10 Things That Make Me Really Happy

Sunday, January 7, 2018

So my sister gave me this ’30 Day Writing Challenge’, and the first day challenge is….

“LIST 10 THINGS THAT MAKE YOU REALLY HAPPY”

Okay, so… My wise friend told me once; there are only two things in the world that give a human true happiness: to give and to be trusted.

But I’m not there yet. For now, here are the 10 things that make me happy:

10 Dogs

I can’t say I’m an animal lover—or even dog lover if it means I have to take care of it—but dogs make me happy. They are the best creature I’ve ever seen! All dogs are incredibly cute, beautiful, and adorable! They are angels, really.

9 Sports game

Especially football (soccer, but I’d love to play American football too), but any other sports game would do. I love to play, not to watch, because I don’t like to watch. I love to be watched instead, even if I suck, playing is still better than watching. Especially when I watch my favorite football team, I usually get too attached emotionally and it ruins my mood for no reason. I hate it.

8 Books

I don’t read many books. I don’t read often, because I don’t have enough time. But I love books. Just being in a library or a bookstore makes me so happy. I’m surrounded by so many interesting books that I’d definitely read if I had the time.

7 Traveling

I prefer to do it alone, but to travel with my family is awesome too. I love to travel to other countries with completely different culture with mine. I love to travel to countries with languages I’ve learned, interact with the locals, and get them awed with my ability to speak in their tongue, even though I actually suck at it. That’s one of the best feelings. Especially the Europeans, they are mostly very appreciative.

6 Food

Pizza, olive, assorted cheese, fresh salmon, fresh oyster, creamy desserts…

I know some people would say, “It’s just food, it’s not love,” but for me, “It’s just love, not food,” makes more sense. I mean, love is beautiful. I love love. But honestly, who can live without food? Come on!

5 Learning

I love to learn about a lot of new things. Mind the ‘new’. It means I love it when it’s new for me. When I’ve learned it for a while, I got bored and move to the other things to learn. What have I learned by the way? Well, I’ve learned eight foreign languages, and speak none of them properly. Lol! I learned about philosophy, astronomy, psychology, sociology, the history of human, of language, of arts, of football, of fashion, of… yeah you name it, and now have forgotten most of them. Who cares? It makes me happy.

4 Writing

I’ve always loved to write. It’s the best thing to do in the world. It makes me happy to share whatever I thought, even if it would sound so dumb and ridiculous the very next day. I’m pretty expressive. I love to express whatever I feel, think, or dream about. I love to write stories and ideas. I used to write teen-series that were popular among my junior high and high school friends. And if I wanna be really honest, if I don’t have to think about making money, I’d love to be a writer. I mean, yeah some famous writers are extremely rich. But I don’t wanna write, being worried about whether my books would make money or not. I wanna just write because it makes me really happy.

3 The internet

Well, I don’t even have to explain, do I?

2 My inner circle

I love spending time with my sister and brother and their partners, my dad and mom, my cousins, some of my aunts and uncles, and my close friends (I have plenty). They’re so fun, awesome, and some of them are actually wise and inspiring. I won’t say I’d take a bullet for them, but trust me, they’re important enough to be put in number 2 in my sources of happiness list.

PS. No, romantic partner is not one of them. They’re like kids or animals: it’s fun to play with others’, but not so fun to have your own because you need to take care of it.

Because…

1 Me time

As much as I love the people I mentioned in number 2, I mostly love to be alone: watching movies or TV series, eat junk food, reading, making artworks, writing, listening to my music, singing it out loud, contemplating about life, taking a nice, warm, bubble bath, or even just doing useless thing like checking on social media. I still need people. As most people, I can’t live alone. But, me time is the best thing in the world, don’t you agree?

Okay, those are the 10 things that make me happy. There are a lot of things actually, but either they didn’t make it to the top 10, or I just forgot them. Anyway, see you in the next post.

Happy New Year 2016!!

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Happy new year 2016!!

Yeah I just got a chance to finally write my blog. I was supposed to write this yesterday, obviously. But damn! Everything didn’t go as planned. I started the new year unproductively.

Okay, before being all complaining, I think I should have mentioned my new year resolution first. Or maybe some little review of my 2015 before that.

How was 2015 for me?

Well, it’s quite satisfying. There was a very big change in the very beginning of the year, and it costs me some loss. But that’s just because I haven’t done things effectively. And there was some big, bad, awful incident with that Karina bitch. Yeah she stole my money. Big amount of money. And you know, I have a group of girlfriends. Something happened. I think it was because of me. And we didn’t hang out as much as the previous years. Also because each of us is getting busier with our own life. My boyfriend in 2014, I broke up with him in 2015. We’re still friends tho’, and we both agreed that it was best for us, no drama.

But, overall, 2015 was my best year so far. And to remind that before 2015 happened, 2014 was my best year, I can say, it’s a success already, because it means the year is always better than the previous year. In 2015, I’ve spent more times with people I love the most. It started with a little adventure in the very first day of 2015. I remember on January 1, 2015, I took the commuter line to the very end of the line, together with my parents and siblings. The trip wasn’t going well as we planned, but it was fun because we were together, and it was a very new thing for us. Yeah, a lot of new things happened to me last year.

A lot of new things happened in my business community. We had a new, so much better vendor, we moved to the new, so much better office, and we have a new, so much better system. There are some new things in the business and all were very good. I also made more than I did in 2014. Thank God!

And also, my business community introduced me to this so called ‘Escape Room’ thingy. Wow! It was really, really fun! I love it! It’s one of the best new things I’ve tried, not just last year, but for my whole life. Seriously! I love it! I played it 3 times last year. First on early May with my community, second with my lovely siblings and their lovers, and the last time was with my community again.

Another new thing is a visit to Greece! OMG! It was like a dream! Greece was the second country I want to visit the most after Italy. I’ve visited Italy twice and I haven’t been satisfied. I mean, I was very happy every time I visited Italy, but there are still so many place in Italy that I still need to visit. But I’ve visited Italy as I’ve always wanted. And in 2015, finally I’ve visited Greece as I’ve always wanted! The goals were visiting Japan and Greece. But well, of course I wanted to go to Greece more than Japan. No offense. It’s just personal taste. I love anything European more than anything American or Asian.

I went there with my family. I haven’t been to Europe in 2 years. So I was very happy when after all the dramas and the nightmare, we still went to Greece anyway. I went there with my parents and my sister. We went to Delphi, Athens, and Santorini. Both are very different places, both are great! The view in Delphi and Santorini were awesome! The temples and museums in Athens were awesome! The foods were great! The people were very, very nice, friendly, and helpful! The language… oh! Lovely! But, the best part is seeing my family happy. They look very, very happy. It was the best family trip I’ve ever had so far. I wish my brother was there tho’.

About my brother, and also my sister, great new things also happened to them in 2015. Finally my sister got a better job with better income, environment, and new experience in the job. So proud of you, sister! And my brother, finally he finished his own house! He started to live there in June or July 2015 I think. And the second great thing for him is, finally my parents gave him their permission to get married with his lovely girlfriend! We are all very happy! I mean, my brother really has a great taste in women. His girlfriend is totally a perfect wife-material! And we are already like a family. So I’m happy with them that finally they can get married. I don’t wanna talk too much about it tho’. I just wish everything goes well.

Speaking of getting married, one of my closest cousin also got married last year! OMG I’m so happy! They live in their own house, so, with their house and my brother’s house, we are now able to hang out till really, really drop! Yeah, before there were houses, we always hang out in café, and it’s either too far from our home town or in our home town but closed before 11 pm. Sucks, I know. With the houses, yeay! We could party all night!

Seriously! Last year was full of celebrations and happy moments with my family and friends! We had a perfect little Halloween party at my brother’s house, sleep over at my cousin’s house, BBQ party at my cousin’s house, Christmas party at my brother’s house, lots of birthday surprises and birthday celebrations, lots of sweet escapes, new places to visit, and the last one was the new year’s eve! I was very upset because I thought I wouldn’t celebrate with my family. My parents were still in Jogja since before Christmas. But it turned out that we celebrated together! My parents weren’t there, but I was with the Halloween team minus my BFF. Damn! 2015 was crazy! Especially with my family and my business community.

Now, what I want to achieve in 2016 are:

1) Finish writing a book and at least 5 short stories. I meant to make a short stories collection with the Great War as the setting. I was obsessed with the Great War because it has became very underrated since the Second World War started. Look at all those movie about world war. Almost all of them are about the Second World War. There are even more movies about the third world war than the Great War. So, yeah, gonna need lots and lots of Rudyard Kipling’s. And the book I wanna write, it’s still secret. I’ve told the big idea to some people since two years ago, but haven’t really start to write it.

2) I wanna paint something: something that means a lot to me, something that will make me feel totally satisfied when I finish it. I already have some ideas in mind.

3) I wanna have income 12 times higher than what I have now. I wanna pay for everything in the house, be the backbone of my family, taking care of my family.

4) I wanna visit Italy again. This time I wanna go to La Spezia, Firenze, Siena, Roma, and… that incredibly awesome Matera!! Oh God! Just to write this down my heart already pounding! I also wanna visit some other cities in other countries. But the main agenda is visiting Italy again after all these years. I friggin’ miss Italy, my favorite country ever! I speak better Italian then I did on my last visit, so…, yeah, it will be great! And hopefully, I could go with my family again. Actually, I just wanna go together, full team: me, Mom, Dad, my sister, her boyfriend, my brother, and his soon-to-be fiancé. It doesn’t have to be Italy, but I still have to go to Italy, with or without my family.

5) And…, still I wanna speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Dutch fluently! Is it possible? Yes it is! Come on! Be optimistic!

There! Those are my new year’s resolutions. Now let’s ride!

Passion of Happiness

I care about people happiness.

I believe in being happy.

I want people to be happy with their life, their job, their condition, their family, their environment, their identity, themselves. I want people to be happy about how they look. I want people to be happy about how they think and how they see the world. I want people to be happy to learn.

I want people and me, to share our ideas, but not forcing it. We don’t have to agree with each other, but don’t push people too far, not to the point that we’d kill each other for the sake of ideas.

Like it or not, we will always grow, one way or another. We will always chase something in our life. It can be knowledge, it can be money, it can be love, it can be heaven, it can be justice, it can be world peace…, it can be anything. You can’t force people to look for love if it’s not what they care.

Someone told me that each people have their own portion in life. We are different, but are one. When we do whatever we do, or don’t do whatever we don’t, we move other people to do whatever they do, or don’t do whatever they don’t, and it starts the chain of movements, and it moves the whole world.

Even if we do the same thing over and over again, and make no improvement in any aspect of our life, we’ll grow a record, we’ll grow an identity. Like that man who makes Soto in my high school cafeteria. He’s been making Soto since… forever. People change, but not him. He doesn’t change, but people around him know him as the Soto maker. People do things while witness his career as Soto maker. Not just people around him, but people around people around him, and those people around people around people around him. 

Every Pembangunan Jaya High School students and alumni knows him, and some will tell about him to some groups of friends. Just like me now, telling about him on my blog. :p

So what do I do in my life? I’m learning about things I care about. I share ideas. I share what I believe. Then maybe some people don’t agree with me. And let’s welcome their disagreement. It’s just beautiful.

I do my best, God helps me with the rest, and I’ll just enjoy the progress.

So people, thank you for fighting for your idealism. But don’t be too upset about the results. Everything happened happens for a reason anyway.

Don’t be upset about others’ ignorance. And remember, it’s not ignorance. They just have something else to care about. And there’s nothing wrong with it. There are too many things to be care about. While you force people to care about what you care, it’s impossible that you care about what they do care.

And I’m gonna have to say this quote from Mary Engelbreit*: “If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.”

Happy life people! Cheers! :D

*world renowned artist and illustrator