April 2009 Archives

I love musicals but I have a confession:

I’d never listened to the Les Miserables soundtrack before Susan Boyle.

Quite an oversight, really, when I grew up listening to West Side Story and Phantom of the Opera. Why not Les Miserables? Because I found the backstory plain miserable. A convict on the run? A heartbroken prostitute? A maltreated orphan? I preferred my musicals of a much lighter vein, thanks.

But maybe I’ve changed. Or maybe I’m just dogged by this persistent sorrow that won’t go away. I’m just escaping into the music all day, every day. Much like when I was growing up in a home where singing was my only solace, music the only escape from the madness of my parents’ marriage.

Is it loneliness? Is it recurring depression? Is it just me feeling too much of everything the way I usually do? I don’t know. But I find myself listening to my favourite showtunes – As Long As He Needs Me (Oliver) and I Dreamed A Dream (Les Miserables) on repeat. Now my new obsession is Les Miserables’ Bring Him Home. It resonates with that dull ache I thought I’d put to rest last year. The terrible hollowness and painful longing to just go home. A permanent home where there is no more pain, no more loneliness, no more having to feel or care. Where there is peace. Where there is quiet.

I feel parched while in the middle of an oasis; why is the blackness returning even as I have good people around me and life, though not perfect, isn’t at all awful?

And I cling to Pratchett’s reminder that you do not die for a god: you live for one. Every day of my life.

 

God on high
Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there
He is young
He's afraid
Let him rest
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.
He's like the son I might have known
If God had granted me a son.
The summers die
One by one
How soon they fly
On and on
And I am old
And will be gone.
Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy
You can take
You can give
Let him be
Let him live
If I die
Let me die
Let him live
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

I admit that twice at work I almost burst into tears at my desk.

The first time was due to personal drama that came out of left field and upset me to the point I took refuge in my favourite Japanese restaurant. Unagi and sake are the next best thing to a shoulder to cry on. Rather than make a scene, I left the office promptly at lunch, ate, drank and sniffled into a napkin and then came back able to work. I don’t do emotional displays at the workplace though my ex-colleagues do know that when I’ve reached point break, I scare even my boss.

The second time, I was buckling under the strain of three accounts. Trying to do followups on one account, finish prepping for another account’s event the next morning and then a third account suddenly demanding attention NOW NOW NOW.

I was stressed to the point I could barely function. The thing is: I can be easily distracted but once I focus on something, I tune everything out and focus on it with laser intensity.

It’s a whole different ballgame from when I was an editor. My job was sorted with a tasklist and each task had priority queues. The tasks would be done in order and by priority. I would also make it clear that someone’s priority might not be mine and if he had issues with it…suck it up.

So now I have to be a bit more flexible and determine just how to manage all the things on my plate.

My line manager gave me advice: “Sometimes, it’s better to overcommunicate rather than not say enough.”

I have to be more clear about what I’m doing and what I need to get done. Even if someone wants something now, I’ll just have to justify why now is really not possible.

Another friend of mine is doing his best to play mentor. He told me “Just understand that rather than hand in a piece of crap work to meet a deadline, make sure you give in your best work even if it takes more time.”

Now, more than ever, I’m glad I have good people in my life who will take the time to listen to my woes and help me address my foibles.

Hopefully the next week will be better. I like my role. I love my colleagues. I just hate feeling lost, inadequate and rushed.

Time to find my own tempo instead of crying when I can’t hear the beat.

Once upon a time, a girl dated a guy. She really liked him. Unfortunately that wasn't enough. Girl was me, if you need clarification. It took me a month to get over him. I cried every other night, lost my appetite and couldn't sleep. I'm over it though I don't feel like dating anyone for the next, I don't know, FIVE YEARS? But it hurts to get old scabs picked at. For old wounds to be reopened. I don't want to talk about, think about it or do anything. Besides cutting off all my hair and retiring to the Himalayas. Am tired.

You’ve probably heard of Susan Boyle’s amazing rendition of the song I Dream A Dream. It’s not very polished but there’s a strength and sweetness to her voice that makes her rendition compelling.

Listening from a singer’s perspective, I find the song’s a challenging one to sing. It requires stellar breath support and a wide range. The song’s not for a light soprano – you’d need someone with a big, gutsy voice to do it well and yet be able to match the top notes. An alto might find the range a challenge but it fits quite well within the standard mezzo-soprano tessitura.

(Ruthie Henshall singing a beautiful version of it)

The song itself is one with a beautiful melody but lyrics that twist your gut. And well they should, for the character they were written for is as tragic a heroine as you could imagine. Les Miserables’s Fantine has a child out of wedlock, and finds herself abandoned by the child’s father who seduced her and then left.

She sacrifices so much to keep her child alive, enduring shame, hardship and work as a prostitute. Poor Fantine is a romantic victim of circumstance and in I Dream A Dream encapsulates all the hopeless heartache of having loved and finding that love was in vain and unrequited.

I’ve been where Fantine was. Loved to the point of oblivion, only to have it all sadly reduced to anguish and painful memories. Romantic love, I find, is a happy dream. But the dream doesn’t always end well or translate to real life. I’m not looking. I’ve stopped looking for the longest time. Sometimes I do get lonely and miss the comfort of a hand to hold, sweet nothings on the phone, cuddles and languishing together, speaking of everything and nothing at the same time. Maybe I’ll find that again. Maybe I won’t. For now, those moments are distant, bittersweet memories of times I cannot return to. But loss is but a cycle of life, one that’s inescapable and a truth as bitter as unrequited affection.

I’ll live.

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Sometimes, I don't get you at all. You love the thrill of the chase - getting that job, that girl, that deal. But once you get what you think you want, you decide you don't really want it all that much at all. You coast, giving as little as you can get away with or just casting it by the wayside. Just like a child with a new toy. So fickle, so covetous, so easily bored or distracted. You could be so much more than that. You're talented, smart and with a mind that can do so much with so little effort. But you're so not into making an effort, aren't you? You want instant gratification. You want everything, for next to nothing. In some ways I'm just as fickle, flighty and allergic to exertion. Which is why, sometimes, I understand that part of the reason you're where you are is because life has hurt you too much. You've dreamed - those dreams were dashed. You've loved - to find nothing but betrayal and disappointment. Though you hurt me so bad, enough that I want to hurt you, I can't. I don't know why I care about you, baby. I want you to do more and be more. To live more.  But I can't save you. I can't change you. One thing's life taught me is that the only person I can change is myself. I can pray for you. I can still care, more than I ought. And why aren't I just telling you all this, to your face, in a letter, in an email? Because, baby, if there's one thing I've learned about you is that you've never been good at listening. Especially to words you don't want to hear.

Into my second week at work, I’m coming to realise the enormity of the tasks ahead of me. That even though public relations and journalism are related fields, I am still starting over. There is still so much for me to do and so much distance I need to traverse before I get to the guideposts set for me.

And before I even reach those guideposts, I know they will be moved even further.

Some days, like today, I feel thankful for my past experience. Things gelled together, ideas sparked and I felt the corporate drone’s equivalent of ‘being in the zone’.

But yesterday, I felt so ill-equipped and lost. Things that are so simple and routine for most PR practitioners seemed beyond me and I felt overwhelmed by my inexperience. I realise with every day how much I took for granted when I was a journalist and now I’m on the other side, I find it harder than I thought to show the care and meticulousness needed to do my job well.

I had a sad few minutes of staring at the screen, feeling as lost as a child on the first day of school. “God, I suck.”

But the pity party ended the next day and I decided to just buck up for the tasks to come. My plate will soon be overflowing at work, something my boss has given me due warning about.

Frankly, I’m terrified. But I’m also stubborn as heck and with a tendency to get over my phobias by just facing them. That’s how I got over my fear of the dark, of traversing a city alone, calling people on the phone, public speaking and heights. Whatever you’re most afraid of, I find, is what you need to tackle first. Now my biggest challenge is letting go of my fear of depending solely on God and not my own abilities.

I’ve struggled over the years with faith.

I profess to believe in God, I say that I want to do what He wills and be what He wants.

Then I go off the path into the wilderness and royally screw myself over.

The worst bit is when I go to bed with a heavy heart and wake up in the morning still feeling ill at ease.

“What have I done, dear Lord, what have I done?”

I’m so tired of living this way. Of turning to Him only 10 percent of the time while asking for guidance from my whims, my desires and my poor imposed upon friends the other 90 percent.

There are so many things I need to know. So many things I need to practise. So many things that I need to stop clinging to.

These lines from Derek Webb’s I Repent resonate the most with me right now:

I am wrong and of these things I repent.

I repent, I repent of parading my liberty
I repent. I repent of paying for what I get for free
and for the way I believe that I am living right
by trading sins for others that are easier to hide
I am wrong and of these things I repent

I’ve been wrong.

Dear God, give me the strength to start living my life right.

I’m lucky that my colleagues are pleasant and nice to me.

Secretly I wonder if it’s because they’re so used to being nice to me when I was the She Editor from Hell. Not that I’m complaining, no no no.

You see, yesterday I made a mistake normally done by entry-level, wet behind the ears, fresh recruits.

I sent out pictures to the press. Minus captions. Colleague had to login to my PC and resend the captions while apologising to media for clogging their inboxes.

Now, in most agencies, newbies who made the same mistake would be grilled on high and roasted till it’s seared into their skulls never to make mistakes of that silly-tude again.

Well, I happened to have skipped a few levels so certain things that new PR people are made to do over and over again are new to me.

PR isn’t as glamorous as SATC’s Samantha Jones makes it out to be. Oh no. There’s reporting, slogging through event planning, ponderous meetings and routine things that must be done like faxing and emails.

Some things I’ve gotten very used to - like yakking to journalists. Even pitching editors doesn’t faze me much anymore because hey, if one does yell at me, I’d probably just take it as karmic payback.

Certain things though still mystify me. Key messages? Talking points? Briefing books? PR plans? Those are pretty much the tools of the PR arsenal that I never had to think about as a journalist. Not that I gave PR people much of a headache at interviews. I’m a ‘soft’ interviewer. Tech reporting is really about how things work, what they’ll do, who they’ll help. Throw the numbers at the business sharks. Tech journalists will run from terms like “add value” and “verticals” like cats from water.

It’s still rather touching that quite a few friends keep checking in on me. You know, just to make sure I’m sane and not a blubbering mess.

David Lian, of course, does his best to scare me. “This is only the beginning you know!” “See how hard XX works us!” “Wait until it really gets busy!” Yeah, yeah. I survived a bus accident. Hard work is a walk in the park in comparison. Still here, still getting into my stride and thankfully I’ve got good people running with me.

I’ve always been forthright about my political views. But after some reassessment, I’m going to declare openly my nonpartisanship.

Perhaps you’ll call me chicken or think that this is motivated by my being in PR. No, my backbone is still very much intact, thanks very much. My decision was motivated by Billy Graham’s example. A while ago, he publicly declared his support for the Republican party and Senator John McCarthy, communist witchhunter extraordinaire.

But Graham exercised that one power we all human beings possess – he changed his mind. Despite being attacked by the Christian right, he moved away from their circle and in answer to their condemnation, he said:

"I don't think Jesus or the Apostles took sides in the political arenas of their day.”

From now on, I will (attempt to) reserve comments on our politicians. Believe me, they irk me on both sides of the fence.

I refuse to be a member of any political party, of any politically-affiliated body or concern myself with politics. It takes a certain kind of person to be a politician and thankfully, I’m not one. But I will concern myself with issues that need voicing. The growing divide between rich and poor. The inadequacy of our education system. The pitiful support structure for our arts scene. The suffering of migrants and the displaced.

Those concern me because I believe that God would want me to give a damn about those things, and not politics. So before you accuse me of not caring about my country, I will tell you that I choose, instead, to care about its people. And all people.

So this PR person (not a Textie) asked me: "How do we engage bloggers?" Part of me wants to say: if you have to ask, you shouldn't even try. That's the cynical, mean part.

But I suppose I should add my own two cents to the blogger/PR debate which blew up oh-so-nicely last week. Before I joined PR, I was a rarity - a journalist who also happened to be a blogger. It's certainly an advantage for me in my current job. I can honestly say to journos and bloggers that I know where they've been and where they're coming from. It also makes me rather peevish when I see clueless PR blindly attempting to 'engage' bloggers and making a right royal flub at it.

Bloggers are not journalists. While journalists can be bloggers as well, the reverse does not hold true. You do not 'pitch' bloggers the way you do journalists. But there are certain things you do with journalists that you can do with the New Media crowd:

1. Find out their niche. What do they cover? What are their interests? Don't just send any pitch or release willy-nilly. An example of what not to do? Send Paul Tan a pitch about hydrophonic plants instead of about cars, and you deserve to be tarred and feathered.

2. Politely make contact, introduce yourself and what you do as well as who you represent. Don't wait until you have something to pitch to make New Media friends. Importantly, ask them how they would prefer to be contacted. When I was an editor, I preferred IM or emails. If a PR person had to, then call me at work. My mobile phone was off limits except for absolute, dire emergencies. Press releases and invite attendance did not fall into the latter so I did blow my Fiery Editorial Pissy Breath on clueless PR person. Don't get me started on the Kaspersky rep who called me at 8pm at night.

3. Work on building a relationship. Don't treat them like one night stands. Use, abuse, chuck. Malaysia's small. The media circle is small. Heck, even the PR industry in Malaysia is pretty tiny which is how my appointment got blown up as big PR industry news. Make the effort. Play your cards right and you'll be regarded a reliable source at best or at worst, angry bloggers won't be crucifying you on their blogs.

What you don't do with bloggers which you can with journalists:

1. Send them unsolicited releases. No, no, no. Yes, Gmail may give you lots of storage space but most bloggers do not want releases from absolute strangers in their inboxes. Get in touch with said blogger first, ask politely if blogger would like to receive news about your client, then send them. Just don't bother sending releases to Shaolin Tiger unless you want to see him do a Hulk Rage. He blogged quite a few times about receiving unsolicited PR writeups. And he's still getting them, the poor sod.

2. Invite them for events and expect them to write about them. Journalists are obligated to write about news or if your client advertises (sad but true) but bloggers are free agents. You want a nice big writeup on their blogs? Contact Nuffnang or Advertlets for blogger advertorial rates. If you call up a blogger and ask him what angle his blogpost is going to have, quit your job now. Please. You're the type who makes the rest of us look like morons.

Bloggers aren't a different race or breed of people. Heck, even Tun M blogs. Treat them like people, relate to them, reach out to them and don't just consider them a 'means to an end'. What if the shoe was on the other foot? A journo I knew once said this in passing about a PR friend: "Pity she isn't more useful." Ouch. What PR needs now is authenticity, sincerity and earnestness. The days of spin and fakeness are over. I've said this before - I believe there is a way to be good again. Even for us so-called PR flaks.

Before I get to make the news public, Advertising+Marketing does it for me.

I never thought that joining a new PR firm would generate so much fanfare.

Yes, I’m joining Text 100. Of all the PR firms I’ve dealt with over the years, I can safely say it’s one I enjoyed dealing with.

The package isn’t what appealed because The Agency’s pay wasn’t much different and it had what some suppose is the ultimate perk – working from home. Yet I felt that Text 100’s core values resonated the most with my own code of ethics. Having as many quirks as I do, it’s not always easy to find a place where my principles and mindset would not only be acceptable but welcomed. Am thankful Text 100 boss Mei Ling’s decided to take a chance on me despite the knowledge I might be a handful. After all, I used to be the reigning Dragon Queen Who Eats PR N00bs For Breakfast.

Of course, I don’t expect it to be all wine and roses. Having some of the crew on my MSN for awhile, I know when they get off work. I don’t foresee going home on time happening very often, but that’s fine with me. Late nights are just part of the PR drill and the publishing beat too.

Right now, I’m trying to decide if working with these people is a perk or a downside…

Case in point:

(pictures shamelessly stolen from http://text100malaysia.blogspot.com)

I kid, I kid. You know I adore you guys! And you’re welcome to ‘rag’ on me for all the times I was:

1. Snippy with you on the phone
2. Whiny about not being fed
3. Putting on my Black-Faced Editor mask at events

And a big shout out to the Text 100 bloggers:

(alphabetical order)

Beatrice

David Lian

Eevon

Lee

Please update the Text MY blog already, last post was in August, slackers!