At first, the pandemic brought fear and panic. It made me feel anxious with everything that might and could happen. My job became insecure. Working from home became unexpectedly difficult, especially when they asked you to stay productive to keep the business running during this time. I was in survival mode. In fact, we are all in survival mode.

I live with my parents and grandparents. Every time a courier came to deliver packages, I always freaked out and cleaned everything with disinfectant sprays. I felt responsible to ensure everything from outside would be safe for everybody at home. Sometimes, I could be very upset when my family members were not cautious as I was. I was too paranoid.

Weeks went by. Months went by. I realised I could not be like forever. I must change.

Slowly and eventually, I was able to release all the tensions within me and continue living as I should be. I let go all the things that are out of my control. I meditate. I relax. Above all, I practice gratitude.

We are now entering the third month of quarantine or #stayathome. How happy I am to realise that even though we are 'grounded', we still have that capacity to create, do something that we love and also feel love.

Taking this as an opportunity to self-reflect, here are the things I am grateful for during the pandemic because only during this unprecedented time, I could pursue these.

I am always a family girl. I love my family so much. Being at home 24/7 with them makes me know them even more. This is a difficult time for everybody including my family members. Somehow by showing and opening up about each other's worry, it allows us to strengthen one another. This is the most beautiful and precious thing ever where you could give time and presence to your beloved ones.

Who knew all the boredom and free time would lead me to start a podcast with my best friend? I had always been wanting to create contents for my own platform other than blogging. Both my friend and I have finally launched a podcast in Bahasa Indonesia which basically talks about everything for only 10 minutes. We invite guests from our circle, like old friends, to also share their inspiring experiences. This made me realise that inspiration could come from anywhere and anybody. If you think people are only successful when we could see them on TV, magazines, newspapers or with high social media followers, you need to think about it again. Start looking inspirations and get motivated from role models in your circle.

We are being given a precious time - while not doing anything at home - to reevaluate our goals. Something is paused because of a reason. It could because either we need to restructure our plan to reach our goal or we need to shift our focus to a better goal. Is the goal that you aimed so far really the one you want? Do you have this goal because you've been influenced by the mainstream or society? Do you perhaps need to have a higher goal as you are in fact capable to do so?

In my case; I always thought that by having a secured job with sufficient benefits would be enough for me. Now, everything that I was proud of has been compromised due to the pandemic. It made me think of "what now?" Although this is out of my control, I knew I still need to find or, at least, prepare a plan B. In case of worse scenario, at least I would not be too miserable or depressed because the Universe tells me that perhaps I am better off with my plan B.

Take this as an opportunity to dream again. Higher.

German. I always want to be able to speak and understand the language better.

I felt guilty when I always spent hours before sleeping just on Netflix. I need to also grab new knowledge or something that would make me a better individual. I train myself to read or learn something new in German everyday. I love listening to music so I tried finding German songs that I enjoy for my listening practice. I followed German influencers on Instagram to learn how they write captions - which I believe are mostly about daily conversational and hence, more handy. I am still far from good but at least I move forward.

Instagram is now full with photos or stories of people showcasing their hidden or newly discovered talents; cooking, makeup, photography, music, speaking etc. If you have not discovered 'that one skill', keep pushing yourself and enrol to free webinars or online trainings that interest you. There are so many topics that you could explore. If you don't know what you like, at least you surely know what you dislike.

I am grateful just for staying at home, wearing no makeup & no bra, watching TV, browsing internet, listening to songs in my room and basically just be at home and do what I love. No rush in the morning, no traffic in the afternoon. Introverts might agree with me on this.

This whole situation is new for everyone. None of us knows how to exactly deal and handle this. Your experience might be different from mine. However, I hope this would make you feel better: we are all struggling at some point. If you could not see something to be grateful for from staying at home like I do, well, I am sure there must be at least one thing that you are happy about during this pandemic. What I am trying to say is that try to shift our focus from the negative to the positive because we cannot stay in our misery for too long. We need to stand up and fight back. Are you ready for the new normal?

I wish you all good luck and may God always be with us <3

Stay positive, happy and healthy!