How Ambition is Killing My Happiness
A story about traveling as a rookie writer disconnected from internet and how it turns out to be a gloopy show.
- {Perhaps, you might want to hear "David Kushner - Daylight"
while reading this story}
It was work that I think about during my travel time. I have to finish that article. And write this article after that and then yes, this is a good title to start my article for the new publishing site. Oh, I’ve told the other publishing site to write some articles this week.
I felt so powerless as the slow internet forbid me to see the loading image on my mobile phone or spare time to write while I seat in the back of the passenger area. Yes, let’s start to write, Nurma. I took my notebook and ballpoint to start the longhand writing. I didn’t know writing could be this hard when our car passed 75 miles highway that happened to be a corrupted project by our government. The road wasn’t wrecked but there was no way I could drink inside the car without spilling a drop of water on my clothes— I, we need to wait for 75 miles.
But, it wasn’t the worst thing. Because, somehow the ballpoint that was perfectly fine last night happened to be dysfunctional to use the next very day. I made my mind bloated with curse words as I accuse myself to be the orbit of blame.
Then, we got lost.
My advice, if you happened to travel in some mountain area just follow a regular road with crowded rather than being stuck with an impossible route for an MPV car and zero signal. Please, just don’t trust Google Maps’ alternative fast-road option.
It was around 9 pm when I got to check in at the hotel. For a quite long moment, I really thought the past and my present have stated their territorial zone. The smell of cheap hotel laundry perfume, white bed sheets plus four pillows, and a fake wooden floor. I let myself be dragged by the past where dementors reproduce its cell every minute. As I wrote and rememorizing the past who whipped my entire identity I’m feeling like is enough to make me vomit.
Thank God, three other people (my parents and my youngest brother) who happened to share the room with me have slept like a baby. They would probably see my face turn blue as I tried hard to hold my breath from the smell of trauma. I should have stayed in my room and had a romantic dinner with my work.
People seem satisfied with the scenery. They look full-filled. In my country — Jakarta people who labor their physic and soul to survive—use the term “healing” for traveling. But in my case, I didn’t feel like I deserve to heal. Especially, if I put “labor” as a context. There’s this emerging guilty with every step I walked to the place where I was supposed to glorify the beauty of nature, a pine forest, a dazzling orchid garden, and laughter. I miss my laptop and my room, just please make it faster.
I felt like I make myself blind, unable to see the essence in every object I saw. These days I also felt like my consciousness has almost left my body. I guess my presence became a nightmare as I tried to ask my father to get out of the place, a room of people and a stage with a full band. Could you imagine being with someone who takes the joy away?
“Let’s go, do something besides this,” I was trying not to sound negative. What we’re going to do besides this anyway?
“It’s only one song,” He answered a bit grumpy. Are two songs enough to be called a lot?
I could hear the ticking sounds of seconds arrow in the clock approaching me and demanding me to work. One second of waiting felt like a haunted 10 hours. I guess the Earth only takes 1 hour to make one complete rotation on its axis.
I don’t have much time. I’m running out of time. I’m going to die meaningless.
When I finally got back to my room, oh my sanctuary, the place where I could unmask my vulnerability to the unjudgemental wall, my work, my future. I press the turn-on button and I might be waiting for 20 minutes to see the screen turn bright as my laptop is already eaten by the harshness of life, like me.
I went to Twitter as I save one of the source materials for my article, the one that I kept thinking during 75 miles away from my room. And I saw one quotation Tweet as a response to the question box “Mention a carrier mistake before you turn 30”.
When I was 28 years old, I realize passion is nonsensical.
So, I quickly change my strategy to work as an ambition. Thank God.I felt offended by the Tweet. So much that my panic attack started to arouse my lungs to stop breathing. The Tweet has this behemoth power to trigger my panic attack something I’ve been enduring for the last 3 months. I have clever enough to do a healthy lifestyle as an act of being care of myself. Learning how to breathe, exercise, and how to just listen to the voices in my head that sometimes criticize everything about my stupidity. “When it’s come just listen and be well aware that it was there. Don’t judge or contribute a commentary that will lead to an argument and make your head feel more crowded” — it was the advice given by my Psychiatry.
Certainly, it’s not the Tweet’s fault.
Did I have not pursued my ambition — being realistic? I have this plan, besides my writing carrier. I remember telling myself that writing would be impossible to support my life. So, I closed the chapter to be a writer not until I was financially stable by the age of 31.
A complicated story that I only told nakedly to my Psychiatry. It was so confusing that sometimes I felt like I’m a parasite to my own body. How could you see the future if your present time is covered by the past that always stopping you to do the work?
So right now, I’m back writing, doing something I am passionate about and yet I felt guilty. My ambitious brain told me I am crap to do what I’m passionate about. And my passionate brain also told me to do something more realistic about the product of my passion job, monetizing it. It felt like the ambiguity genre mixed with paradoxical and duality concepts. Is that make any sense?
But, there’s nothing I can do besides having a tiny baby step as I try to build my view of reality. On bad days, I will try to remind myself of the reason why I keep continuing to fight for life…and write. On good days, I will write more and tell myself to trust the process. I will remind myself that big achievement is made by crumbs of little achievement. The pain of discipline is better than the pain of regret being not able to start anything.
And look at you Nurma, you have finished your article. So can we have a cuddle now?
