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Nikah Kapanpun – None of Your Goddamn Biz, People.

naralea wedding

Belakangan gue sering banget ngeliat pembahasan soal nikah. Nikah muda, nikah telat, nikah ketuaan, kebelet nikah, bahkan fenomena ga nikah-nikah atau memutuskan untuk ga pernah nikah sekalipun. Kayanya semua berawal dari anak salah satu uztad terkenal yang menikah muda, dan #NetizenBerkomentar banyak karena yang bersangkutan sendiri banyak raise statement-statement mengundang diskusi seperti ‘daripada dosa, mending nikah’. Gue gamau munafik, gue juga membalas pertanyaan tentang dia di ask.fm tapi lebih ke arah nikah muda-nya dan statement dia sendiri, (come on, as if kita ngga sepunya akal sehat itu sampe ga bisa ngontrol nafsu kita sendiri?) I don’t really give a s about him. It is his life, his decision. Dari situ, mulai deh banyak postingan dari akun-akun content marketplace yang highlight nikah muda untuk menghindari dosa.

Lalu banyak kasus-kasus lain bertebaran. Dua yang gue inget banget itu adalah (1) kasus cewek yang ninggalin pacarnya demi nikah sama orang lain yang emang udah siap nikahin & literally ngajak dia nikah. Well, to be fair, dia bilang kalo objektif dia emang nikah muda (ga bilang sama siapanya sih yang penting nikah?). Yang nomer (2) adalah artis senior yang sudah masuk usia senja dan memutuskan untuk menikah dengan budayawan Indonesia. Banyak yang nyinyir gatel banget sih udah tua masih aja ngebet nikah.

Dari semua, yang paling mengganggu gue adalah kehadiran para SJW-SJW yang mulai ngebash fenomena nikah muda as an achievement. I am not saying that they are wrong, but I don’t see the point of bashing someone else’s point of view because of that. Gue setuju sama pendapat mereka kalo everybody has different timing, tapi itu juga berlaku buat semuanya loh, jangan biased karena merasa diattack dengan banyaknya konten soal ajakan nikah muda? Kenapa sih diurusin banget? Terlebih, banyak konten yang bisa diartikan dengan ‘gue belom mau nikah karena gue masih ngejar karir dan/atau pendidikan’ yaudah, we all appreciate your voices and thoughts, but that doesn’t mean lo berhak being a bitch ke orang seumuran atau di bawah lo yang nikah muda. Hey, doesnt mean to brag but I got married young and a. I am now a senior manager and b. I got accepted in #1 Aus univ for my master. Kalo lo emang ngerti statement everybody has different timing, ya really mean it dong. Jangan cuma pake itu kalo lo butuh defense.

What I am trying to say is orang bisa nikah kapanpun dimanapun sama siapapun dan selama lo ga bayarin nikahnya dia, your opinion is not needed. Sure, semua orang bebas beropini, semua orang bebas mengutarakan opininya, tapi pikir lagi deh buat apa sih sampe ofensif? Jangan mengeneralisir suatu tindakan cuma karena lo ga suka sama tindakan itu. Anak belom lulus SMA mau nikah? Biarin aje. Nenek-nenek mau nikah lagi? Yaudah sih orang butuh teman, terlebih di masa tua. Dia gamau nikah? His/her life.

Gue sering nyeletuk ‘hhh aku kecepetan nih nikah aku mau nikmatin masa muda dulu’ yang terus dibales Rey ‘yaelah kamu masa balita aja belom lulus’ cuma gue tidak menyesali keputusan gue nikah di umur 24. Gue nikah karena gue sayang, cinta, yakin, dan percaya sama Rey. I hope you find someone who can convince you of the thought ‘forever and ever’, like I did. Semua orang punya waktu sendiri-sendiri. Mine started last December.

 

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Thank you, 2016.

naralea

Thank you for the chances, 2016.

You have given me a lot of chances for me to be better. To improve.

Looking back, I don’t even know who I was in the beginning of the year. And now look where I am. I am stronger than I ever was before. I stand for my own self. I begin an endless relationship in 2016 – the self-love that arrives and shines brightly. Oh baby, I could build a castle from the stones they threw at me. 

Now I know that in order to be accepted, I first have to accept myself. I begin to swipe my doubts and be okay with my flaws. I know what I can do, what I can’t do, and what I have to do.

 

Thank you for the courage, 2016.

Some things happened within you that require a bunch of guts for me to take, but I did. I take a leap of faith and I am finally here. Thank you for reminding me that the paths are already opened, I just have to cross the bridges.

My guts outshine my fear of failures, and boy, I could not be more right. I finally feel like I know what I want in life, and this is the right track for me to achieve it.

 

Thank you for the lesson, 2016.

You teach me that the most excruciating pain of this year is to lose something I did not even know I had. I learn the hard way to continue with what I have on my plate right now because sadness demands a lot of attention, but time won’t stop for anything. 

With my heart broken and faith shattered, I still need to wipe my tears and stand up strong because I have other responsibilities for other people whom I won’t take for granted.

 

Thank you for everything, 2016.

In you I get to experience a lot of thing. Sadness, break up, failure, betrayal, and promotion, success, acceptance, also – marriage. Wrong choices, brutal losts, and misplaced trusts won’t affect the feeling that 2016 has been my greatest year up until now. I sincerely thank you, dear me-circa-2016, to be sane enough throughout the year because trust me, it is worth it in the end.

 

Dear 2017,

I cannot wait to see what’s in your agenda for me.

 

 

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You promised destiny, but somehow you cannot stand the distance

naralea

This is how it feels knowing the expired date is close behind. I cannot ask you to promise that things will be just fine, because I know it wont. Things never work out for me, and I just found out that you are not an exception.

I wish I had an exception.

I always screw up, like, in the best way possible. Goodbye is all I have ever known. When I met you, I wish that you were an exception, because I felt like I deserve an exception, and it now kills me slowly knowing you are not.

I know we really do not have a fucking clue about the future, and we shall not act like we have one, but that does not mean we cannot predict it. We will end up going our own ways, because that is how it works with me. I never once have a really happy ending, and I now give up wishing for one. Because when I finally got my heart to love again, to trust again, to hope again, it ends in tears.

Some of me wants to end it right now and wears the dignity of being the one who leaves, but the other part of me is afraid to take the risk of being the one who is broken. Because I always am.

I really want to stop loving. I will, someday. Just not today. I promise myself to stop loving someone because nothing good ever comes out of it.

This original post was written and published on my personal blog in March 2014.
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Hey baby

there is so much I want to say to you

like your question about what is it about me who is so feisty, so full of opinions, so straightforward, can go mute when confrontation approaches?
what is it about me who can be so brave on words under real life but so scared of talking to you face to face?
what is it with me who, as you call it, runaway when things are not comforting for me?

because confrontation makes my skin crawls, and people are always going to fucking leave.

I avoid saying anything that will put a riff between us because you can leave and it scares me so much, it is the most terrifying thing I have ever learned. here it goes: my own dad, the first and only man I was truly needed left when I was not done needing him, it is a fair game for you to decide to leave me.
to decide I am not worth it.

honestly, I am so afraid that someday, you’ll realize that I have a major severe abandonment issue. and then you will start to look up to my family to try to find the cause of why am I so messed up (like your mother did) and then you will realize that I am a real mess starting from a kid, and likely there is no way to change that, you will wonder if you still want to go the distance with me in the future, and you will start to think that you may be wasting your time from July 2014, and then you will leave, because they all do, because people are mean and cruel, because deep down I know that there is something off with me from the very first time, and I also know that nobody stays, and I will end up alone.

I do not realize that the issue of my dad & family has been affecting me more than I thought. at the moment, you are sleeping beside me and I wonder how much longer will you be loving me before you left. because despite your (and your mom’s) flaws, you are the best thing that happens to me up until now. but I know, you deserve better than just me, a childish, spoiled, cry-baby, glutton girl that is actually a wreck.

you deserve a mature woman with no issue and a normal family. me? I know I am childish, I know I attach too much to you, I just hope someday you will find the reason why I attach myself too much to you: because I have nobody else whom I can count in my life. when my dad left and my mom screwed up, I have been detaching myself from so-called parents. when you walk into my life, I attach too much.

you know? after I post this blog, I will curl into your arm and hug you so tight trying to savor the moment.

I love you.

This original post was written and published on my personal blog in January 2015.

 

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Why Marketing Automation is Important

naralea

Have you ever heard of Marketing Automation without really knowing what is it about?

Well, in this advanced digital era, people are shifting from the traditional marketing towards the machine – tools, channels, e-data, etc. Marketing Automation is a process of leading your leads to the buying process with the right content for the right audience in the right time.

Marketing Automation usually stands alone as its own tool or exists as a built-in feature in CMS (I am usually implementing it with Kentico EMS – recommended!) that helps the marketers prioritize and execute the marketing task in a more effective way. The question is – do we need it?

Few good reasons why

  • We won’t waste time on manually update the contact sheet after we follow up, which we have to store manually also lol this is so old school #vintage
  • We won’t be perceived as disturbing to our customers because we do not blast the same thing to the mass – we hand-pick the content and deliver it as a nice, personalized package to the right audience, because we too feel disturbed right, e.g me when I see Golf promo arrived in my Inbox, wtf?
  • We won’t be wasting time and money marketing to someone who may not be interested in what our sharing, because you know content development is really time-consuming

There goes the second question, what does Marketing Automation look like?

What Is It Really About

To understand what Marketing Automation is, let’s see a traditional marketing example below:

Step 1: You send an email invitation to your activation event

Step 2: You send a thank you note to all the people who have RSVP’ed

Step 3: A few days later, you send a follow up email to the list of people who have confirmed, explaining the event and give a quick summary

Step 4: After the event is finished, you send the recorded material to all people who both attend and don’t attend to your event and leave an email and call number should they be interested in your product.

These steps are what traditional marketing is. There is no sense of personalized invitation because audiences are smart enough to know that those are email blast. In Marketing Automation, you can do things as follow:

Step 1: You differentiate your customers based on their interests to select those who may be interested with the event

Step 2: You send a personalized email to those lead

Step 3: You send emails a few days later for people who already rsvp, who have opened the email back and forth without responding to the invitation, who have rejected the invitation, and who have not yet opened the email. Each action defines the kind of content that you should send.

Step 4: You send a kind reminder to those who book, and you also send an email with different offer who ignore the event but showing different interest in the product.

With Marketing Automation, targeting the right audience is simpler and it turns out to be more effective. Companies that use marketing automation qualify 53% more leads, while the 65% of companies that don’t have a defined lead nurturing process or toolset in place lose a shocking 79% of leads (source: League Digital). First-hand experience, Marketing Automation makes it easy for us to plan, implement, and track the process of achieving goals in terms of marketing and sales. It is easier as well to automate experience in website, such as providing a whole journey for people who come from Google search based on a particular keyword or welcoming people accessing the website from a particular city with targeted promo for that city only. Let’s maximize our digital asset with personalized experience using Marketing Automation! 😉

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This is how it feels to lose something that wasnt even here to begin with

I got my hopes up.

I knew there was an equal chance for me to either have one or lose one. I, as a realistic, had no idea what to wish for, but the problem was I knew what I wished for. And I got my hopes up.

And as we all know, hope is a dangerous thing.

I still remembered the day where I first heard the news. At that moment, it all seemed vague and was hard to swallow. I began to think of the possibilities and the more I did, the more it seemed to be wonderful. The pros clearly outweighed the cons. I could already image what would be of me in the next year, in the next five years, and in the next forever. I fell in love with the imagination without keeping one of my feet into the reality.

And Monday came. It started with a rough morning and afterwards, things were moving in a slower speed, making it seemed like life wanted me to suffer longer. And I did. I cried all afternoon, and just this early morning, I woke up in the dawn crying my eyes out without even remembering what dream I had that brought me to this emotional turbulence.

How I wished things were different if only I had known.

If only. The two words kept resonating in my head like a broken stereo. Of all things I did recklessly, this unplanned silly thing was the worst, I mean, IS the worst. I did not know why I was using past tense in this writing because it still haunts me. it still brings the worst. it still aches. 

 

 

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To my first love: it indeed makes sense now

naralea | first love

You know the feeling that you are so afraid you won’t make it out alive?

You keep questioning why does this have to happen, what wrong you have done to deserve this, why it has to be you of all people? You have been good, man, you have been great. You have given everything you can possibly give, you know that if it were you, you would not let go of you.

But you can’t. Because you are you, and they are they. Because life is not always fair. Because all good things for good people only happens in movie. You need the good thing right now because at least, you would not feel like a complete waste.

For me, that moment will be the first time I fell in love, and got my heart broken into pieces.

The first one is always the benchmark of everything else coming second.

I think, the portion of your first love never really goes away, because I do believe that each of our relationships has taken different portion of our heart. When it is over, a particular portion will be boxed away along with the memories and, also, a tiny amount of ourselves.

My first love lasted for an on-and-off two years, and it shaped me into the person I become right now. I always think the hottest love has the coldest end and sometimes, it is true. I was giving him portion I didn’t know I was capable to have. I started something for the first time, and I failed miserably for the first time as well.

During the break up phase, never once I did not pray to either undo everything or skip to the part where I could wake up and did not think about him. The recovery took a while. I was a mess. Some part of me that was believing in love wholeheartedly came crushing as I stood by and watched it turned to dust. Love was messy and cruel. Why did we love if it wasn’t forever? All of this did not make any sense. 

Although it took a while, but I recovered. I started loving again, and failed, and now, I am in a relationship where I can finally see why. It all makes senses now. In order to be whole, we all need to be damaged first. Some of us are indeed lucky to marry their first loves, but most of all, we have to go through the coldest break up, the cruelest broken heart, and the hardest nights.

For that, I thank you.

I guess I never had a chance to thank you, even though you are most likely confused what for. It is me, it is my personal being that I want to thank you for.

Thank you for being my first. Thank you for teaching that love is not made for eternity. Thank you for showing that no matter how hard we try, if it does not meant to be, it won’t. Thank you for preparing me for the next journey. For the next broken heart. For the next break up. It may or may not be better than our first, but we kind of reassure ourselves that we have been through this kind of thing before and we survived. We will survive again. 

Right now, I am indeed still wearing my heart on my sleeve, but I have faith in me that I can go through with anything because I have been there before. If we *knocking on woods* were to experience *knocking woods again* stuffs like that again, we will be crumbled. We will be a mess. But we will make it, because we. have. always. been.

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Every fire is a lesson learned

You know, the older you get, the more you get to know yourself. Well, I finally get a better view about myself. At least. Haha. I mean, I made so many mistakes for the sake of growing up. Some of those mistakes, I cannot actually forget. It is always there to remind you how douchebag you are, and it never really wears off. You just get to a point where your mistakes wont wear you off. You are not defined by your mistakes; you are defined by what you overcome.

Every fire is a lesson learned.

I do not always remember what other people have done me wrong, but when I do, I never forget how those feel. I am a sucker at forgiving someone without being a bitch about it. Actually, the more I am mad, the more I get cold. I mean, like permanent cold. I’d rather be cold and cynical than have to explode and cuss and mock and yell and whatevs. I just dont think it worths. All I do is putting it down to my memories and making sure I remember that just in case I have to use that as my defense or I ever think about dealing with that person again. I used to think its a good idea until….. I read about repressed emotion in defense mechanism at psychoanalysis (God, are you Sigmund Freud?)

I don’t care if people say Sigmund Freud is crazy. I adore him. So basically, defense mechanisms are unconscious coping mechanisms that reduce anxiety generated by threats from unacceptable impulses.

The big idea of Psychoanalysis is the ego — the “I” — sits at the center of some pretty powerful forces: reality; society, as represented by the superego; biology, as represented by the id.
When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is understandable if we feel threatened, feel overwhelmed, feel as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all.  This feeling is called anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy. In order to deal with conflict and problems in life, Freud stated that the ego employs a range of defense mechanisms.  Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious level and help ward off unpleasant feelings (i.e. anxiety) or make good things feel better for the individual. Kind of defense mechanism are:

Repression is an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious. Thoughts that are often repressed are those that would result in feelings of guilt from the superego. This is not a very successful defense in the long term since it involves forcing disturbing wishes, ideas or memories into the unconscious, where, although hidden, they will create anxiety 

Wow. I mean, wow yea that makes sense, especially the issues I have to deal with my family. I never really burst out into anger while I just try to repress the emotion because it hurts only talking about it. I dislike explaining what I truly feel so I just go on like nothing ever happens. Is this really a symptom of a mental illness in Psychology?

But I still do not want to deal with it..

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I Want A Friday Kind Of Love

naralea

 

I want a Friday kind of love. The excitement you have after a rough week to finally meet weekend. A getaway. A break. When you pack your things, look at the window, and smile, knowing you are going home soon. The traffic will be bad, the streets are always crowded, but you don’t care because the shoulder you have been waiting to lean on is waiting for you.

A Friday kind of love is the feeling when you just don’t care about the unfinished reports, the never ending feedbacks from clients that do not seem to understand the limitation you have constantly mentioned, and the office drama where you have to deal with those who do anything just to strengthen their presences. It will be dealt later, you say. It can wait. You deserve the break.

I know that life is not always going like we plan it to. We study at school, we graduate college, and we try to find a job that is feeding our passions. We always have that dream of our future, I do too. I want my future to be bright and beautiful. I have been told that if I work hard, I can actually achieve it, but no one told me how to be okay when things start to fall apart. No one told me what are the signs if I am actually walking the right path, nor how to start over when it actually isn’t. I am afraid of taking chances, because I cannot afford to actually fail. I don’t have the luxury of failing because my safety net has been gone since I was a little kid. But, you. You give me my safety net. You are my safety net. The kind of safety net that is not actually cleaning up my mess, but the kind to reassure that it is okay, I have given my best, I have tried, I just have to try somewhere else.  It is okay to fail, I am strong enough to start over.

Friday is the day I get to spend with you at night without worrying to wake up early on the next day. We can talk about our week because on the usual day, we sometimes forget the little detail. You can play XBox and I can watch movies and it will all be okay, because tomorrow I get to spend the whole day with you. And the day after, as well.

A Friday kind of love is the one we come home to. The one we can escape the reality with, without actually forgetting about it. The one that encourages us to be okay throughout the day. And the week. And the month. And the year. And, hopefully, forever.

 

Inspired by Monday and Tuesday

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‘So when will you get married, Nara?’

naralea wedding

As I am typing this, my senior high school friend is marrying the girl from my junior high. My bestfriend, along with her husband, is attending her bestfriend’s wedding. My classmate is blasting her wedding invitation in my junior high class’ chat group.

Everyone else is getting married/planning to do so, and here I am contemplating about it.

I want to get married. I have been dreaming of my wedding since my childhood (and thanks, Pinterest, I am storing my fantasies) but seeing so many failures, even my own parents got divorced, starts to freak me out. I guess things would be better if I had a normal family and my current boyfriend never married before, but we are just not. My family has this weird expectation about marriage and my boyfriend was once married.

The reasons why my family keeps asking me to get married can be simplified into two. First is to stop all the sins we sinners have when we are ‘just’ dating, because dating is not a halal phase to my religion. From the other side of my family, it has become a sorta ‘tradition’ where the eldest is expected to take care of the younger, the burden my dad has to deal since he was young.

Then, my boyfriend’s divorce has set this high parameter for both him and his family, although he may not admit it himself. It is perfectly understandable, but how I wish I was those pure Javanese blood girls who praise their husbands like they are kings of the world. That would have made things easier, for both me & his family. Call me a fake but I just cannot act like myself without fearing they will scold me again with such rude words.

I really wish to get married, but the fear of it being ugly when it starts terrifies me deeper as the days go by. People say that as long as I love him, nothing else matters. I do love him but these things MATTER, because marriage is not only between two of us; it is more to marrying families. I once thought that after I was married, we would have had our world revolved around two of us, but my dear coworker fellow slapped me with ‘yeah I once hoped the same but truth be told, it was not like that. it cannot be like that.’

I dont know, perhaps it is only a childish wishful thinking, but I dont understand why. I cannot accept that if two people love each other and want to tie the knot, it has to be this complicated and messy and, sometimes self-inflicted, damages.

Convince me again why marriage is such a beautiful thing, please?