What’s Next? (Season 2)

Yes, this season is almost come to an end.

But an END will become the BEGIN for the next season, if you watch a series like Game of Throne. 

Hahaha.

Oke, pertanyaan ini adalah yang kedua kali kutanyakan pada diri sendiri setelah 5 tahun berselang (you can read the previous one here).

5 tahun yang lalu, aku tidak menyangka akan berada di titik ini. This is beyond my imagination. Dan tulisan ini dibuat beberapa jam setelah masukin jilidan disertasi di Kinko’s (guys, bersyukurlah di Indonesia tukang fotokopi dan jilid itu banyak dan murah, disini jauh men… mahal pula).

Sooo…. This was what I said 5 years ago:

My passion: become a writer, a traveler, a travel writer.

Question: are you really competent in it?

DOENG!! 

(hammer fell down to head)

Dream: become a professor

Genie said: “NGIMPIII!!!”

I always think that everything good happened in me was LUCK. 

I am lucky being accepted in Gadjah Mada University when I was 18.

I am lucky I am still alive when I was 21, but that’s true.

I am lucky I can take master study in Thailand and got scholarship when I was 24.

I am lucky to attend DRC class in Kyoto University, and my dream to visit Japan came true when I was 25.

I am lucky to continue study in Kyoto University as doctoral student and got scholarship again when I was 26.

And now… I am 29, about to finish my doctoral study… Is it still because of LUCK?

I think I probably have a problem with self-confidence, since I always consider those awesome things as just LUCK, when I actually struggled to achieve them. 

“Are you really competent in it?”

What reason I can say no, while other people recognized more than I myself.

Those people gave me chance and money for me to live my dreams because they trust me, they believe in me. Even Allah believes that I can do something worthy by let me live longer.

Why should they gamble on someone unworthy…?

Mungkin sudah saatnya aku mulai percaya pada diri sendiri, that I AM CAPABLE. If now I am not yet capable, I wish God give me more time to struggle more until I become capable.

So, what’s next?

I admit now I am not thinking about myself only since I got married and have kid.

But I refuse to give up dreaming, because that’s why my life is exciting.

I probably plan to publish my research in the first months after I come back to Indonesia, working on the paper and apply to related scientific journal. To make my degree official :D some people will doubt my PhD degree without a (or several) journal paper.

Meanwhile, starting a new life in Indonesia with my husband. He surely has his own dreams to achieve, and it is now his turn to make it come true. I will support him as much as I can.

I sometimes joking, “If I’m not teaching (in university), I will open a knit shop”. Well…, everyone must have back up plans in their life, right. If one failed, you can try the other. But am I seriously will open a knit shop? I don't know, a “knit shop” means something I enjoy and excited in doing it. I enjoy the process and excited for the result, eventhough in the middle I find obstacles but I will keep on doing, fighting, until I finish. Like doing a research, isn’t it? So, I think I will do such thing, but what is it exactly, I am still observing.

I like to travel a lot. It means I maybe will try to find a chance to go again after this. We, me and my husband, will try to settle things in our home, Indonesia, before start the next adventure. We want to go further, to the other part of the world. But how we will go… it’s a mystery.

Who knows about the future?

But when I look back to my old note, I smiled

I was done much unimaginable stuffs since then

And my history was written quite great

Now let’s write another great story in the future

For dreams, for the future, for life!!

Kyoto, August 24, 2016

29 year-old Atrida Hadianti