Outgrowing Echo Chamber, A Real Life Story

It was evident that the replacement process gave me some kind of a new anxiety, as if I was slowly losing my entire identity. But as I continued working, it was clear to me that holding the old chamber's methods and ideologies wouldn't get me far in life's next phase. I decided to change myself, I stepped out. It was nothing short of a miracle that saved me from my fated stagnancy. That psychological surgery enabled me to grow my company sustainably, albeit it's not a big company yet even now, but not insignificantly small either in both financial power and work quality for a 15-people sized creative studio in a 3rd world country down in the Southern hemisphere.

Frankly, I wasn't the only one who could feel the crack on the chamber early on. There were several other friends of mine who decided to step out much earlier than me, and in quite a bold fashion---usually pushed by the imminent needs of a stabler monthly income to simply prolong their livelihood. Typically, these friends of mine would pursue and work on other career path unrelated to art, craft or design, be it in banking, accounting, F&B, farming and other field of disciplines with firm vocation elements. I talked to some of these people to get to know more about their considerations to step out. Some simply stated that they were just trying to continue their lives, getting food on the table daily, giving their sick parents monthly allowance, paying for their next master's degree---things that they couldn't get from their art, craft and design skill and mindset at that time; a decision that was quite wise and logical, in my opinion.

Sadly, these decisions, more often than it was not, were usually judged pretty harshly by their former chamber's peers; a failure of ideological purities, a boring tragedy of creative incompetence, sell-outs who trade their liberal soul for sub-worthy jobs, or even went as far as a traitor of the creative hemisphere. Ironically, these criticism were typically spoken from the people who hadn't really make a livelihood with their pure ideologies, getting their daily bread and water from who-knows-whom, and yet, had quite the nerve to ridicule other people who were just trying to survive and continue their daily lives. These typical behaviours were so common, that some of the people who stepped out (me included) wouldn't even bother to tell about opening new business or getting a new non-art-related jobs to these zealous KMSR members in order to save themselves some headache coming from the imminent, judgemental ridicules. And they didn't regret it one bit.

Fast forward to 2020, some of my closest circle whispered me the stories of my other old friends' struggles. Who wouldn't struggle on times like these? I initially thought to myself, almost ready to hear the whispers with half an ear---until I heard the full stories. Some of my KMSR friends struggled a lot to fit into the current workforce; devoid of any jobs and income, and even worse---losing a great chunk of their passion and identity. Some of them became utterly bitter to the society and the systems of the world---leaving them no choice but to reject the world entirely and caved to their own unsustainable safe spaces. Some of them went as far as seriously contemplating to attempt serious criminal conducts in their last desperate moments, hoping to gain some air to breath.

My heart was utterly heartbroken. A good number of these people were my closest friends back in the days before I stepped out from the chamber. They were amongst the brightest people I've ever met in my entire life, they could've easily outdid me in my entrepreneurship endeavours be it fiscally or by performance standard. I tried to reach as much of my old friends as I could, trying to integrate them to my company's projects---but sadly most didn't change much from the days of the chamber, with bad punctuality and discipline amongst the most apparent traits, making it even harder to sustain any projects with budgets for typical small companies such as mine.

The stories of these old friends of mine quickly transcend itself from a tragedy to an enormous mirror, begging for my attention for a high-resolution reflection. And up until this point, the only prominent difference I found between them and my journey is how we treated each of our own chamber when we grew up. I was fortunate---I stepped out. Sadly, they stayed.

I hope this writing wouldn't be perceived as a critique on echo chambers from the place of hate and malevolence, as it sincerely came from the place of empathy and love---as a bitter-sweet break-up letter from someone who benefitted greatly from the family, and as someone who inevitably drifted away from it. ---Michael Alexander, 2020.

I'm still working on the Bahasa Indonesian version of this writing.