The first half of 2022 was spent on preparing our marriage, and the second half to adapting. I wrote in my last year's Annual Review that 2022's plan revolved around marriage. I said last year: to marry is to surrender and God surely has shown His way to take more control of our lives.

We both understand and expect marriage is a hard work, and we step into this covenant with restful heart, knowing that we accept each other's qualities and flaws without remorse. Without any terms & conditions that allows us to exit and break the covenant. We look into Jesus and His church, as exposited by Paul in Ephesians.

The stories below revolves around these questions I got from Sahil Bloom (with personal tweaks): (1) What did I change my mind on this year? (2) What created energy this year? (3) What drained energy this year? (6) What were my greatest hits and misses? (7) What did I learn this year?

I divided the 2022 recap in a few common sections so you can read the ones that you want and skip the rest of it. Happy reading!

Disclaimer: this section is heavily limited on my personal reflection.

It's not as spooky as the crowd's wisdom tells you all over the internet. Simply put, you move out from your parent's house, to live and build a new family with your partner. But the day-to-day is harder than I thought. The minor differences got magnified and bugs you every day. For example: I'm a planner. I organized my tomorrow to every minute and make sure there's no surprises. Claudia is the polar opposite: she plans out her day as she wakes up. Going through that every single morning worn me out.

Heading into 2023, I want to focus on "getting the daily things" right. How we conduct our morning: how we greet each other each morning, ensure adequate sunlight exposure, slow and undistracted walk, family devotion, workout, and breakfast. Last year I wrote underestimate event, overestimate process, and this is a perfect use case of the wisdom. Arrange the tiny things into perfection—it compounds.

Big goals like what are we going to do in 5 years blablabla is just not my cup of tea. We barely survived a year, what sort of megalomaniac would plan out for 5 years (or more). Instead, I want to focus on systems and making sure we got the day right. The weeks are going to reviewed retrospectively (per weekly review), the months will pass by as they always are, and then the Annual Review.

In 2023, my personal aspiration is to make progress in all three domains of Headship of Christian husband: Leadership, Protection, and Provision. I want to share with you what Pastor John said about this, especially for husbands.

Everything a husband is called upon to do in his leadership is summed up in four ways:

I thank God because we live in a country where the role of man and woman is still distinct. The call for physical provision and protection, I must say, is natural for me. However, the spiritual ones are not easy. In 2023, I want to lead my family in those areas, especially in the area of prayer.

Thus far, Claudia and I are the biggest supporter of each other. I want to enable her to flourish in her activities and service to the community, and vice versa. I found that being in a covenantal marriage, in some ways, allows your partner to voice their heart without any fear of judgment. At least for me, I always feel Claudia speaks out of love and having our family's interest at the forefront.

Taking a step further, I think we did a good job as a new family on how to relate to our roots: the big family. We established our boundaries as a new and independent family and we wish to continue to do that in 2023. One of my greatest joy in 2022 is to see my family grew fond of my wife. It's a hard-fought battle, with years of patience and toils for us. To see it starts to bloom warms our hearts like none other.

A few years ago I learned a trick from Quora: hike with your partner before you decide to marry him/her. Claudia and I never did that (she will never agree to hiking), but there's a chunk of wisdom to that suggestion: holiday reveals our teamwork dynamic as a couple. A trip is a project that involves planning, financing, lots of compromise on preferences, and what sort of activities do you both agree to do together. Remember what I said earlier about Claudia figures out her day as she wakes up? Exactly. During holiday trip, we learned a lot faster about how to handle each other.

However, the past 7 years we have developed a good conflict resolution. However, there's an exception: when she cries (or about to cry), she wins. She can do whatever she wants at that time. I'm a sucker for tears.

Before anyone asks, let me tell you a story about our plan to have a child. Dr. A. R. Benard in his book said there are four things women want from a man: Maturity, Decisiveness, Consistency, and Strength. Initially, we wanted to postpone for a bit because we literally started our marriage from zero. Out of the four things Claudia want from Ivan, and the calling of husband as stated by Pastor John, Ivan has nothing. Maturity? Meh. Decisiviness? Took me a few years to convince myself about big decision. Consistency? I'm still learning about myself and what I want, how could I? Strength? I'm a weakling since a newborn. Zero money, zero assets, zero savings.

We didn't feel confident to have it immediately and so, we took it slow. I'm gonna spare the spiritual details about how we finally decided that this is time to start the program, but yes, in 2023 we are planning to have a child.

I told Claudia she needs to free your time, if we want to have a child. Remember, I'm the kind of guy who believes everything must be prepared and no surprises is allowed—unless beyond our control. I need her to prioritize and provide exclusive quality time for us, for the family, for friends, and for her service.

Sometimes we are too busy with our work, even in the bed we were occupied with our phones. I want to change that in 2023. Still no TV in bedroom and will continue to do so. I want to test with Claudia on this rule: after 9pm, your time is for your partner's. No more midnight working (unless planned and urgent), but the order should be implemented.

Our overall health trend in 2022 is good. A few trips to doctors here and there, but all is well. I want to take a moment to reiterate that not sick does not equal healthy. In 2022, we were not sick, and I realize we were not healthy.

We have a sedentary lifestyle and gained pounds. Poor sleep habit and daily routine (as I mentioned above). We started going to the gym by the end of 2022—but laziness got the best of us.

In 2023, we want to start taking health seriously and committed to prioritize Health. Some of our commitments are:

This is the spiciest of all. First, my view on money is negative. I like money, but everytime my paycheck comes, I have mixed feelings. I'm happy because I can share it with my family, but I hate it because I don't know what to do except save it. I don't have a vision, a cause, or other things that I feel I must do or have that involves money.

However, I realized how potent money is for other people and to significantly allows us to help other people, so I got the gist of why I should manage our family's finance more thoughtfully.

My first "teacher" is Dave Ramsey. In short, his book's ideas are: 1) Pay your debt, 2) Pay cash for everything. Then, I met Ramit Sethi and Morgan Housel. These three bosses should suffice to setup our financial system to have our Rich Life. Please note that Rich Life is a personal list of what would be your Rich Life, not necessarily means accumulating more wealth. And the value for us is freedom and independence, not luxury. For example, my rich life would be: taking a cab for every personal trip. We don't own a car—we only borrowed it and I hate driving—so I don't want to drive whenever I can. Hence, taxi is part of my Rich Life. I don't care about sports car or any other vehicles. To borrow Sadhguru's term: they are social thrills; they are not necessary for survival.

Claudia and I made our list of Rich Life, and after calculations, our 2023 financial systems for our combined incomes looked like this: 10% tithing, 40% for fixed costs, 31% for savings, 14% for investments, 4% guilt-free spending.

Now, what is guilt-free spending? It is the amount of money we will spend on dining out, movies, and anything we want. For me, it's mainly for shoes. I bet Claudia will spend her money on dining out.

Why 4%? Doesn't it seem too little compared to the 40-30-20-10 rule? 30% for stuffs we want? The thing is, we don't value luxury lifestyle and we are not interested to upgrade our lifestyle. We set the bar for "what does it mean to live a comfortable life?" the past 6 months. We plan to stick with that despite significant increase in our combined incomes. Most of our "increased" income translates into savings.

In terms of career, 2022 was the best year of my career. Needless to say, because it involves G20 Indonesia. You can read the summary of lessons I learned here. However, the end of 2022 also unveiled a twist in my turn: I quit. I stop working for WHO and embark on a new journey with other institutions that I will probably elaborate some other time. I scratched the surface of my decision in The Green Pasture, to give you a glimpse of the rationale behind.

I fulfilled my desire to apply to graduate school even though I haven't heard anything back. Probably will hear the result on February or March. Here's the catch for 2023: I will postpone it again. I land a good job for 2023 in which I can support Ministry of Health. My aim is to work until at least 2024, then undertake the graduate study. We shall see what happens this year.

In 2022, I figured out that my friends knew me for my knack for reading. So, why am I not doing it? So I started writing online (again), this time it is titled The Green Pasture, a newsletter. It will probably expand to a community to fulfill intellectual endeavors, including how to build a family. For now, this is the newest section: Ask and Tell, where everyone can ask anything and I will try to weigh in my perspective—along with the all the lessons, frameworks, and theories I have read. If you have some burning questions, drop it in the comment section or dedicated thread I that will make later. TGP will be a slow, zero-pressure hobby I aim to consistently do in 2023.

Aside from primary career and study, this year I have several funny goals that I would like to explore:

I said last year that I wanted to be more social. Claudia is over-social. So there's that. I wanted a sip, but she chugged the whole bottle straight to my brain. Constant exhaustion from me. I want to limit the time devoted to "social meetings". It threw me off the balance and I couldn't function well in my daily life because I hadn't had my downtime.

On the other hand, I enjoyed my G20 colleagues. Hopefully will stay connected with them this year and forward.

Prof. Adik Wibowo passed away. The hardest part of this year. And it happened in December 30th.