Who and Why

Hi.

My name is Carissa.

I am an Indonesian who lives in Indonesia. In case you’ve never heard of Indonesia, it’s the archipelago close to the south end of Asia Continent.

Why did I decide to blog?

I decided to blog to change my attitude towards life.

Earlier this year, I read a book by Angela Duckworth titled Grit. Some of you may have read it, but if you haven’t, go read it, it’s a life-changing book. Or at least, it was for me.

Basically Grit points out with detailed explanation what successful people in the world have one thing in common. And as you can probably predict, that one thing is Grit.

While I was reading the book, I could see myself in it. But not in a good way. In fact, I saw myself in every bad example Duckworth used. I was pessimistic, I was fix-minded, and I valued natural talent more than hard work.

I had come to realize that I never once in my life worked hard for something worthy. I never targeted anything for myself. I mean, I was an okay student at school and I also was an okay employee when I worked for a company. But that’s it. Never in my life I wanted something so bad and stayed doing it and actually strove for it.

Now, if you asked me why, I guess the answer would be because I was afraid. I was afraid to dream anything because I felt like deep down I always knew that I would have failed if I tried. I thought, by not trying, I let people (or as a matter of fact, myself) think that if I tried I would have been great. Which I knew by heart that that wasn’t the case. The truth was, I was afraid of failures. I was afraid to find out that I was not that good, that I was never that good.

Grit slapped me right in my face hard. It woke me up that no one, and literally no one was already good at the outset. People practice, people train, people do something to be good, to get where they are.

So here I am, in my 30^th year of life, searching for one thing to settle my Grit in. And hence this blog. I’ve always loved to write, but to be a writer is one too bold of a dream to undertake. Even to only admit that, it requires the courage I don’t yet have. I am embarrassed of what people would think of me. (Again, wrong attitude. You see, I keep falling into the same pit.)

Writing this, putting this out, allowing people to actually read this makes me feel deeply unsettled. It’s terribly scary stepping out of comfortable zone. Yet here I am exposing myself to many uncomfortable failures. But you know what, I now write because I want to do it and not because I am good at it.

And why English? Even though it’s not my first language

This one is quite simple. Because English didn’t come easy for me. I like to learn foreign languages yet language is a difficult subject for me. Therefore I want to keep perfecting my English perpetually and I am hoping that people in the blog world would be supportive enough to help me get there.