THE STORY
"I wasn't really American. And I wasn't really a 'fob' either. I was just trying to figure out where I fit."
I was born in the US, but I grew up in Indonesia, at an international school, until I was fifteen. Then I moved back for high school. I remember landing here and feeling like everything I knew about how to exist in a room stopped working overnight.
I moved to the United States for high school, and my first year here was hard. I did not feel American enough, and I did not feel like the version of foreign that people expected either. I was caught in between, and for a while that made me feel like an outcast in every room I walked into.
Going into my next year, my grandma gave me a few words that stuck with me for good. She told me that in America, the opportunities are endless, you just have to go out there and get them. I did not turn my life around overnight because of one sentence. But I started treating self improvement like something I actually got to choose, instead of something that only happened to other people.
By the time I got to college, I told myself something had to change. I joined a professional business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, and a social one, Sigma Pi. I did not get into either one on my first try. I tried again anyway. Getting in was not even the best part. The best part was being around people who did not all look like me, coming from a place where almost everyone did, and realizing that a strong community is one of the fastest ways to move forward.
That confidence turned into curiosity. I started DJing, then became a promotions manager, and eventually found myself behind the booth at some of the biggest clubs in LA. It was not the plan. It just became the thing that taught me how to read a room, hold attention, and build something out of nothing.
Somewhere along the way, that same instinct for people and attention turned into a career. I moved into marketing, and today I work as a Marketing Manager while building something of my own on the side, a personal development brand called MAJU.
Personal development was different from all of that. It was the thing I had already been doing for free, for years, without ever calling it that. Somewhere in there I met a mentor online who told me something I still think about constantly, that my future self is already waiting for me to catch up, that I already have what I need, I just have to claim it. Around the same time I was grinding on my own business and feeling like I lacked something I could not name. That idea reframed the whole thing for me. Wanting more does not have to come from a place of lack. You can want more and still be grateful for exactly where you are.
A few years ago I signed up for a HYROX relay. To most people that is just a fitness event. I have torn my ACL in both knees and had two surgeries on my left one, so burpees under a clock are genuinely scary for me in a way they are not for most people. I almost did not document any of it. Then I realized that is exactly the point. We are all going to go through setbacks. The only real choice we get is whether we get back up and start dictating our life again, instead of letting life dictate us.
I am still figuring a lot of this out. But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that you do not need to have it all planned to start moving forward. This site is where I share what I am learning along the way, from work and business to health and personal growth. If any of that sounds like where you are, I am glad you are here.
