Dear Current Job

At the beginning of last week, I promised I'd write a piece about my job if I survived the event my boss and I had spent the last three months putting together. 

First, an aside: during the event, I was so tired that even my glossy, chipper back-up Lles (she runs on battery) had to receive and deflect concerned exhibitors and writers asking, "okay ka lang? kaya mo pa?" When my CL350 friends arrived, they voiced the same question. I tried to pass it off as a joke but I forgot to eat breakfast and I had less than fifteen minutes to gather myself for lunch. if anything, that was the major failing I found, and it wasn't even in the program or logistics. It was in myself. I had spent so much time and effort--both online and offline--trying to get things ready that I had completely and almost certainly neglected to tend to my own needs. But hey. At least I remembered to pack the essentials: a sharpie, a pen, my fully-charged mobile, a copy of the program. These things all fit in my pocket so I was never unprepared. My mind--despite the white humming noise that, I imagine, could only have been my own internal machinery slowly breaking down--ran on fumes but ran exceedingly well. I found the rhythm in the job I had been given.




Dear Current Job:

First of all:

"Sikat?! Anong sikat!?"

How did that even happen!?

Hinga. Kunwari dedma.

First of all, at the beginning you seemed too good to be true. You basically turned me into a professional reader and allowed me to hole myself up--for weeks at a time--in an obscure part of the internet. You basically gave me the perfect excuse to never leave my room, ever again. 

I remember a conversation with Marv a long time ago (a year ago, maybe more). We talked about our careers (char) and our hopes (charchar) and where we wanted to go next (charizard) and I remember we agreed that we had both landed in the industry we wanted to be part of, permanently--fortunate--but that our financial situations were both less than exemplary. I digress. This is supposed to be a love letter to my job!? Dear job: you remain too good to be true. I could, basically, stay like this for the rest of my life and therein lies the problem. I thought I had you all figured out.

Boracay break-out room, lunch, padded chairs and padded ceiling, a small buffet at the end of the room and hanging out with writers I had always respected and, eventually, grown to be comfortable around. They knew me as "and Kyra", my name leashed to my Boss' the way one pronounced an endearment (like "Thank you, dear" or "Break a leg, hon", like that). I did not mind. Budjette Tan sat opposite the table and, grinning, he turned to me and asked (the dreaded question), "o, how are you? kaya pa?" I thought I was supposed to answer but he went on to say, "I remember noong nag-post ka sa UVAS na gusto mong maging busy!" The writers all chuckled. At the beginning of this year, I remember listlessly scrolling down the emails in my work inbox. Back in the break-out room, I wished for that time and gritted my teeth. No sooner had I put down my fork, my mobile rang. It was another unrecognizable jumble of digits but the woman's voice on the other end was friendly and completely familiar. I excused myself and my boss waved me off.

I don't remember not being a scatterbrain. I think that's why I love lists and the act of enumeration. It forces my mind to steady and focus, to gather the details and to sift through them. That's what I've been doing, that was my job and the event simply magnified the experience. I've become reasonably good at it because I've been doing it since college. I've specialized in book launches and literary events since I became production manager and I've been doing it ever since. This is no longer an accident. Whenever I can, I tell people I graduated with a degree in communications (Film Studies and Media Theory, actually, but). I tell them because I've encountered writers who insist on small book launches attended by and produced by the same people, over and over again. During an early meeting with the steering committee, someone suggested the UP Diliman Bahay ng Alumni as a venue. That was one of the few times I was adamant, when the comm-major intuition kicked in and I said, No, we can't do that. My boss allowed me to speak for the company when I said, if we're doing this, we're going big or going home. I tell writers I'm a communications major with a strong background in events management because this is what they need, in part, at least. Dear Job: thank you for the opportunity to do that (a little). My latest monologue was meant to be performed during the post-mortem, the event evaluation, during which we have to grade our own effort. In the monologue, I say, the only real conclusion we can draw from the eight hundred attendees we registered is this: we have an audience. We have the capacity to attract and hold at least eight hundred people in a venue that size, for a period of several hours. Doesn't that mean we also have a responsibility to these people? That they are part of the literary community, too? 

Dear Current Job: I'm not sure where we're headed but I'm not scared. For once in my life, I feel like I'm where I need to be. 

More than a year ago and after I quit a corporate office based in Makati, I figured I'd take my chances, cut my losses, and apply to the (visible) commercial organizations in the industry I was interested in: Publishing. There weren't a lot of choices.I still remember the exact moment I threw my hands up--in frustration and abandon--and said, well fuck it, why not? Then, as now, the guiding principle I followed was Ignation, Atenean: go where you are needed although I now recognize the extreme and unforgivable obscenity of that presumption. But, Current Job, I think I was right (to some extent).