During this season of life, the day can be divided into a few roles and shifts during the day.
It starts with quiet and silence in the morning. When the 3 am alarm rings, moved to the living room. It’s when I read, write like now, then followed by the Sunnah prayers and morning Quran.
The loudness of the day starts between five and eight a.m, dealing with motherhood’s tasks and duties. This period is loud and intense. But, this is also when the most important parenting takes place. Between 5-8 am in the morning is my 80/20 principles as a mother. Me as a child was quiet, me as a mother is loud. Whose mother is not loud anyway?
It feels like pushing a button or turning down the volume knob right after school delivery to midday. It’s where I play, do some work, and rest. The little girl always asks when I picked her : “what did you do while I was gone?”. Sometimes the answer could be lengthy, sometimes it could be no more than five words like: “I read and sleep”.
This period of the day is guilt-free. It’s one of the most important periods of the day when I can entertain myself, body, mind, and soul. I go for a morning walk, go jajanan pasar hunting, volunteer, meet with friends/parents, clean the house, read and sunbathe, and then nap. Nap time is important.
Preparing myself to mood-switching after midday where I resume working. Picking up the work phone and start dealing with customers and teams, while going for school pick up followed by after-classes session and dinner preparation. This is like doing multiple jobs at once. Tired, but totally manageable. Whose life is not tired anyway?.
Dinner always done between 5.30-6.30 pm and another period that I am looking forward. Works are all done. Study night with the little girl doesn’t count as work, it is more like a light discussion or checking some of her works.
When the last five times prayer of the day is completed, it is already near time for bed.
Saturday is mostly the loudest weekday during this season. (Any day that requires me to move around is considered a weekday.)
I decided one thing that I didn’t want to do in life when I was 26 : daily commuting and being stuck in one place for hours daily. After doing it for two years, it crushed my body, mind and soul. I didn’t want to move restlessly between day. That was when I understood that I need more than money to live properly. I was far from wealthy but I didn’t want to spend my life being tired and unhappy daily.
Trading stable jobs for tranquility is the price to pay and that was the first time I exercise my audacity to ask kind of life I want (or I didn’t want to be exact).
Everyone looks for peace of mind at a certain point in life. I just decided a bit early.
One of the gains from this kind of life that I really treasure is a chance to do my five times prayer mindfully and peacefully. No rush and I can take it as much or as long as I want (although there are times when it is still as fast as I can). Time and space to exercise the long surahs and verses memorized. The sit and stare after some of the prayers. At my age, any other gains offered but must be traded with such significant gain is no longer interesting.
From few angles, this life might look boring and uninterested. But, from many POVs, I am just privileged and and lucky that life granted me the audacity and go along with my decision.
Life before the London days and after that also plays an important role. London days were milestones when life season gently changed and no willingness to return although the period of living there was over. Life once again granted me the courage and audacity to ask such a thing.
I sometimes wonder where such audacity comes from? Only courage and bravery from genetic and personality? Or it‘s more of pure good fate and destiny? Because, audicity doesn’t stop there. It’s closely related to being resourceful and high agency. I often assume all of these contribute to the complexity of rezeki.
Despite knowing this as an undeniable privilege, maintaining this actually needs one to be sober and sane, not once or twice or sometimes, but all the time. It takes high level of discipline and consistency because it’s really easy to slip away without realized it.
Audacity is not just about courage or bravery, nor destiny. In my native language, audacity should come with “tau diri”.
Well, gotta go. Loud period should start.
About Audacity.
A Penny for My Pensieve 