No idea

I’ve been confronting such a stressful dilemma with lots of depression, grumble, and debate recently. And I am so blessed to be able to have a stance to stay for this last a year.

It was started when I received the role to represent Indonesia team to lead a big project alone. Started since February through the end of this year, to be exact. We are developing an online platform, incorporating any possible information related to the topic, and engaging diverse stakeholder to receive essential feedback for long-term platform’s enhancement. As I respect my manager who is more likely a father to me, I was feeling more than honored than being exploited to handle a big project that even our office in DC has numbers of staff to handle it!

Initially, it was an overwhelming fantastic job, cooperating with numbers of foreigner people. I must admit how exciting it was at that time, once my manager appointed me to handle such a big role in facilitating DC team in mainstreaming our proposal output into the real action, specifically in Indonesia. It was for real such a strategic role. I cannot imagine how this opportunity could shape not only my skill and capacity, but also self-confidence to adjust working with professional atmosphere.

It was an exciting task to do for the first few months. We conducted weekly skype meeting to report our progress. I reported the result of our in-depth literature review while DC reported their progress of the agreement with vendor. Although initially there was an ineffective meeting, but step by step we became more progressive in terms of achieving our own main task. Things turn even better while we were starting on scoping phase. We gathered any possible dataset around, interview with any relevant stakeholder which some of them are a national key actor in environment-related issue. We dealt with numbers of donor, targeting one main output: bridging a knowledge gap for diverse target audience to translating the issue in local level.

Things turn more complex during the last few months. While we were developing more demanding and creative outreach strategy. I worked with numbers of to-do-list, force me to have tonnes of workload at the same time. I was trying to maintain my spirit to accomplish this project until the end and how to keep my enthusiasm always on, day in and day out. Things getting worse until one day, and I ensure myself that, ‘Hold on. I’ve reached my limit’.

It was exhausted to work 'beyond' our own capacity. It was exhausted to always try to keep the best of us. It was exhausted to always pretend to be strong. For a second, I took a break. Questioning myself, ‘why I’m feeling so devastated?’

For this recent condition, it was even heavier to handle small task individually. Taking a big decision alone. Spending almost a day to reply an email, cc'ing to Senior Associate or even Director with some substantial attachment. Besides, having numbers of donor create even more significant demand for presenting specific request of data. We also need to develop specific method, provide series of analysis, create an added value, and facilitate a dialogue among 3 different sides: US, Spain, and Indonesia team. Seriously, it was so demanding to work with enormous pressure but minimum supervision.

Turns out, sometimes, I worked in the most unproductive way. Turns out, sometimes, I gave a fake smile only to show that life isn't bitter enough to be handled alone. Turns out, sometimes, I managed to always think in a positive way until I cannot define my own capacity. 

I think, no matter our position right now, in the past or what future will be, we always deal with ‘working stuck’ and it do exist. It was an inevitable thing to exercise ourselves to control our emotion mentally and physically. It was the moment when we need a strong enough relationship with precious friend to lean our burden, to give an essential feedback, and to remind us that we're not struggling alone.

*exhales deeply.

I will continue this note once my spirit has come and I'm passionate to do what I suppose to do.