2 rants in a day (in bahasa indonesia)

Gue dan kembang kristal

Menurut gue punya kembang kristal buat dipajang di ruang tamu itu norak.

Tapi gue gak pernah ngejelek-jelekin orang yang punya kembang kristal. Atau maksa orang yang punya kembang kristal buat ngebuang koleksi kembang kristalnya.

Mungkin mulut gue gatel buat nyela, tapi kalo di depan temen gue yang suka banget ama kembang kristalnya, gue bakal diem aja.

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Dufan dan buku harian Ayah.

Dulu waktu Dufan baru buka, saya masih es de kelas dua. Ibu saya janji, kalau saya masuk ranking 10 besar, akan dibawa jalan-jalan ke Dufan.

Saya belajar mati-matian sambil tak henti-hentinya membayangkan serunya naik Niagara-gara. Hasilnya? saya masuk ranking 5 besar.

Banyak hal yang udah saya lupain akibat umur, tapi scene ini masih detail terekam di kepala saya. Ruang tamu (merangkap ruang keluarga) di rumah kontrakan kami di Gunung Batu, Bandung. Karpet merah tipis yang menggundul di beberapa area, tempat saya suka tidur-tiduran sambil baca lima sekawan. Ibu saya duduk tercenung di kursi rotan sambil menghisap dalam-dalam rokok surya 16 beliau.

“Duh… darimana Ibu bisa dapet uang ya?”

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Why do you blog?

I wished upon him much joy

 

Good question.

And to celebrate Blogger Day (27th October), this blog post was made to answer that question.

If you’re a girl, like me, you must remember the good old days in high school when you and your close girl friends sharing a diary together. Not the kind of diary with lock and “OPEN THIS AND YOU’LL DIE” written all over the front page, but the kind that big enough to fit lots of colorful drawings, interesting clipping from magazines or cute photo box of you and your mates, or long written expression of how you shitty feel on a particular day.

If you’re a grown up, like myself at this moment, you’d probably sigh and deny the fact that you were one the girls who share that diary together. 

No matter how hard you’ll deny it, I know one thing for sure. Whenever I finished ‘posting’ something in that diary, I always felt better and had half of the burden lifted up. And whenever I got a ‘reply’ from my mates, or simply a hug, the world became colorful again.

That would explain why I am still blogging until now.

When I just moved to Jakarta seven years ago, I use to write long emails to my mom to overcome my homesickness. It did help, a lot. I wrote useless stuff which only matter for me and her, like how delightful it was to be able to go to the top roof of my office building, or how hungry I am and how the thought of her cooking made me miss home terribly.

After starting my first blog here five years ago, I used it as an ‘open letter’ to her and my closed relatives, including my long distance husband (was my long distance boyfriend). Then I began to make friends online from that blog. I even did a collaboration work with a person I have never met.

 

my diary about wedding preparation, 2006

I blog about everything. My thoughts, experience, photos, sometimes purely links. I used to reveal a bit of what I was working on, but after reading a written announcement about the law of blogging vs company I was working for, I was becoming very cautious and changed all my work related blog posts into private. Wouldn’t take any chances. Although, I have to add that lots of my blog readers envied my job and admire the company I worked for. So, in a way, I actually helped them with good publicity.

Having been a blogger for several years, I become more careful of my posts. I know it’s an open public space expression, nevertheless it is open to public. Writing a blog post is becoming more difficult for me, like crafting an ad. Who am I talking to, what am I going to write, will it offend some people, will it be a crappy writing and waste my readers’ time? 

 

I still use my note book

Of course, I still blog. But not as often I used to. And as much as I would like to say how blogging set my inner expression free, it’s not. Blogging is a serious stuff. It’s still fun, but it’s not just just write and post and voila. A blog post came from considerable amount of researching, thinking, and creating. What you blog defines who you are in a blogsphere, like a clothes you choose to wear in your real world.

That’s why I twitter more than blog. Sometimes I got this idea in my mind, just a thought, but not a blog post, so I tweet it. Sometimes I just want to write how I feel about something, but it’s enough in less than 140 characters, won’t be much for a blog post, enough for a tweet. Sometimes my mind is so full of scattered things that wouldn’t make any sense in a blog post, so I just tweet them, will blog them later (or maybe not at all).

In my humble opinion, blogging will never expire, it simply evolves.

As a human, my need to express myself, share my thoughts, and tell stories will never die. It will remain the same. That’s why I will keep on blogging.

Happy Blogger Day!