2022: Year of Trying and Failing

2022 will be over soon. After pandemic chaos in 2020 and 2021, the world is slowly recovering by itself. People return to office for work, travelling rules are being relaxed, and some people are already talking about upcoming recession next year (oh f*ck).

As for my life, I can say 2022 has many ups and downs, and to put it simply, I think this year is a year of trying.

Hang on, let me fix a little bit, a year of trying and failing.

Trying to be healthier

I don’t remember since when, but I have 2 things that I promise that I won’t do or become: being fat and smoking. No, I don’t hate fat people or smokers, but I just don’t want to become like them. While not smoking is easy, not being fat requires more effort, that’s why I do exercise a lot and thankfully my BMI is still within ideal range. However, there is one thing that’s not simple, it is to eat healthy food. I am used to eat anything edible, wherever and whatever it is. Bad news, because I eat a lot of fried food, my last medical check-up shows cholesterol above 200. It is not that bad, I still can control it, but it is already a yellow light. With my late father suffered from diabetes, it is also a lower hand for me, so no excuses.

Trying to invest more

Probably some of you who read my previous story already know that I really want to have my own house. Even though the economy has been stagnant for last years, we can’t help that house price is still very high, including here in Indonesia. For since I got my first paycheck until now, the biggest part of my salary always goes to investment, and there is no reason for it other than to pursue my dream of having a house. I should be thankful about pandemic market crash because I invest a lot and gain bigger capital gain after its recovery, but I can say it’s still a long way to go. In 2022, I have been trying to increase the amount of investment as my salary increases (and I also write all of my monthly expenses too), but probably I should rebalance my portfolio since my peer-to-peer lending is not gaining much compared to stocks and mutual funds.

Trying to love my job

I resigned from my previous company in July 2022 after 3 years and I am still figuring out many things right now in my current job. It is not that I hate my job, but I can be considered newbie in this field. Change is scary, it pushes you out of your comfort zone and force you to adapt. For right now, I can’t say I love my job, there are many things that I don’t like about it to be honest, but at least I need that money. Trying to love my job means that I must be comfortable with the culture, the people, the working situation, the work shift, and I am not at that state yet in 2022. I hope next years will be different, and I am still confident about it since I still have many things to learn. Without it, I’ll probably lose my interest straight away.

Trying to be closer to God

No, it does not mean I want to die you blithering idiot. I realise that after pandemic, I become lazier to go to church. Pandemic shows us that we can make anything online, including church devotion. The thing is, so many church still do a live streaming devotion until now, and sometimes I got lazy and think that it is enough. Yes, it is easier, you just open your laptop and listen to everything until you realise you start to ignore many things. As for my case, I tend to do open my phone more often, open another website, do not want to use appropriate clothes again, and many more. I easily got distracted back then and this year I started to go to church more often, and I think it is better. It costs me a lot more energy and fuel of course, but some choices have to be made because of something more important right?

Trying to improve my programming skill

I took dozens of programming courses since last year or so and I don’t think of stopping. Most of my colleagues think that I really want to switch career to be a data analyst or machine learning engineer, but that is not exactly true. The first time I took course in Coursera platform is because I want to reduce my YouTube time. Shortly, I like watching YouTube very much and I think it wasting a lot of my time, so I force myself to allocate some time to enhance my skills in other things that I like, which is programming. I keep on doing that until my YouTube time now is significantly reduced and fortunately, I become interested more in Machine Learning and Data Analyst too. So, I keep doing that, but the reason is not solely to reduce YouTube time anymore. I think learning about programming is always beneficial for my life, even though it is not directly related to my work; It enhances my logical thinking, always seeking to automate repetitive task, and make me become tech-savvy person. Many people say to me to stop seeking certificate and I just don’t give a sh*t about it since I don’t care about the certificate either.

Trying to enjoy my life

No house, no car, no girlfriend either. I know my life is not exactly the life I imagine like 5 years ago. It’s far from ideal, but I still trying to enjoy my messy life. To be honest, I don’t have specific life goals other than my investment to buy a house. Yes, I think a lot about my life lately, especially about what sort of person I want myself to be, but the thing is, I don’t have a role model for my life, not even my parents (yes, even I don’t want to be like my parents, but I won’t go into details about that, sorry).

Without specific goals, I realise that probably my life is just a stinky mess and yet I’m still trying to enjoy all the little pieces of it. I think of anything that will make me happy in my life and I just start doing it. I continue playing guitar, climb some mountains, playing badminton, travel to some places I don’t’ really know about, and so on. As you may guess, I am still a person who separate my life and my job, at least for now. What about my love life? Well, I think that I will be better single for a while since it is difficult to take care of someone’s daughter when I am still unsure of many things in my life.

So, here I am in 2022, still figuring out, still trying, and still failing in my life. I have no idea what will happen in 2023, but I will probably take some time to think about it. Just in case you have similar experiences, I just want to tell you that it is okay. You’re fine, keep going and good luck!