Have you ever imagined going back to a particular moment in your life, wishing you could change just one thing to make things turn out differently?

For me, there is one particular thing I wish I had done differently: I wish I had been brave enough to speak up instead of always being a people pleaser.

Before I had Tarianja, I worked for a company for ten years. I started there as a student and eventually became part of the teaching team. In many ways, I saw the company as a family. It was a place where I grew, learned, and had the opportunity to explore many things. That is also why this story is difficult for me to tell.

I have never spoken about this publicly before because, for a long time, I felt that the situation was too complex to explain. I had also made a clarification about it in the past, only to be told that I was in denial. But I am writing about it now because I hope this can become a small archive for other artists, especially those who may find themselves in similar situations, so they can perhaps make different choices from the ones I made. So, here i’m telling my mistakes, so you can learn from it. WE can learn from it.

Ten years working there, i had a very great time. However, like all people do in their work-life, I had disagreements with the company and with some of the people inside it. But I was able to manage, adapt, and continue working there until around 2020.

Then COVID happened.

During the pandemic, the company experienced a significant decline, not only in the number of students but also in its overall system and management. At that time, the company had several branches, and I was one of the people responsible for managing one of them while also teaching at the main school. It was a difficult period. From my perspective, the management was struggling, and communication became so much difficult. I had to deal with parents’ expectations while also trying to get information and direction from the management. Sometimes, it would take days for my messages to receive a response.

At one point, I asked the management to conduct an evaluation of the students so that we could understand their progress and decide what could be improved. There was also one parent who repeatedly encouraged me to ask the management whether the branch would continue to have a future or any further programs. Because I was not getting clear answers, I eventually tried to manage the branch more independently, although I still had permission and supervision from the main school.

I invited one of the teachers from the main school to evaluate the students. Looking back, I understand that she may also have been going through difficulties in her personal life at the time, so perhaps asking her to be the examiner was not the best decision.

But what I still remember very clearly is what she said after seeing the students. She told me that I was a failure because the students’ results did not meet her expectations.

Something changed in me after that.

I slowly realized that my heart was no longer there. I began developing a different vision for my career and a different direction for my own work. But I made another mistake: I was too afraid to tell them.

No matter how difficult the communication had become, no matter how much the system had declined, I still loved the people there. I felt that they had helped me grow so much. I felt indebted to them, and because of that, I found it very difficult to leave.

So I tried to cope with the discomfort by continuing to teach and continuing to manage the branch, which happened to be located close to my home. But after that experience, I felt as though my heart was no longer in what I was doing. Everything became something I did out of obligation rather than passion, and I hated feeling that way. Eventually, I tried to find the love and spark in my dance career again by dancing and teaching in other places. At the same time, I was still working with the company.

It is also important to mention that throughout those years, I never had a formal employment agreement with the company. The boundaries between being an employee, a teacher, a branch manager, and eventually having my own studio, which was also considered one of their branches, became so much blurry.

I tried to discuss the possibility of having a formal agreement, but my requests were repeatedly refused.

And still, I did not have the courage to leave.

Until 2024, when several things happened that made the situation much more complicated.

One of them involved the parent I mentioned earlier.

I actually cared deeply about her daughter. She was brilliant, intelligent, and someone I genuinely enjoyed teaching. I was also quite close to her mother. We shared many stories, including conversations about dance films, and at the time I thought that perhaps she was also trying to support me.

But eventually, our relationship became part of the conflict.

There were many things happening at once, and some of them are difficult for me to remember clearly. At that time, I was also pregnant, and I was struggling with forgetfulness and exhaustion.

There was one particular incident involving costumes for a school performance.

I accidentally communicated the wrong costume price to the parents. I tried to reconfirm the information with the management, but I could not get a clear answer at the time. As soon as I received the correct information, I immediately corrected the price. I did not take any money for myself, nor did I benefit from the mistake.

Nevertheless, that parent accused me of corruption.

What made the situation even more complicated was that, by that time, I was also teaching another group through my own studio. I had different responsibilities in different places, and the boundaries between my roles had become unclear.

With my own students, I was emotionally invested. I taught them with love, care, and a sense of ownership because they were part of something I was building myself.

With the students from the main school, however, I was increasingly doing my job in a more normative and professional sense. I still did my responsibilities. I still taught. I still showed up. But emotionally, I was no longer there.

That difference was noticed, and eventually became another source of conflict with that one parent. Then she tried to do a black campaign, made a group and inviting other parents to hate and leave me. Some of them did, but the others stayed.

Looking back now, I realize that perhaps the biggest problem was not a single incident.

It was that I had stayed too long in a situation where my boundaries were unclear, my communication was unhealthy, and my sense of responsibility had become mixed with guilt and gratitude. I kept thinking that because they had once helped me, I owed them my loyalty forever.

And perhaps that is the part I wish I could change.

I wish I had understood earlier that gratitude does not mean lifelong obligation. I wish I had learned that saying “this is no longer working for me” does not make me ungrateful. And most importantly, I wish I had been brave enough to speak before my silence turned into resentment.

I am writing this because artists often work in spaces where professional boundaries are unclear. We work with people we love. We build communities that feel like families. We become teachers, friends, managers, choreographers, administrators, and sometimes even the person who keeps an entire branch running.

And because we care so much, we sometimes forget that care also needs boundaries.

I learned that lesson very late. So late that by then, the things I had been carrying for so long had already taken a toll on my mental health. But perhaps writing this down is one way of making something useful out of it.

Here are the things that could be useful for former artists, or someone who has a multiple role in the art industry. I tryna tell this for me too.

1. Gratitude is not a lifetime contract.
2. You can love a community and still leave it. (Have a courage and say it nicely and diplomatically)
3. This is the most IMPORTANT. Put professional agreements in writing.
4. Know which role you are playing.
   Artist, teacher, manager, studio owner, coordinator, collaborator. When roles overlap, responsibilities and boundaries need to be clear.
5. Do not take responsibility without having the authority to make decisions. 
6. Document everything that matters.
7. Being adaptable does not mean accepting everything.
8. Conflict avoidance does not make conflict disappear.
9. Your artistic labor has value, even when you love doing it.
10. You are allowed to outgrow the place that helped you grow.
    A place can be an important part of your journey without having to be your destination.

Today, I am in a good place with the company. We have talked, we have gone through the difficult parts, and we have found our way forward. I am grateful that we were able to do that. If I could say something to them again, especially to the founder and my former colleagues, I would simply say thank you.

Thank you for the years, for the opportunities, for the lessons, and for the people I met along the way. Thank you for giving me a place where I could grow from a student into a teacher, and eventually into an artist who began to find her own direction.

I would also say that I am sorry. Not because I want to reopen what has already been resolved, but because sometimes I wish I had been braver and more honest about what I was feeling at the time. Perhaps some things could have been handled differently if I had known how to speak up earlier.

But I also understand now that I was learning. I was young, I was trying to find my place, and I was trying very hard to be loyal to something that had meant so much to me.

I don’t want to become someone who forgets where she came from just because she has found a different path (a.k.a kacang lupa kulit). Whatever I build in the future, a part of it will always carry what I learned there. The way I teach, the way I work with artists, the way I build a community, and even the mistakes I try not to repeat are all, in some way, connected to those ten years.

I will carry its legacy with me, and I will always remember the people who were part of the person and artist I became.