We jumped from month to month with grace to grace. January we moved out. February Odi announced her pregnancy. Then we counted weeks. Then we counted days. Boom, now there are three of us. Archie arrived and changed everything. Time slowed down for a minute, then suddenly it's Christmas.

Our family is getting stronger and stickier (I know it sounds bizzare) but we move towards each other. We attach to each other, we setup boundaries, we really made our own 'country' with rules and terms we felt comfortable with. As per Annual Review 2022 (link above), we divided our years into facades you'd relate to, so feel free to read what suits your appetite.

In the last review, I mentioned that: I want to focus on "getting the daily things" right but I felt like we didn't succeed in this area. There are many moments and big changes in our year that shook our daily foundation, especially the head honcho who can be simultaneously smells good and smells poop-y.

Personally, as an individualistic person who was not close—emotionally—to my former family members, I'm beginning to understand why family is the foundation of a country. The role of parents are irreplaceable. This new season, three of us, feels like everything about Archie.

I thought I understand why 'childfree' is quite common nowadays, but until I have a child of my own, I changed my mind. It is not because of the rising living cost, or the risk for the mother, or any other reasons. It's because to bear a child you must sacrifice and lose your comfort (for a certain period of time, not forever). I won't draw any line where someone's life might be considered as comfortable or not, but the 24/7 demand and constant urgency that the child demand has taken its toll on me. However, I'm quite surprised that the upside of having children is not widely discussed, at least what I encountered is asymmetrical information from the contra side.

What having a child does to you is cruel, honestly. It breaks down every wall you ever created in your life (including, and especially!) your childhood trauma and how you view your family dynamics. It's interesting how suddenly I can have my heart melted (instead of annoyed) when Archie pooped while smiling at me.

And the everyday interaction taught me how God wants to connect with me despite all my shortcomings and why they don't truly matter in the eyes of God.

The season was rough in Romance sphere. We felt like the last three to four months were about survival. We adapted to survive and fulfill short-sight needs, so it's unbelievably hard to thrive.

We were stupefied by the overwhelming and underwhelming response to Archie's birth. We felt isolated and alone even with all the gifts and attention barraging upon us. Family connection and attachment did matters. On the other hand, there are domination, exertion of power that demanded Archie to go a certain way of parenting, so we backed down and guarded ourselves up.

The complexity of relationship dynamics humbled me to the point where I don't want to be socially bound or dependent. To avoid any asymmetrical exchange and keep our family undebted to anyone. For those who know the multicultural background of our family, I must balance them in Archie's life, so we orchestrated Archie's celebration to cater to both sides of our extended family.

On a personal level, I completed my promise to Odi that I will always be there with her in every step of her pregnancy, till delivery, and took my paternity leave to help her out in the first weeks of Archie's life. Unfortunately, we were unable to manifest Radiohead's "no surprise, please" because God redirected our initial plan and ended up facing some problems related to Archie's delivery and his health. Regardless, I was there, all the time.

Overall, a fantastic year in this department, particularly thanks to Heartfelt as our independent financial planner. Particularly, we were grateful for God's provision over the expense spikes due to pregnancy and welcoming our first-born.

As head of the family, I'm humbled that my wife felt provided in all areas of her life (even though I couldn't buy her new gadgets!) so that's my number one priority for her in 2024. Ha!

We decided to be more mindful in 2024 especially on the are of "eating out." Needless to say, we loooooove trying new restaurants, so that was it. Also, in 2024 we will introduce MPASI to Archie, so yeah, we need to keep the kitchen warm.

This household also celebrates our continuous flow to our selected charity, and we will continue to do so in 2024. If you are looking for a referral, we have been donating to DesiringGod and TruthForLife because we have been tremendously blessed by their ministry, and to Rumah Ruth because we believe in their mission to accompany victims of rape, help women with unwanted pregnancy, children who are victims from failed abortion attempts, and abandoned children.

I risk being seen as humblebragging but let me just say that by sharing significant portion of our finance on top of our tithe, it gave us additional meaning to work hard, because we would like to share more of our resources to more good causes in the world. I hope you do too!

You probably want to share more, but you know there is something holding you back. You can diagnose your heart knowing what does "love of money" looks like. Here are 8 shades of it that I learned from Alistair Begg:

To close this section, I'd like to share a few quotes on Money that helped me throughout the year, and I hope it will bless your 2024 financial journey:

We pulled through every health obstacles in 2023. Claudia went through pregnancy with no meaningful pain/sickness. However... I went through a lot in this department. My left eye was 'blur' sometime in 2023. After comprehensive eye examination, no fault was found. I still (subjectively) felt that way, so yeah, maybe I will check it again in 2024. In early 2023, I also took out my wisdom tooth.

In August 2023, I finally decided to go to a physiotherapist and I was spot on. A lot of problems at my joints, cervical syndrome, weak muscles here and there, unstable gait and posture. Lots of work required in 2024.

Odi moved to a new office and opened their own cafe: 36 Homecult.

Meanwhile, me, loved every bit of working with TBI. Got the chance to meet and handshake Sir Tony Blair himself.

This is cliche but I really thought this year I found my Ikigai spot, after almost a decade of waiting. Truly grateful for the chance to build the relationship from the ground and up even though there were hiccups.

Finally, after a long, several unfortunate events, I started Master's in Global Health Policy program. I thought I need to bury my dream to study abroad, but I guess God wanted to show me that I don't really want that. I just haven't realized it yet.

I am fulfilled being a father, a husband, an employee, while undertaking the study. God provides me a balance circumstances without crushing me.

Simply put: no more 1-on-1 with people other than close friends. It just drained me extensively and the time I needed to recover is way too long. All the events this year where I marked it as 1-on-1, I tagged them red. Bad times for me.

Not that I don't like serving other people, listening to other people, but the downsides are hurting my family. Time is precious. Attention is precious. I want to reserve my energy for my closest ones.

This year I'm grateful and treasured wide-range of just-close-enough friendships, such as my G20 colleagues who bought gifts for my son, we still took time to catch up and talk about our work. It's fun and refreshing without anything too much.

My highlight in 2023 was definitely the weekend getaway with my high school buddies. I laughed my guts out and forgot to breathe. Suffice to say, lots of dopamine release before Archie arrives.

We ended up laughing at each and every poor occasion in our lifetime for the rest of the night, summoning his brilliant line: fucking first child again. When Archie was born, he refused to join with the others and gave us a gift himself. The others were confused why did he do it. But I do understand.

I'm glad I followed up my vision last year to learn piano and dress up a little. Hopefully, in 2024, I can play Here Comes The Fire Truck and sing along with Archie.

I also checked my bucket-list to watch Muse concert. I have no words to describe the concert. If you love Muse's music, please attend one of their shows if the circumstances allow.