End of Twenties Note: Evaluate Backward and Dream Forward

November and December are special months when many special occasions held. I got married on November. My wife birthday, my most special person, is also in November. And December is my birth month.

Yesterday was time when my age clock tick to another year and it remind me that I have stayed in this earth for another extra year. This year is my last twenties and next year my age second will be incremented too, that make me join thirties group. Before get too old and too lazy, like usual, this event is always a best time to do some reflections and evaluations. I want to move back a while with my imaginary time travel machine.

The Magical Time Travel Machine

I often feel that time flies. Sometime I still remember several old fragments, when first time I have memory that I can recall from my childhood. One of that I still can retain is, when one day I was play outside near my home. Then my dad fetched me to go home. I was around 4 years because I remember that my mom was expecting her second child, my first younger sister. I couldn't recall any memory older before that time.

We moved to different city shortly after my mom delivering my first younger sister. I was entering primary school when I was around 5 years old.  I couldn't remember most part of those times. Like I don't remember any name of my friends. I only can recall some of memory snapshots. I was schooled there only for one year because then we moved back again to another city again.

On second year of primary school I was staying with my uncle. I was with his family for 3 years from 2nd grade until 4th grade. I couldn't remember much thing around that time. However my memory was better because at least I can remember several of my friend name. Even I can found out them again in Facebook, some years later.

On 5th grade I return to stay with my own family. Then 2 years later, I entered junior high school. I can recall more and more. Sometime I wonder about how magical human memory is. It getting better and better when age increase and one time will decay again when we reach older time. 3 years in junior high school with important achievement of getting to know how to fall in love with girl, then I entered high school. Fast forward 3 years I entered university. More freedom, found more diverse people.

Four and half years in university is like a blink, then I graduated. Got a job luckily 3 months only after graduation day. Somehow destiny guided me suddenly to work as a programmer. I work in Jakarta for 3 and half years then destiny flew me to nearby country and has worked here in Singapore for another 3 years. So what I have achieved? Anything I can proud of?

Chasing The Achievement

Nope, I haven't help to resolve world hunger issue yet nor in near future could have capacity to win a noble prize. I am not so that impactful yet as an individual, although hope to be so sometime later. More or less I feel that I still about same with 4 years old of me. Except that I little bit taller and much more fatty. However, inside I still have the same soul with that little boy and hoping could be a better and better person as the time moving forward.

Getting older is a gift that not all people can attain. People life and dies every time. Be grateful if we still breath at this exact second, which mean we still have chance to make world a better place, said no startup founder ever in their pitch. I am serious in this point, as I believe there is no impossible thing to achieve and any damage that couldn't be recovered in this world  as long as we still live and have strong commitment to do so. Making world as a better place could be started just to make our self a better person. Hence I still disappointed to myself is I feel that I still haven't make any significant movement to make myself as a better person yet.

I always state my personal motto as "Life is to precious if just to be ordinary". Hence I feel that most of the time I still too much ordinary. No sin to be ordinary but most magnificent achievement in this world is done by extra ordinary person. To have just a standard life maybe we could just be ordinary. However to have a good life, a proper house, a nice vehicle, frequent travel to beautiful destination to enrich our soul, to have best health and education for our family then we have to be extra ordinary.

Best result comes from best effort. And I feel that I haven't presented best effort in my life yet. This is important thing that I remind in this event and I have to serious to start doing best for everything I do from now on. Let see following example: doing best job in my work, be a best husband for my wife, be a best father for my future children, be a best son for my parents, write a best software., write a best book, use every day time as its best, and so on. Hoping that by executing those best input to get best output. Let we say that best output as a thing called success. Everybody want to succeed, aren't they?

Success is something too abstract. To make it easier, let's define success as achieving something that we want. So from that we could list following steps to succeed:

1. It started by knowing and define exactly what we want. 
2. Prescribe the step to get what we want and break down it as specific as we could. 
3. While have not succeed, do every step that will help we getting closer to what we want. 

It might be funny, but sometime people don't know what they want, which indicating that most people satisfy to be just ordinary. Some people know what they want, but they don't have exact step to get what they want. Whom that even not doing number 1 has messed up them self . Whom that execute only step 1 to 2 is a dreamer. Whom that execute all of those three will only be the person that could succeed. Ironically I rarely doing 3. Sometime I do step 1, sometime I do step 1 and 2. Less often do the whole steps 1,2 and 3. This have to be changed.

What I want?

This is standard bucket list that I often wrote. Hoping this year can put more full commitment to achieve these.

• have a better personality so that I could be a best friend, near perfect husband, a superdad, a nice son for my parent
• make more friends because the best source of life learning is from other humans
• have children
• have a house
• have a car
• have a sporty motorbike again
• have best expertise in my professional field
• work in awesome company to gather experience so that
• I can build awesome company too
• study post graduate 
• improve my English
• learn another foreign language (maybe start with German, wie gehts?)
• have better skill in public speaking because
• to speak in a software conference 
• travel to awesome place
• Learn to fly an airplane
• and so on

How To Reach There

This morning my wife re-shared my Facebook status from few month back, that even I forgot from where I have it. But understand this steps will help a lot to achieve our "what we want list"

1. No more zero days - do something towards whatever goal or want. (e.g. make time to study/research/learn/design/develop/create/build/launch)
2. Be grateful to the 3 You's - The Past You, The Present You, and the Future You.
3. Exercise - when you exercise, you are doing your future self a huge favor.
4. Read Daily - almost everything we've ever thought of, or gone through, or wanted, or wanted to know how to do or whatever has been already figured out by someone else. Reading will help you better understand.
5. Have faith and follow through with action.

Special thanks to my wife that like always never stop giving me sweet surprise including giving some of my dream lego set in my birthday. Luckily some of my friends also  came and spent an awesome night to talk about life.

I just found out that for the last 4 years, every year I have tried to write my personal statement for my birthday that could be important reference for myself:

1. 28 years old personal note
2. 27 years old personal note
3. 26 years old personal note
4. 25 years old personal note