Information overload after a meeting.
You know just one of those days when you kind of feel like you're seeing a lot of possibilities and big picture forming but somehow you're a bit too dumb to understand it or draw any conclusions from it?
That's how I feel now. I guess you could call it overwhelmed.
I actually should be doing some tasks but right now? Too distracted.
Really wish I could somehow sort through this information. Every time this sort of thing happen things end up becoming very confusing and tiring and more often than not, I will simply forget everything.
Here's another metaphor. It's like you know there's something amazing just behind the ravine but the effort to climb out is too much physically. And when you become forced to do it, you do a slipshod effort and come out at position where the view isn't all that great.
Ha.
I guess that has always been my problem.
I think the last time I felt like this was when I had to do a m.e.d.i.a.c.o.r.p proposal together with Mike from dbf and I simply could not understand what he's going on about even though I could vaguely get the picture of what he seems to be getting at. And all the while being extremely conscious of how limited my viewpoint is.
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Another day feeling crap
What's wrong? What's wrong.
Why do you always make yourself feel so helpless.
Why do you always tell yourself you deserve more breaks and yet say you want to do something great.
When you see other people who are a hundred times more hardworking and you see their results.
Then you feel so helpless and useless.
Have you really worked hard?
Have you really given your 100%?
Over the years you've spent so much effort on accessorizing yourself.
For that unique identity you can call your own. Reading, books, writing, media, journalism, orchestra, percussion, dance, street dance, house dance, cats, TV shows and films. Grasping at straws. Scriptwriting, producing, films. All these damn labels you assigned to yourself. What use are they in the end. Now that you've come across someone who has done exactly the same as you and even managed to fulfill them 10 times better.... someone who has everything you wanted. Which upsets you more? The fact that she writes for Rice as an aspiring journalist or the fact that you realised she does house dance? Did you feel like its your identity being snatched away? Did you start to feel a little less special? Yes - that's the quiet voice. The truth.
You have not fulfilled any of those labels 100%. What amount of dedication have you given? Have you persisted with dance? No. None of it. Maybe except for reading. But that was the very first one that started out organically. You really did that one out of interest, out of necessity. The rest?
Nah. Those were for the eyeballs. So that you feel like you belong, so that you feel like you can be accepted, admired, almost.
But you know what, have you ever considered just accepting yourself for who you are? What do you really want?
What do you really want? If you don't know who you are, will you know what you really want?
Please, r.o.n. When will you learn to be a little kinder... a little prouder to be yourself. I hate this feeling of envy and incompetence.
Why am I still stuck here. Let me out.
Why do you always make yourself feel so helpless.
Why do you always tell yourself you deserve more breaks and yet say you want to do something great.
When you see other people who are a hundred times more hardworking and you see their results.
Then you feel so helpless and useless.
Have you really worked hard?
Have you really given your 100%?
Over the years you've spent so much effort on accessorizing yourself.
For that unique identity you can call your own. Reading, books, writing, media, journalism, orchestra, percussion, dance, street dance, house dance, cats, TV shows and films. Grasping at straws. Scriptwriting, producing, films. All these damn labels you assigned to yourself. What use are they in the end. Now that you've come across someone who has done exactly the same as you and even managed to fulfill them 10 times better.... someone who has everything you wanted. Which upsets you more? The fact that she writes for Rice as an aspiring journalist or the fact that you realised she does house dance? Did you feel like its your identity being snatched away? Did you start to feel a little less special? Yes - that's the quiet voice. The truth.
You have not fulfilled any of those labels 100%. What amount of dedication have you given? Have you persisted with dance? No. None of it. Maybe except for reading. But that was the very first one that started out organically. You really did that one out of interest, out of necessity. The rest?
Nah. Those were for the eyeballs. So that you feel like you belong, so that you feel like you can be accepted, admired, almost.
But you know what, have you ever considered just accepting yourself for who you are? What do you really want?
What do you really want? If you don't know who you are, will you know what you really want?
Please, r.o.n. When will you learn to be a little kinder... a little prouder to be yourself. I hate this feeling of envy and incompetence.
Why am I still stuck here. Let me out.
Wednesday, June 3, 2020
A day into circuit breaker phase 1 and a day after mariko left.
Wow, has it been two years since my last post?
That's pretty long. A lot of things have happened as usual. Since the last post in 2017 I have left the company. Joined and left, joined and left. Another two.
Let me just fast forward past 2018 and 2019 -- Mostly it's been work and work-related drama. Actually it would have been quite interesting to do a recap. Let me consider it for the next post -- maybe a shitstorm highlights recap, or milestone anniversary, haha.
Straight into 2020, here's wishing everyone a happy belated new year. This year turned out to be a series of rude surprises/shocks (I would say the former since there were some good that came out of it, for me personally, that is). Covid-19, lockdowns, China-US relations, China-HK relations, Iraq-Russia relations, Donald Trump. Oh, recently, George Floyd. The economy. Definitely looks like a downhill from here on, doesn't it.
Anyway, the reason for my post today is to talk about storytelling. Specifically, my recently discovered flaw regarding storytelling. So I was employed in 2019, but in 2020 I'm unemployed. It was my intention to quit, but it wasn't my intention to stay jobless for so long, really. That was all thanks to Covid-19.
Back to the main thread though: the good thing that I got out of this was probably that I gradually started to do more writing, and not the shitty stuff that I thought I should do to make money. Even though it's still kind of an existential struggle but I think I might be making a little bit of progress, at least on the learning front.
I've been able to focus a bit more on the kind of fiction stories that I want to write so far, thanks to the current situation being a good excuse for everyone to be in default: "the economy is bad so there's less jobs and it's harder to earn" state. I'm doing some random projects that really don't guarantee money or make me think about it being a chore for survival... so it's refreshing that I get to grow a bit in this area that I've always wanted to explore but has been unable to due to feeling pressured to be practical about other life responsibilities.
Oh no, this is turning into a repetitive rant. Anyway, my big problem which I have always been sort of aware was that I have good openings but can never manage to have a good continuation of that. I'm always stuck at the opening chapter. Either that or, float through the middle portions in a directionless manner and give up without getting anywhere near the ending.
Number one, this is really because I don't have an ending in mind, I don't have a message I want to convey (at least, not a surface one). It's like I will start a story by thinking, I want to do this topic, or I want to explore this interesting angle. But I don't have a conclusion in mind, just meandering. This ends up with me taking very long to work out how to do the story.
Hopefully I can improve from there. Step by step, with more practice.
Oh and I've also been rethinking my career as a scriptwriter and producer since this period really sort of made me think all kinds of weird thoughts, including about the local creative industry and how low-paying and unstable this line is (basically, a lot of hard work and very little pay, I mean, a lot of jobs are but I've just been wondering to myself if it's really the norm or am I just surrounded by people who are not the norm who gravitate to these kind of positions. Seeing that I've been taking a Chinese Business course recently and everyone there work in white-collar jobs and have stable pay... like its a Singaporean majority thing?). I'm not sure if this is the kind of life I want for myself that I've inevitably become almost or moving close to the epitome of "struggling artist/writer" trope, as that comes along with a career in the arts. Yeah. So I have been playing around with the idea of becoming a librarian instead. Doing structured, boring things that you don't really have to think about, talking to people once in a while to engage the mind even if its mundane topics, walking about arranging books. It actually doesn't sound bad at all.
And after a work day that ends on time (unlike in video production or writing), I can go back home and write things I'm interested in. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? I don't know, I guess. I've wanted to go into journalism, then literature, then film and now it's library sciences. I'm already 28 years old this year and yet I still find growing up hard.
Well, that's it for today. All the best to me, and to everyone else.
That's pretty long. A lot of things have happened as usual. Since the last post in 2017 I have left the company. Joined and left, joined and left. Another two.
Let me just fast forward past 2018 and 2019 -- Mostly it's been work and work-related drama. Actually it would have been quite interesting to do a recap. Let me consider it for the next post -- maybe a shitstorm highlights recap, or milestone anniversary, haha.
Straight into 2020, here's wishing everyone a happy belated new year. This year turned out to be a series of rude surprises/shocks (I would say the former since there were some good that came out of it, for me personally, that is). Covid-19, lockdowns, China-US relations, China-HK relations, Iraq-Russia relations, Donald Trump. Oh, recently, George Floyd. The economy. Definitely looks like a downhill from here on, doesn't it.
Anyway, the reason for my post today is to talk about storytelling. Specifically, my recently discovered flaw regarding storytelling. So I was employed in 2019, but in 2020 I'm unemployed. It was my intention to quit, but it wasn't my intention to stay jobless for so long, really. That was all thanks to Covid-19.
Back to the main thread though: the good thing that I got out of this was probably that I gradually started to do more writing, and not the shitty stuff that I thought I should do to make money. Even though it's still kind of an existential struggle but I think I might be making a little bit of progress, at least on the learning front.
I've been able to focus a bit more on the kind of fiction stories that I want to write so far, thanks to the current situation being a good excuse for everyone to be in default: "the economy is bad so there's less jobs and it's harder to earn" state. I'm doing some random projects that really don't guarantee money or make me think about it being a chore for survival... so it's refreshing that I get to grow a bit in this area that I've always wanted to explore but has been unable to due to feeling pressured to be practical about other life responsibilities.
Oh no, this is turning into a repetitive rant. Anyway, my big problem which I have always been sort of aware was that I have good openings but can never manage to have a good continuation of that. I'm always stuck at the opening chapter. Either that or, float through the middle portions in a directionless manner and give up without getting anywhere near the ending.
Number one, this is really because I don't have an ending in mind, I don't have a message I want to convey (at least, not a surface one). It's like I will start a story by thinking, I want to do this topic, or I want to explore this interesting angle. But I don't have a conclusion in mind, just meandering. This ends up with me taking very long to work out how to do the story.
Hopefully I can improve from there. Step by step, with more practice.
Oh and I've also been rethinking my career as a scriptwriter and producer since this period really sort of made me think all kinds of weird thoughts, including about the local creative industry and how low-paying and unstable this line is (basically, a lot of hard work and very little pay, I mean, a lot of jobs are but I've just been wondering to myself if it's really the norm or am I just surrounded by people who are not the norm who gravitate to these kind of positions. Seeing that I've been taking a Chinese Business course recently and everyone there work in white-collar jobs and have stable pay... like its a Singaporean majority thing?). I'm not sure if this is the kind of life I want for myself that I've inevitably become almost or moving close to the epitome of "struggling artist/writer" trope, as that comes along with a career in the arts. Yeah. So I have been playing around with the idea of becoming a librarian instead. Doing structured, boring things that you don't really have to think about, talking to people once in a while to engage the mind even if its mundane topics, walking about arranging books. It actually doesn't sound bad at all.
And after a work day that ends on time (unlike in video production or writing), I can go back home and write things I'm interested in. Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? I don't know, I guess. I've wanted to go into journalism, then literature, then film and now it's library sciences. I'm already 28 years old this year and yet I still find growing up hard.
Well, that's it for today. All the best to me, and to everyone else.
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