Ini adalah refleksi gue － yes, I’m using gue － menelisik isi hati dan pikiran yang selama dua setengah tahun sudah hidup sembilan jam sehari (or lebih), lima hari seminggu (belum termasuk kalau dibutuhin buat support) jadi software/system/robotic/automation engineer. It’s kind of in the middle of those.

I would not lie, it has been fun! So fun that I could not believe that I’m “jobbing” this job. You can say that this is what I wanted to do for a living, back then when I was still “kuliahing” and “ngoprekking” mechatronics stuffs in university.

Sudah cukup lama gue tertarik dengan the way alam bekerja. Tidak sebentar juga that I’ve been amazed by how us, humans, utilizes every law of nature to make something really-really cool. Dari hal “remeh” seperti sendok, garpu, pun hal lain seperti motor, peluru, internet, sampai roket. Dan robot. Automation.

Waktu kuliah, dulu gue belajar － self taught － tentang computer vision. Tidak cukup dalam dan luas untuk bisa dibilang jago. Just enough to make me understand the basics and where to navigate next based on my interests and needs. Sama sekali gak kepikiran bahwa apa yang gue pelajari waktu itu bisa diterapkan intensively di dunia kerja Indonesia yang － dengan paradigma gue waktu itu － belum cukup modern atau maju untuk menyerap teknologi semacam ini menjadi suatu produk.

And now, I’m actually working in a sector which enables me to do just that. Right around the corner, not far from my hometown. Not even a big city. So green and chill and quite far from any shitty traffic madness － for now at least, hopefully this one will last.

Robotic. One branch that my high school or college self did not know would pull me this far. People say, bekerjalah sesuai passion-mu. Apakah robotic is my passion? Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, what is passion?

a very powerful feeling, for example of sexual attraction, love, hate, anger, or other emotion – Cambridge Dictionary

Wow. Okay… Now that I grasp the actual meaning from a dictionary, it changes the landscape a little bit.

I would say, I am passionate to learn about robotics － or mechatronics for that matter － and to actually apply that in our life, even more so in our daily basis. Reading it again makes me realize that I’m not that far, but I’m certainly not close either. Nevertheless, in this case, I am making a living in accordance to my passion. Nice!

However, the other thing I’m confident to say is that － based on the definition － mechatronics is not my one and only passion. I think that would not be fair to my other deep longing feelings inside me. What are those? That’s the catch. I don’t think I could clearly put my fingers on them yet.

Don’t get me wrong. I can describe, or even list, several other things in life that I feel passionate about. Many of them are abstract or intangible things. Covering several areas in life, one of which is love. Funny, right? The very word which describes “passion” in the Cambridge dictionary above, is my other passion.

Still, I can not lie. I’m having a hard time to think about these things these days. Or maybe for quite some time now. Maybe months. Are you familiar with the feeling of being in depth, inside a fun rabbit hole, so focused on one thing you like, that you spend on literally almost 50 hours a week, that it makes it hard for you to think or even feel about… life?

It’s not easy. I’ve always been associating myself with being “grounded” kind of person. That I have an obligaton to live life to the fullest with a great mental clarity on what’s important in life. What’s worth to live for. I feel disconnected.

Maybe, it’s just me being not that skillfull in “managing” － I don’t really like this word, it feels to pretentious. Too modern with all these capitalistic circular working system － my life. My needs.

I imagine that passion is like a spring in the middle of a wood. If that wood does not have a proper road － river course － for the water to pass, then the water will still flow wherever it likes. It will still flow. You can not tell it to just freeze. If it does not find a way available. It will eventually make one. Pray to God that it would not become disastrous.

I strongly think it is our conscious job and responsibility to provide the river course. The canal. So that the water could flow gracefully to where we want it to be. Where it should be. Let’s build that. You and I are human. We are smart. We can do this.

Maafkan kalau jadinya campur-campur bahasanya. Tapi judulnya aja emang Two Setengah Years. Terima kasih sudah membaca tulisan gue.