A Story of The Many Hobbies I Started and Stopped, Equally Fast.

It's all started in the year of 2018...

I had just moved to Jakarta. I was eager to start writing for a living after years of watching romcoms portray creative jobs made me think that it would happen as easily as it did for them, all in less than 2 hours running time.

Along the way, I started bullet journaling. It was not exactly a recent trend back then, but I loved how put-together it made my notebook look – and subsequently, made my life look. But then quickly, my day-to-day reality moved on faster than the pretty lettering and pretty pen could keep up, and so I ditched them. Turning away from a hobby that seemed easy and helpful for a lot of people was not a nice feeling; there were many times I judged myself harshly for not having a beautiful-looking, hand-drawn to-do list page.

Pretty soon, it was late 2019, and I had moved on to another job and another hobby: hard news online (albeit intern) reporter and macrame weaving. Little did I know that soon the pandemic would hit, and that my effort for a new job and maybe a crochet side business would dwindle so fast. I still have rolls of yarn littering my storage alongside my previous press pass, collecting dust, and my (artistic and journalistic) potential.

Then I got a pretty steady job in late 2020 and got married in 2023, and quickly my hobby merged with the demands of domestic life: I took up cooking. Apparently, I can whip up a pretty decent pot of pasta, fry a not-embarrassing bunch of crispy chicken, and even assemble a nice 3-meal dinner. Then I thought to myself, "Hey, maybe this one would stick! Maybe, finally, I found a hobby that can sustain me and my life, mentally, physically, and even financially!" (Yes, I researched how to open a sandwich shop from home, I even set up an IG account for it. No, I'm not gonna share it now since it's still embarrassing.)

But I then got quite the burnout, both from my job and my cooking. I approached both "projects" too all-consuming, too gung-ho, and all around too much for what I could realistically do. I would start replying to emails while making french toasts in the morning, continuing my other script while making stir fry in the afternoon, and STILL try to push myself to cook dinner while crossing the t's and dotting the i's on my finalized draft.

It was exhausting, I was exhausted. And so in late 2023, I quit them both.

At this point, I realized that I had been taking all of them, my job, my hobby, my life, too seriously. Too much pressure and expectations, and quite a lot of them internal, had been placed on me. I had to have written the perfect essay and cooked the perfect chicken for me to even allow myself a break.

I realized and learned that what is done is miles better than what is perfect, since, well, I'm only human.

And then 2024 turned into 2025, and I'm happy to report that I've learned to take it easy(er) on myself and allow myself to make mistakes.

Taking on a business/finance-related role and pursuing gardening are both completely out of my former wheelhouse, and the old me would've been too scared to fail to do it. And yet, here I am, still doing it and feeling pretty good about it. -WW