I was always kind of “allergic” to business reporting.
When I chose a journalism major in the university, I originally dreamed of becoming a football reporter with an ultimate goal of covering the Champions League final. However, real life is not a Disney movie. It just did not work out as planned.
After six months working as a cub reporter at The Jakarta Post, I was posted to the business desk in July 2016. In the beginning, I covered everything from the tax amnesty to the launch of Samsung Galaxy On7. In October, I was given permanent assignment to cover the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), which only lasted… a month. I was suddenly ordered to cover energy and mining following a request from the Post’s then managing editor Rendi Witular.
But even after that, I was still occasionally assigned to cover other beats. At the end of 2016, for instance, I had to go to a seminar on “Bank Indonesia’s future policy direction”. I think that was the first time I had to cover something related to the central bank.
At that time, Bank Indonesia’s then senior deputy governor Mirza Adityaswara explained the central bank’s plan to partially implement the averaging-primary reserve requirement policy to give lenders some time to adapt. Needless to say, I had no idea what he was talking about.
It took me a whole day just to make sense of and write it down properly. I suddenly became more grateful I was an energy and mining reporter.
But again, the more I tried to avoid something, the harder it was thrown back in my face. After 2.5 years with the Post, I accepted an offer to join Bloomberg News, where I got to cover the Finance Ministry and… Bank Indonesia.
All of a sudden, my life changed. My top “sacred” events in a month included the central bank’s key rate announcement, statistics office’s release of inflation and trade balance data, and the government’s state budget update.
And now, I have resigned from Bloomberg. I have never regretted the path I took as I believe it has only made me better and stronger. I just think this is the best time to take a step back and start over, so that everything can finally work out as planned.