that last road trip

Some of us were lucky enough to have the next chapter of life after college figured out even before you threw the graduation cap to the air with your families clapping in excitement from afar. Your first job will start the very next Monday, or the tickets to bigger cities were purchased for your departion next week. Some were done looking out for engagement rings and the ceremony is planned for next month. Ah, the joy of not having anxiety towards uncertainty at least for a year ahead. But let's not forget those who tend to jump into one chapter of life to another without knowing what's on the table—like me, or a great amount of us. I might have carried the must-stay-organized attitude with me everywhere I go (not to blame Virgo as my sun sign), and to always have plans for almost everything puts my mind at ease, but life after college kind of twisting that part of me. I'll turn 26 in a few months and I can say that uncertainty doesn't give me so much anxiety as it used to.

I remember graduating in October 2017 with no job offers or graduate school plans. However, I also remember the feeling of being so young and it was like the possibilities were endless. For a moment there it felt like I could do anything I wanted, as far as changing the world. I definitely am not exaggerating, and those who believed that their minds have been broadened wide by all the volunteering hours and model UN simulations during college years would relate. That also fueled me and my group of friends to take a 12-hour drive road trip to the eastern part of the island in December 2017.

We were a hopeful group of youth, we wanted to leave an impact. Becoming a corporate slave wasn’t a choice, because we wanted to create something from scratch. I’m not going to write down what we were planning to create out of that trip, but just imagine the spirits of four young fresh graduates with their idealistic minds and idealistic world—we were far more ambitious than Zuckeberg when he snitched the idea of Facebook from the Winklevoss twins (or at least that’s what I saw on the movie, though). It didn’t take long to plan out, we did a bit of research and preparation then we grabbed our stuff and shoved it to the very back of the car. I’ve been on a longer road trip before—the trip from Sioux Falls to Chicago a year before was taking the whole 20 hours, but that one didn’t involve narrow roads or trying to overtake gigantic trucks and buses.

The village was still very much in its original state—everything feels like it’s blending with nature. The lake was magical and terrifying at the same time. The people were nice, and I don’t know if the universe was pretty supportive towards us because the weather was perfect for the whole week. Electricity was available from 6pm to 6am, because the people will go attending their farms or fishing during the day. Our alarm sound in the morning was the Hornbill bird’s call from deep inside the forest (or as the guy from WWF whose house we were staying at, told us—hornbills are extremely rare nowadays, as their status is now endangered species). 

To this day, I’m thankful for the fire that fueled our spirits and ambitions, pushing us to go on that trip without any hesitation. Maybe it is common for young adults to have confidence within themselves that they do have the capabilities of doing big things, or maybe it was just us—I remember how I loved all of our meetings and brainstorming sessions. I remember the late night get-together jamming into rap music, scribbling down ideas and rough sketches, falling asleep on the floor with pizza crumbs on our hair.

As years went by, I realized that what I miss the most from our adolescence years is our big dreams. No doubts clouding up our minds, no hesitation to throw ourselves into life-changing experiences freely. I can’t lie that the thought of maybe everything we were planning on will eventually fall apart as we grow up lingered inside my mind back then, but I also wouldn’t be willing to trade those magical moments with anything. I’m glad we decided to go, because who would’ve thought that the trip would be our last road trip ever?

fascinating filmstrip

Other than randomly planting a cacao tree next to hibiscus shrubs on his front yard, one of my grandfather's hobbies was including taking pictures with his camera, developed the filmstrip, and put tons of pictures on albums. Each of his children had their own photo albums, including his first granddaughter—me. It was unfortunate the album he made for me was ruined in a flood years ago at our old home, even though I got to save a few pictures from the disaster. I was really devastated, because the albums he made were not just albums—he didn't just put up the photos, he would cut out pieces from magazines and created something sort of like a scrapbook on it. It's kind of sad that none of my family members inherited my grandfather's particular interest in photography. Since he passed away 16 years ago, nobody create a photo album anymore (and not to mention that people nowadays don't print out their pictures anymore..). The camera he used also has stopped functioning when I found it at my grandparents' attic years ago.

There is something with analog cameras that attracts me. The grainy pictures, the sound the camera makes when you press the shutter button, the results, the slightly burned pictures, everything. When I was younger, I was obsessed with lomo cameras. It was the year when lomo cameras got its hype, but I never actually owned one. All I could do was scrolling down my Tumblr homepage staring at beautiful pictures taken with Diana, Actionsampler, La Sardina, and other popular lomo cameras. Then for a few years later, my obsession faded away along with the invention of high quality phone's cameras and the editing apps that came with it—at least that's what I thought. I was wrong, of course, because I still have that huge interest in analog camera that suddenly sparked up all over again when I stumbled on a YouTube channel called Negative Feedback. One video after another, I decided to look for a cheap analog camera while blaming myself for becoming so indecisive when I found a shelf full of used analog cameras at one of the stores in Old Market, Omaha.

I actually decided to get myself a Fuji MDL-5, because I found it only for $12 online and I didn't feel like getting something as fancy as Pentax or Minolta for a starter. I also didn't want to get a disposable camera despite of all the hype. Three days after I checked out my (online) cart, the seller told me that the Fuji MDL-5 was taken by another buyer and they offered me the MDL-9 one instead with an additional $2. I was about to transfer them the couple bucks when they called me up again to tell me the MDL-9 was also taken by somebody else. As an apology, they offered me Nikon Lite Touch Zoom 120 ED with no additional payment. I was disappointed at first, because visually, Nikon Lite Touch didn't look "old enough" for my taste. It kind of looks like a digital pocket camera. 

Since it is a used camera (and I don't know for how long the previous owner had it), it didn't come in a perfect condition. The zoom lens didn't work anymore, but the rest of it still functioning pretty well. Even though analog photography is deemed to exist, it seems like the trend didn't make it to the city where I live. I couldn't find any film rolls, and I had to get them online. I got Kodak ColorPlus 200 and Fujicolor C200. I brought the camera with me everywhere as I slowly shoot all 36 frames of the roll. It turned out that it took me a good two months to spend all the frames in one roll. I was nervous every time I hit the shutter button—"will this one come out good?" "did I cover the lens with my finger?" "am I doing this right?"—I completely forgot the idea of shooting with analog. You should not think—you just point and shoot.

It was also a heck of journey to get the film roll developed. Remember that nobody sells any film rolls anymore? Yes. It also means no labs to develop the roll. I had to send my filmstrip to Hipercat Lab in Bandung to get it developed. It took a little over a week until I got the result. Though my grandfather might be disappointed with this, but I decided to get my pictures in a digital form. The result wasn't that bad! A few of them are out of focus, but overall I'm so happy with it. I became obsessed with the feeling of getting the filmstrip developed. I definitely won't stop shooting in film.

Here are my favorites:

All of them taken in Kodak ColorPlus 200. The result wasn't disappointing at all. I even joined an analog photo competition with one of the pictures. I didn't win, but the fact that I joined a photography competition itself is still quite unbelievable. The whole experience gave me a feeling that quite addictive—both the feeling when I took the pictures, and when I waited for the result to be arrived. Isn't it quite fascinating what a filmstrip could do?

that one time I run on a marathon: 2018

Earlier this year, a friend asked me a question.

I remember every word, and the look she gave me after I gave her an answer. “What do you want to do in your life?”. The question was somehow gave birth to a few thoughts that—in a way or another—could describe the general feeling I had throughout the year.

I shrugged, and said “I don’t know, yet”. At that time, I felt like that kind of question—the kind where you ask someone about their goals, their passion, their dreams—is not the one you could throw on a coffee table sipping a hot caramel machiato in a regular day. Sometimes I would just blurt a generic answer, the one that will stop the other person from asking follow-up questions.  

Just like a hundreds of millions of babies that were born in 1995, I turned 23 this year. Not yet a quarter, but the crisis has definitely hitting on me—prematurely. But hey, maybe a quarter life crisis is meant to be there even before you hit the number. It is a life-shift from an adolescence period to adulthood, and most of the time it feels like unfolding a never ending layers or trapped inside a long tunnel. Maybe because the conversations during hang-outs were changing, promptly, from gossips, assignments, or movies; to engagement pictures, wedding organizers, babies, or financial plans. Late night phone calls’ topics were shifting from silly crushes, or outpour cries due to heartbreaks, to graduate school scholarships, an old friend got engaged, or moving away plans. It gets overwhelming, I had to switch off my Instagram for a month. The fear was inevitable, I began to let myself drowned in it. I haven’t gotten anything in my pocket figured out, yet, and I was panicked.

One of the books I read this year is The Bell Jar. In fact, I carried it along with me on every journey I took throughout the year. There is this one part of the book where Esther Greenwood—the main character—could see her life as a big fig tree branching out before her, with each fat purple fig symbolizes every life options she has upon her. The fig tree part hits me so hard, that I stayed up all night thinking about it. What if I had these handful of figs in my arms but I couldn’t carry them all with me? What if I’m too busy picking up the figs that fell from my arms, they started to rot even before I get a bite?

2018 is a 27 miles marathon, and I definitely wasn’t the winner.

This is the year I cried as much as I was a toddler. I took many flights and cab rides. I tried to hang my fate on a giant, sparkly, Christmas tree people built on the capital city, it fell—it couldn’t hang on for too long. I tried many times to the point I got nothing on my hands but a series of failure. I fell, I scraped my knees. I tried to whisper to the ground, nobody answers me back. I tried to flee, on a full speed—pack my bags and planning on never going to look back—but my feet were on chains. Nothing worked out, not even a single thing. And for the first time in my life, I googled the least painful way to kill myself. I reached the point of the marathon where I began to suffocate and had to stop.

“But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenceless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.” — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Then I realized that it was all me. I let myself drowned in a social construction the society made, I let it made me feel there is no way I could catch up. I let myself to live inside somebody else’s timeline. I was constantly at war with myself. The only thing I need is to tell myself that it’s okay—it’s okay to fail, you can always try again next time. I focused on my failures only, but I never really appreciate the trips, storms, wrong-turns, bad decisions, rocky paths, and heartbreaks that had led me here. I never took a time to reflect on what has gotten me here, how much I’ve changed. Therefore, I would try to make a peace with myself while I have to unfold more layers ahead. Maybe I don’t have anything figured out at this moment, and it’s okay. The figs will grow again, and it will be just in time.

2018 is a 27 miles marathon, and I wasn’t the winner. But I finished it. I decided to feel alright again.