A Much-Needed Reset
East Manggarai, Flores, Indonesia, 2023. A colleague took this photo of me gazing this field — a much-needed reset that I then needed in the midst of very hectic fieldwork. It’s a feeling I’m trying to gain back from resetting this platform.
Over the past four years or so, December has always been a month when I have had more time and space to explore creative work.
Back when I was still working full time, my organisation used to give the last week of December off for all staff — a well-deserved one after crunching days and nights chasing donor deadlines, mostly — so I used to find myself in a lull. Now that I'm back as a full-time graduate student, December is still the time I can dedicate to resetting and breathing a bit more lightly and wonderfully.
Well…two weeks in after a whirlwind of early December 2025 — two weddings and a school trip later —, I find myself in an endless scroll through my Instagram reels and faced with a decision fatigue on which movie I should watch next on Netflix or HBO Max. Being back home for a bit in Jakarta felt nice, but again, I honestly felt like the living example of the laws of diminishing returns; I watched too much content, shopped for all the headscarves, local skincare, and t-shirts to my hearts’ content, and now I’ve reached the point where the additional utility points are no longer as effective marginally. Not to mention the effects of doomscrolling for too long on my brain, though. I’m struggling to sleep well, am attached to all my devices, and find myself needlessly anxious about things that…I really should not be worried about.
Ugh.
(Sorry for the sudden basic econ-speak, though — as a public policy student, it’s basically a fourth dialect at this point.)
So I thought, well, by putorisan. has been dormant for so long, mostly because I was trying too hard to make it picture perfect. Perhaps it might be time for a reset, to rethink again why I wanted my own space in the online sphere beyond social media to share my photographs.
Two years ago, when I bought the domain, I wanted this space to help me transition to possibly taking photographs more professionally. That is, it should have a complete portfolio, a mailing system to get orders, and possibly start selling my images as greeting cards? I thrive on systems, so I intended to build that system for by putorisan. Towards the middle of the journey, though, consistency and maintenance became two core issues. With juggling full-time work and planning to go back to school, then, not to mention trying to be more present in my own non-online life, making by putorisan as a side hustle was a bit too much. While I had a little bandwidth, it no longer felt as refreshing and creative as it used to be. It felt like…work. Systematic and target-oriented, feeling constantly rushed to collate all my photographs and categorise them… it was too much.
So I turned it off. Kept the domain though because I love it haha, but the space? Left it dormant, wondering how I can revamp it. And now, here’s another one of my endless attempts to revamp this site. This time, though, I am making it more effortless. I’m not targeting to establish a side gig or business just yet, I just want to share my stories in a way that the Instagram crop rulers and algorithm do not restrain me. Hehe. Because that’s why I got into photography, right? It wasn’t to appease the rulers of algorithm and cropped frames, it was to tell stories. I was just a bit sidetracked by Instagram’s convenience and the endless short-term dopamine hits it gives me.
For the longest time, photography has helped me stay present and communicate stories that words simply cannot. It has helped me cure homesickness as a first-time international student in Japan (more stories on that later), capture the laughs and memories I shared with friends and family, and become my tool to de-stress and be more present — two things very important in my recovery from chronic anxiety. As someone who thrives on structures, systems, and targets professionally (umm, hello high functioning anxiety girlies!), I find that my creative personality is nothing like theirs.
My creative side does not enjoy targets and chasing perfection; it thrives mostly when I can breathe and really take my time with my camera, focusing on framing and capturing the dancing light, and then sitting and really taking my time to enhance its beauty using Lightroom. I give myself no deadlines, no distinct colour palette I must adhere to, or a specific style I must always keep in mind. Little did I know, photography has become a place for my brain and self to rest and just be. A place for me to share stories, thoughts, and relax.
So that’s the new ethos for by putorisan: a structurally organised mess of the two things that I love: photography and storytelling, in a way that provides a space for my creative output. I have hardly intended to make photography a side hustle (every paid work I’ve done so far is mostly serendipitous opportunities), but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to it.
The space will grow, I’m sure, because as a person and a creative, I will grow, too. But now I’m not aiming for much more than having a space to share my stories. Right now, I’m focusing back on making photography my storytelling tool first, side hustle second.
So if you're interested in where this reset takes me, stay tuned. There are always more stories to tell.