i'm working on practicing and making more art, just in case i'm going to be serious about it in the future. To make myself practice more, i'm doing a 30-days Art challenge where i try to make art everyday and post it on social media. Currently i've been focusing more on my Instagram account (@dyws_), but i'm also re-activing my twitter and tumblr account. Hope to see you guys there!