29 September 2026
Tonight, Ilham and I suddenly decided to rearrange our bedroom.
For some reason, this turned into a whole project. We moved the bed, discovered a rather embarrassing amount of dust underneath it, and recovered several things that had apparently been living there rent-free. One of Cino’s spring toys. My long-lost Girl with a Pearl Earring brooch, which I had given up on months ago.
I was disproportionately happy about the brooch. I have a thing for cute ones. Somewhere in my drawer there is also a Van Gogh sunflowers brooch, so losing Vermeer had genuinely bothered me.
Meanwhile, I was walking around the room with a measuring tape in my hand as if I had been appointed project manager for a small construction site. I measured the wall, the bed, the empty corner, then measured everything again because somehow the numbers looked suspicious.
Eventually, we gave up and climbed back into bed.
Then, completely unrelated to whatever construction work we had just attempted, Ilham asked me, “Babe, did you read Indonesian literature?”
“Of course I did. Or, I used to. I read quite a lot of it in high school and college. Why?”
He had found a short story he wanted to read, but he said the language was difficult. I took his phone and tried reading it myself.
Okay. Fair.
The writing was quite poetic and a little old-fashioned, the kind of Indonesian that feels slightly Malay and makes you slow down for a second. I could understand it, but I also understood why he struggled with it. He simply was not used to reading that kind of prose.
So I started telling him about the writers I used to read. I told him about Hamsad Rangkuti and recited one of my favorite short stories, Maukah Kau Menghapus Bekas Bibirnya di Bibirku dengan Bibirmu? I tried to explain why I liked it so much. The story itself is simple, but Hamsad was so clever with words. He could thread ordinary sentences together and somehow leave one of them sitting in your head for years.
Then I remembered something.
Wait. I used to write too!
Not professionally, obviously. I just liked writing. Sometimes little stories, sometimes random thoughts, sometimes whatever was occupying too much space in my head. I even had a blog. Some of the older entries were in Indonesian.
How did I forget that?
I immediately opened nisadyr.de and was greeted by this little digital graveyard of things I once cared about very much.
The last entry was dated 20 September 2025.
I checked the date again. Almost exactly a year ago.
So naturally, I started reading.
And I felt warm.
There was something strange about meeting an older version of myself through my own writing. I wrote many of those entries when life felt like it was in limbo, when I was trying to make sense of the life I had somehow built between Germany and Indonesia.
I wrote about moving here, getting laid off, starting over, changing jobs, feeling lost, wondering where home was. I wrote about plans quite a lot too, usually after watching them fall apart.
Reading all of it now made me realize how chaotic those years actually were.
So, what changed in a year?
A lot.
Around that time, work had become exhausting. I was stressed and tired, and the pressure had been building for a while. Even after I closed my laptop, I still carried work around in my head.
Then my former manager reached out and asked if I wanted to work with her again, this time at a different company. The timing was almost suspiciously good. I said yes, and looking back, it was probably one of the best decisions I made that year.
Work feels different now. Healthier. I close my laptop and, most evenings, work stays there. I started seeing my girlfriends more. I had more energy for things outside work, and slowly, I started paying attention to myself again.
I ate better. I took care of my body. I lost weight.
Nothing suddenly became perfect. Life simply started feeling a little lighter.
Reading my old entries also reminded me of something I apparently write about a lot.
Plans.
I love plans. Maybe it is the first-born daughter in me, but I like knowing what comes next. I like timelines, lists and backup plans. I feel better when I can see the road ahead and convince myself that, if I prepare enough, I will know what to do when I get there.
The past few years have made that increasingly difficult. Moving countries, losing jobs and having to change direction more than once taught me that there is only so much I can prepare for. Still, I keep planning, perhaps because it gives me a sense that I am doing something with the uncertainty instead of simply waiting for life to happen to me.
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be ready. I always assumed readiness would come from preparation, that if I gathered enough information, made enough plans and got enough things in order, I would eventually feel certain. But some changes are too big for that. You can prepare for them and still feel completely unprepared when they arrive.
Maybe that is what I am learning now. Sometimes life moves before your mind has caught up with it.
I closed the old post and looked around the room again. The bed was slightly crooked from all the moving, and the measuring tape was still on the floor.
And there, in the corner we had measured three times that evening, was the empty space we had been trying to make.
Space for a crib.
I am nineteen weeks pregnant.
Apparently, the universe decided I was ready.
