All my life, I have never considered myself as a brave person. As far as I remember, I am always scared. Not to ghosts or other superstitious things like that, but I am scared of things like meeting new people, doing new things, going to unknown places, and above all that, I am scared that people won’t like me for I am or they think that I am not good enough in what I’m doing.
Having said that, I could say that I am quite proud of myself this year. Well maybe these past 14 months or so if I want to be really precise. But I have done so many new things, accepting so many challenges that maybe two years ago would never occurred to me, and I am loving the result!
Let’s see. This year I finally able to cross three things on my so called bucket list (because I have never actually made a list, but those are the things I have always wanted)
I am back to school
I have always wanted to pursue undergraduate degree, but things were always came my way. This year it’s finally happening! It’s not an easy thing to do, doing your MBA while working, but I am not complaining. I have so many people supporting me for taking this decision and I am gonna graduate with flying color, I swear! The school is really great, by the way, but if I’m gonna talk about it, this is gonna be a very long blog post
I slowly going back to the size I was before. And healthier than ever!
Yes, each year I told myself I’d start healthier lifestyle and I would reduce my dress size. But instead, I got bigger and bigger and not even close to healthy. And I was in constant denial, blaming it all to my PCOS problem, and thinking that it’s your personality that matters, which is very true, except that it’s hard to let your personality shines when you constantly feel nauseaus and out of breath. But this year I finally decided I’ve had enough. I went to see the obgyn to talk about this illness thoroughly. I hired a nutritionist and followed her plan religiously, and I pushed myself to exercise, harder than ever. It’s all paid off, though. I have never been fitter (and happier, really), and, like I wrote above, I am slowly going back to my non-whale size. And I am doing it the healthy way.
I breathed Europe’s air!
I don’t travel much. I can even say I very rarely travel! But whenever I dream of traveling, I always think of Europe. Last month I went to Finland for school trip and I enjoyed every second of it. What makes my heart swell with pride is that I spent a couple of days by myself in Helsinki, and I managed to last in one piece. For someone who are even scared to go eat by herself, that’s such an achievement :D
There are also some other things that I am quite proud of, like this year I managed to finish not one, but TWO races. One was Indonesia Urbanathlon and the other one was Adidas Kings of the Road 10 k race. And that I participated in Shave for Hope event and running around everywhere with clean shaved head for a couple of months (I am going back to wig now, though, because now the hair starts to grow, I look really weird)
I am not very religious. But I remember one time, there’s this Church event and the guy who gave the sermon said, in the Bible, there are 366 lines of Jesus saying “Don’t be afraid.” I don’t know whether it’s true or not, and I am not even interested to check, but I believe it anyway, because it’s just so awesome that there’s enough line for each day of the year, Him telling us not to be afraid.
And if you don’t believe in Jesus, my most favorite author, Neil Gaiman, on each of his New Year’s letter, wishing us to be brave, to make mistakes and to surprise yourself (Read his complete awesome New Year’s journal
here). And being a person who got scared about a lot of things, I can tell you that it is really a wonderful feeling. Maybe because I am not being brave often enough that it’s very special whenever I do that. But it really is awesome.
I am about to try something new again this coming year. It could be the stupidest thing I have ever done, or it could even be the best decision. I don’t know, that’s why I am trying it. And it scares the hell out of me. But I know that, whatever the outcome is, I would not regret this decision. I am gonna face this new challenge bravely, and I will work hard and have a lot of fun and at the end of the day, I know I can sleep better at night knowing that I, once again have surprised myself… and be brave.
