Getting my blogging gears cranked up again feels a little clumsy. I haven't been in that blogging state of mind in a long time and just thinking about how to start writing and what to write about is honestly hard. Admittedly, the incidences that have happened over the last year does contribute to my mental block. It is a psychological effect and validated paranoia of having someone breath down my neck to see what I've written here just to use it against me. Someone at my last job.
Long story short, this person was just a toxic influence in a job I actually enjoyed. How do you decide between a job you felt could be a new career versus a pain in the ass manager who doesn't believe in managing a team with positive encouragement or reinforcement? Who would rather believe in stereotypes than the truth and yelling unwarranted obscenities during meetings. It was also obvious by my first month of working there that he hated my supervisor.
I was somewhat trapped; but it came as a blessing in disguise when I got retrenched, two days after I turned 30. It wasn't a very nice experience, for sure. I just grew very resentful of that office in the weeks leading up to it and the retrenchment announcement was the crux of it. The irony was I felt liberated and relief.
Doubly more so when two competing magazine editors and a publicist called to tell me that I was very good at what I did there, and that they were surprised to hear that I was the one retrenched. The affirmations I never got from that manager, I received from the industry. It was good enough for me to move on.
In that time, I did contemplate hanging up my blogging mantle. I felt like I was growing more conservative and shoved into a corner in this new confrontational culture. It is weird how people here don't embrace blogging in the way that's familiar to me home in Malaysia. The web is seen as a professional space, not a personal space. Personal public space in the web is not respected. It's used against them, like you're not allowed to be you. Like vultures to a fresh carcass. Social commentators and pundits are a dime a dozen, and they make more dimes from every dozen they trash.
So, is it any wonder why I've become paranoid myself?
In spite of that, I've told myself I want to keep doing this. Twittering is fun, but there's only so much 140 characters can do for me. So here I am cranking it up and starting over again.
Leave a comment