A Piece of My Mind

A close friend of mine just messaged me this morning, asking: what do you want for Christmas?  I don’t celebrate Christmas, per se, other than the fact that it was on this very day that I chose to see what the fuss in this world two months earlier than scheduled.  But I do have a wish list saved in Amazon, any worldly things like books, perfume, iPod, to a pair of Citizens of Humanity. If anything, it’s just a wish list or merely branded items.

  But if you asked me what I really really want this year, they don’t have the names of Manolo or Tag Heuer or iPod attached to it.  They’re just two simple things that would really make my day, and my year: getting my books published and having a new job, one that would appreciate me way more.

So, ignore the pictures that you see in this blog.  Just wish me luck (I would need it along the way of my eventful life), good health (I’ve been struggling to cure my allergies), good career (God knows what I feel about mine right now), and good relationships (my relationship records could be made into 10 seasons of sitcoms and tragedy).  Buy my books if they’re published.  It’s as simple as that.

But if you have shopped for presents for me, wouldn’t kill you to send them anyway, would it? Hahahahaha.

Oprah Winfrey once said: the more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.  As I’m flying away to take my minds off things this afternoon, travelling across countries with a group of friends, I would like to invite you to be in my mind and my heart along the way, celebrating my life, our lives. 

So, fate brought me back to Jakarta last week.  Yeah, fate, business, whatever.  The important thing is, by 9 AM on Sunday morning, I’ve already landed in the capital city, breathing the fresh air of consumerism.  Lunch at Chopstix, book hunting at Kinokuniya EX, dinner at Chatterbox to finally attempting the so called midnight shopping spree at Debenhams Senayan City If you’re planning to do so, let me tell you something.  Yes, the offer is abso-fashion-lutely tempting – where else would you find a couple of Matthew Williamson blouse for under 500 – but once you look at the loooooooooooooong – I don’t think I inserted enough O’s there – queueing line, you are so gonna give up.  Anyway, it’s kinda an irony to see that in one corner of the city, people are queueing for kerosene while in another corner, a group of hedonistic society was actually lining up for the Debenhams buy-one-get-one offer.

Anyway, as I was enjoying a piece of heavenly dark chocolate brownies at Secret Recipe, a quote on one of the wall at the mall caught my attention.  “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness, simply didn’t know where to go shopping – Bo Derek.”  Never thought I would say this before, but she’s absolutely genius.  Don’t tell me you haven’t had a day where all the stress that you got at work completely vanished once you’re walking around the mall with the blue paper bags from Zara at one hand and a couple of huge shopping bags from Sogo at the other hand, maybe a little box of cakes and other delicacies from Starbucks in between.  While it’s chic jeans or pretty blouse or sexy clutch that does it for us girls, it might be stylish ties, designer t-shirts, or even car accessories for you guys.  This splurging habit has become a society thing, not just a girl thing.

  I can’t really answer for sure if you asked me when exactly shopping becomes both a culture and a necessity for the urban society.  Is it the gratification of consumerism itself – some might say that we’re as customers are actually being capitalized by the consumer industry – or is it the reshaping of human hierarchy of needs, we can’t really draw a line of definite explanation.  But we do live in a world where society identifies its members from the products or services they consume, as some brands serve as status-enhancer and class identity.  It’s the world of Dean and Deluca, BMW, Stuart Weitzmann, and Panerai.  I’ve read the argument that relationships with a product or brand name are substitutes for healthy human relationships lacking in dysfunctional modern societies.  I wouldn’t call our society dysfunctional, but I guess we are really experiencing a great deal of orientation in valuing human nature.  We – allow me to generalize – are continuously included in a grading system that depict – genuinely or not – the value of our existence: the gap between A-average and C-average student in college and the gap between a Starbucks-coffee-cup-holding yuppy and homemade-brewed-coffee-mug-holding average Joe.  As we were divided into classes between the smarts, the average, and the intellectually challenged in college, we then continue to be classified and divided throughout the rest of our lives, and now it’s by possession and lifestyle.  We would not have such thing as the advertising industry if it weren’t for consumerism gratification, would we?

It’s sad, really, to see that we have actually fallen into this kind of society hegemony, in which you buy things not because you need them, but because they identify who you are.  Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in style and fashion and hedonistic self-indulgence, but now I see it in a different way: do and buy things because they make you happy, not because they make people happy to see you.  Buy Manolo if it makes you feel great, but never ever buy them just to make people say: I like you because you like Manolo.  Are we really hollow and lacking of self-quality and personality that we need Manolo and Weitzmann to spell it for us?  After all, when you’re dead, your tombstone will not read: Carrie, the Manolo lover, but it will read: Carrie, the loving friend and extraordinary woman.

So in the spirit of holiday and lots of THR and bonuses, I just would like to say: go buy, buy as many things as you want, but buy them because you like them, because you like to see yourselves in them, not to please others.  And certainly, not to identify your very own existence with the brands.

No, I’m not suffering from hypothermia when I write this … but maybe I just bumped my head with something

So my plane was annoyingly delayed yesterday, for three damn hours!  Imagine waiting in the airport for that long with an impending headache from sleep deprivation because I had to wake up at 5 in the morning to catch what-is-supposed-to-be my morning flight (only to find out that Garuda cancelled my 8 o’clock flight and move me to the 11 o’clock one.  I said: givemmeafuckingbreak!  Since when flying Garuda is the same as flying AirAsia?).

Anyway, after sleeping for an hour or so – the people at the lounge was nice enough to give me a room with reclining chair and a TV – I decided to get up and find some books at Periplus.  Originally, I was actually looking for the book Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.  But as I browsed through the store, I found a very interesting book by Bernik called This Diary Will Change Your Life.  It’s full of out-of-the-box ideas of activities you can do day to day in the year 2007 that will definitely spark up your life in a whole new way, from calling a phone sex line and demanding to speak to the manager to making a movie of your own.  If it doesn’t make you view life in a whole new way, it will definitely bring you laughter everyday.  But the book that I want to talk about today is a colorful book by Paul Arden entitled Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite.  Needing a book to ignite my creativity – you know how much writing has been my fixation, obsession, and passion – I decided to buy it, and spent the whole flight reading it.  To say that the book is awesome is probably the most understatement of the year.  I love it!  Paul Arden, a legendary executive director at Saatchi & Saatchi, challenges its readers to see the world in radical point of view, choose the extraordinary, and eventually achieve the so-called greatness. 

  The most memorable line on the book, to me personally, is about creativity itself: don’t worry about the medium you want, focus on the money you’ll make.  Right on, Paul!  Hahaha, it’s not that I write for money … well, I do, but that’s not all.  I write because I love writing.  Nova Riyanti Yusuf calls it “masturbation of the mind.”  I’m not saying that I’m orgasmic when I finish writing one chapter after another on my book, but there’s just this unbelievable feeling, you know, actually holding the draft of your own book in your hand for the first time.  I’m sure you’ve heard an artist or an author or a singer calling their painting, book, or album as their baby, and that’s exactly what I feel.  And quoting another saying from Paul Arden: If you want something bad enough, you will do anything to get it.  That’s why never ever say “I wish” because it only means “it’ll be nice if I can do or have that.”  But “I want” always means “I’m gonna do everything in my power to get it.”  And rethinking back about money as alterior motive – I really wanna say primary, but that’s just plain obvious hahahaha – in pushing my creativity, it really helps a lot!  I was able to finish the book ( plus some corrections and rewriting thanks to my dear closest friends who would find the time to thoroughly read it, proof-read it, and sent their feedback to me.  You guys are really priceless!) in two months!  And now I can’t wait to get it published to actually reap the sow of my own creativity.  So I’ve handed the draft to a dear friend of mine, an established fashion editor and author called Bang Dean whose latest book Pengantin Gypsy dan Penipu Cinta just hit the bookstand.  If his editor likes it and everything goes smoothly, my dream would finally come true, so wish me luck, guys!

If you’re asking me why would I pursue being a writer when I’m already a banker with very limited time on my hand – being a writer actually means no rests once I got home from the office, because I usually spent three hours writing before I went to bed and juggling the time of hanging out, having enough rests, and actually writing again on the weekend – I really can’t give you any other answer than the heart wants what the heart wants.  Should being a banker or a doctor or an engineer limit the possibility of expanding our creativity and choices?  Is this still the era of only having one profession in our hand?  If it is, then give me a time machine because this is not the era that I want to live in.

So, guys, pursue your dream.  If you want something bad enough, you will find the time, the energy, and the means to get it.  I don’t know about you guys, but isn’t it the greatest achievement of your life if you can make money doing the things that you love?  I believe Jean Chatzky, the financial guru of CNBC, even said once: wealth is being able to do the things that you love.  It’s about time to have your fissazione, obssessione, and passione as the source of your self-accomplishment.