Let me introduce myself. I belonged to the generation when globalization and high technology. I witnessed the transition of keypad phones to smartphones, DVD/VCD players to streaming services app, tube computers to flat computers and even tube TVs to flat televisions, and the continued development of the Internet, the rise of AI and its integration into our lives. I belonged to a generation between the Millennial and Gen Z. I have aspirations and perspectives of Millennial despite being born as the eldest of Gen Z. I experience both living in the city and province. I spent my childhood in the province, where I traversed the side street towards the school, passing the rice fields and a river. My consciousness started to develop in the province, where I believed that a child must grow up, knowing that it offers the beauty of nature, fresh air and peacefulness of the community, away from the fast life of the city. Then my family migrated to the city for a better life, in order to sustain our needs. This is where I witnessed the changing of the world, with awareness and innocence from the trivialities of being an adult when I was in teens. I was a meek, quiet child who rarely speaks up and with low self-esteem. I grew up that being silent was negative and being active and participative was positive. I was always the child on the corner, a wallflower and had only one friend until I mingled and my world widened in highschool, where I developed my personality.
I developed my skill and passion, which is writing. I started writing on papers and notebooks, completing stories with handwriting and then typing on smartphone and laptop. Writing has been my escape ever since. This is my way to express my thoughts and feelings, to release catharsis. Sometimes, it’s too much and I hold everything to myself instead of writing it. There can be times that I can’t write, and I just let my worries, dissent, opinions and trifles store in my mind until I can write them again.
My teen and early adulthood were an era of testing the waters and treading the waters without any pre-knowledge of how to navigate this era. The darkness and emptiness were filled with weight, like it’s weighed too much on my shoulders until I just sucked up and accepted that this is the past of my life. My depression is part of my life, and I need to just manage it, so it won’t eat me or let it just drown until I deal with it when it surfaced. I have so many realizations of being adult. Now I’m in my late twenties, I realize that you don’t need to figure out everything. This era is like an experimental stage. You juggle your responsibilities in financial, economic, and personal aspects. To live it on our own, we need to have a job to sustain our needs. In order to live, you need to have something that still lights a fire in your heart, a passion that gives you a reason to live, and ever since I have awareness and consciousness, I’m trying to figure out my purpose in life. And I’m still figuring out my purpose in life until now.