This morning, my phone woke me up. It buzzed nearly every second all mornings. Notifications from Whatsapp, LINE, Skype, Facebook, Path, even Linkedin kept coming to my phone. And yes, it was because today is my birthday. 🙂

It surprised me how many birthday wishes I had all day today. It’s a lot more than I used to get last years. Not only close friends and families, but also colleagues across the countries, old friends that I haven’t met for quite some times, and some other people that I never thought would care about my birthday. And did you know what’s even better? All people that I expected to text me did actually text or call me just right in time. None of the people those matter to me forget my birthday today, hehehehe.

When I just arrived in the office, an ex-colleague called me for a few minutes and we had a good laugh, as we always do. I’m so excited that I will meet her very soon in my birthday bash this weekend! And then exactly at 11 AM today, my Dad texted his birthday wishes along with some pictures of me when I was still a little baby. My parents looked so young in those pictures, and I looked so tiny in their arms! These pictures were heartwarming to me, somehow. Looking at those picture made me feel (more) blessed and grateful for the life that I live in. My life has never been easy even since I was a little kid, but it’s always always worth living.

And then after I was back from lunch with the MC who’s going to host my party, I found a wrapped box with a post-it on top of it right on my desk. My party is still three days away and I already received this early gift! And actually, I already received three other early birthday presents from my friends even since one month ago! Ahh, how can’t I love my own birthday? Hehehehe.

My phone kept ringing once in a while all day today, so there I decided to go to the coffee shop downstairs just to reply my texts (oops, I’m sorry for this, Boss! In case you read this, hehehehe). I spent 10 minutes replying all those texts until my phone rang. Sarah from my team called asking me to go upstairs for an urgent matter related with the MC. Oh well, somehow I knew she had prepared a birthday cake for me and she was waiting in the canteen with all other team members, hehehehe.

And of course I was right! When I entered the canteen, everyone was singing and Sarah gave me my birthday cake. I blew the candles, made the first cut, and gave the first cake to Rian (and it was only because he was craving for the cake so badly, hehehehe). Then as usual, we took some pictures and exchanged jokes with each other. Thanks for making time to prepare this, guys! I know you were all super busy today! You know… it’s closing time for the finance team everywhere!

Today, someone in my team asked me, “How does it feel to be 30?”

I didn’t deliver any good answer back then, but now, I have prepared the real good answer (at least I hope it’s a good one!). How does it feel to be 30? It feels like I have won the first round of my life. People says that 20’s will determine a lot of things in the future to come, and I do think that I have made the most of my 20’s. The ups and downs, the rights and wrongs, the tears and laughter, all of it have made me the one whom I always dreamed of. I’m grateful for every moment of my life, I’m even grateful for the mistakes that I ever did. Thanks to all those wrong turns I took, they have finally led me to where I am right now; to the place that I belong.

Yes, being 30 is scary in a way it makes me realize that I should really start a new phase in my life. I can’t be forever alone, but am I ready to share my life with someone for the rest of my life? Being 30 also pushes me to do something a lot better that I already did when I was younger. Given that I have achieved a pretty high bar in my 20’s, the next targets would be a lot more challenging to achieve. Just yesterday I told myself, “I know what’s next, but I’m not yet sure if I’m ready for it.”

But… hey… What’s the rush here? This is just my first day being thirty! Relax! If God gives me a chance to live longer, then I will still have plenty of times to make my wishes come true! If I could do it back in my 20’s, then insyallah, I can try to find a way to make my dreams happen in my 30’s too.

And finally… I want to share with you the biggest achievement I’ve made just a moment before I turned thirty: I learned how to sincerely forgive and let go of the things that are not meant to be. I’m also so proud that I’m never too tired to push myself to be a better one, I never lose my faith in humanity, and I’m really proud that I could remain as a happy person after every loss and failure I had over the first thirty years of my life.

Thank you everyone for the prayers, for being a part of my life (be it for years or just a little while), and for my blog readers, thanks for reading and motivating me to keep writing for you!

I’m gonna stop writing this long post and back to work! Hehehehe.

Wish you all a wonderful night!