Count the things that make you happy

Yes, I am. Because there are so many things that make me happy lately.

First, my friends and I had the final exam of our Dutch class last night and I think I did, most importantly, the speaking test pretty well. Listening to my boyfriend talks in Dutch and talking to myself help a lot ;)

Second, even though the course is over for now, I can still learn from an app. But I also can spare my studying time for other things to do. I’m thinking of doing watercolour drawing again and this excites me.

Three, now that I have more time to read, I will start reading Homo Deus. I promise my friend Nabila for that.

Four, the remake of Resident Evil 3 and Final Fantasy VII have been released. My brothers and I won’t need to wait until weekends to play this game. We have the whole time in the world now.

Five, there’s a stranded kitten in my house. She’s been staying with us for the past 2 weeks and I really enjoy my time playing with her. I call her Nyanyaa and she’s so cute!

So, there’s no reason for me to feel sad. But there’s a pandemic going on Cynthia, we have to quarantine ourselves, and it feels like a prison now. How can you be happy?

For someone who had always woken up at 4 am during weekdays for both school and work in the past 19 years, I finally reached the point when I think I had enough. Earlier this year I thought “Fuck it, I’ll wake up later than the usual, go to work by myself, use the public transportations, and spend around 2,5 hours on the road, finish my work, and still go home on time.” After a while, I felt better because I finally had enough sleep in the weekdays.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that on rainy days. I had to go back to my old routine; waking up at 4 am again, going to the office by car with my Dad at the earliest hour to avoid the traffic, and so on.

I was tired. I was drained.

To make it worse, I realised that even after 3,5 years I was still not used to an open office. Who the heck had this idea of mixing so many people with different characters in one open working space? They must be extroverts. So, after so many short nights and long working hour, my office’ working environment made it harder for me to work effectively.

I need a cubicle. I need a space. My own space.

I wished at that time for a chance to work from home. So I can wake up later and work in my room, in my personal space. When I took a sick leave, I realised that I did my work faster (even when I was sick) than when I was at the office. I had a better concentration and no noise around me. So then I thought, “Should I ask for a permission to have one day in a month to work from home? Especially when it’s the day when I have to do important tasks?”

I should be careful on what I wished for, because after that, this pandemic started.

It’s been decided that we should do our work from home. Not just one day in a month, but everyday until… we don't know when.

Now, it’s been one month since I started working from home. This feels like weekend everyday for me. To be honest, I’m okay. I don’t have to wake up at 4 am. I have enough sleep. I have more times to do things that I like. I have more times to have conversations with my family. I don’t have to wait until weekends for those things to happen. I feel fine.

Although I can’t lie that I miss going to the cinema and watch movies by myself, I miss walking around the mall and shopping alone, I miss my boyfriend a lot. I could only visit him once or twice a year. But after this, we’ll meet again. We’ll create more memories together again. I know we will.

My boyfriend asked why I am always this positive. I don’t know, maybe because I know I had worse. I had endured a lot of things. Maybe it's also because I count the things that make me happy and focus on that. You can try if you want.

After all of this is over, I’ll thank the universe for giving me a chance to take a break after those 19 years. I am sorry for those who are bored, stressful, or tired during this moment, but when we’re back to what you call the ‘normal situation’ again, I will be the one who feels all of those feelings… again.

#happiness #workfromhome