Hey 👋
That includes myself lately where adventure is just some distant memories. But sometimes I wonder, if it’s myself, the root of all this mediocrity and monotony these days.
I mean, I could say yes to that answer but there’s more I want to talk about today. Something about being more expressive, language and everything in between.
About a month ago, I stumbled upon this fascinating character. A blue collar worker who talked about how though he’s just a construction worker, he wanted to improve himself. He considered himself shy and unable to bring himself to speak to the public. But he challenged himself despite his condition, he learned how to have better public speaking skills. Since then, not only it moved me but also made me learn that it’s us who decide if our life is going to be a mediocrity or excellence.
Writing on hive for so long made you wonder, why am I even writing this seemingly mundane thing? Why do people even want to know about it? I mean the places we reviewed, went to or things that we did might be so out of reach for some. Technically, you have to travel far away before even trying out said places. Will those people even watch the movie I reviewed? The game I reviewed and so forth.
When talking about our achievement, do we sound too boastful or will it be a motivation? When we talk about our life’s progress or failure, are we just having a pity party? I don’t know but those are valid questions I have whenever I am writing something here. It’s even more these days when I intensely question all these.
You could say it’s all really subjective but even for me, sometimes I wonder why I still hit publish. But I am reminded this place is where I feel less out of place. Where I feel like I could be more expressive however mundane my life can get. I admit that I treat this online public diary too intimately. The fact that my friends and families don’t really know much behind what’s going on inside my brain is another layer to all these. It’s not like I am hiding things from them, rather, I just didn’t know how to convey them without sounding snobbish.
It all once again circles to our understanding and command of a language. Which language do you think in? What language do you have more vocabulary to convey emotions, thoughts and explain difficult concepts? Then, the other day, I met someone who touches on this idea that,
I don’t know about you but that makes a lot more sense to me. I easily convey my thoughts in English more than I could in what is supposed to be my native language, Indonesian. Sounds pretty weird isn’t it? But to me it’s a constant reality I am facing daily where I can’t really have a meaningful conversation as it’s too cumbersome to translate. Some words just don’t translate well, however hard I am trying to put it into words. On one hand, I don’t want to sound inarticulate or snobbish because I don’t have a good command of a language that I am supposed to have.
For quite a long time I have tried to seek reconciliation between these but even when I read more books in Indonesian, it still sounds too challenging for me to talk about complicated things and more than just anything superficial level understanding of things. So, for me I was bound to feel a lot like strangers and lonely in my own surroundings.
As much as I tried to help out in the local community, integrating myself with them, those language barriers showed. It took me a while to say what I wanted to say and sometimes it didn’t come out as how I wanted it to be. It looked so perfect in English, not in Indonesian.
I am sure some of you here are like that too, being more expressive in your native language than English or some other languages that connect us all here.
But, I learned that there is another lens to look into all these. Rather than feeling like I am so out of place, it could be an opportunity for me to learn more. These days, I certainly learned more, especially when I am doing more translation work. I talked to a lot more Indonesians and my vocabulary expanded quite a lot. For quite a while, I framed this as a challenge rather than blessings. I tried so hard to fit in like a puzzle piece that would never fit. Maybe, I’ll never mold myself to totally fit in but in 2026, I was just one among many new generations whose command of Indonesian language seems like a distant memory too.
Where am I going with all these? You could say that like that construction worker whose life seemed mundane for many of us, he managed to wrap it into a refreshing story that made us hooked to follow his personal journey on becoming more confident.
Perhaps that is my newest goal here, to breathe some refreshing air into what seemingly mundane life and stories I have.
