C'est la vie

It was at the height of my powers that I started rejecting them.

Just last July, a summer internship at Bloomberg lay on the table, served up by my almost-triumph at the Dennis Bloodworth Memorial Journalism Prize. I turned the media giant down -- to join an one-man designer aquarium company.

In true Roarkian spirit, I pursued my own contrarian form of industry and artistry, and even became famous for taking the path less-travelled! But that eventually tanked (excuse the pun), and the creative ideals I held going into the business got crushed in the collapse of our investment deal.

Immediately I looked back, slightly regretting turning Bloomberg down. The humour attached to my memory of telling the HR woman "yes, you heard that right, I'm sorry to say no but I'm going to sell fish tanks" doesn't seem so funny now.

But after making Chumbawumba's I Get Knocked Down my personal anthem in secondary school, it was fitting that a decade later I fulfilled the hit song's mantra; I got up again. From one brash start-up to another, I joined Visci0n Media Group.

Immediately, inevitably, the big guns came a-calling after I said yes. On day 6 of my new job as a Sales Journalist, I turned down the chance to interview to be a SIA Trainee Station Manager. I told myself to ditch buyer's remorse and concentrate on what could be a happy marriage of writing and business.

Cmi. Through MAD and Visci0n, I lived lofty professional ideals. Yet as I have discovered, they aren't quite enough, and the scene is repeating itself.

It's not a good time to be doing print ad sales. The business of print media is dying, according to TIME. Asking people to spend on a troubled start up is difficult enough; under attack from new media and the recession, the company is creaking even more. Any smart person would look for the exit -- then Sining comes and says that SIA has frozen hiring for TSMs :(

So, while many of my peers started their job search almost a year ago, here I am beginning looking for a third job. Professional sluggishness? I refuse see it that way. Moving on again is painful, but I still believe in the values that have guided me: I will not be a 9 - 6 cubicle rat, I will not lose myself in a maze of bureaucracy, I will be creative.

As Sam reflected to me, I am not the sort to look back on an immaculately-planned career of stepped-on heads or carried balls ; he says I am an experimentalist -- agreed. Candice says my time in the sun will come and insists that I should, and will, find a good stable employer :)

And as she and Zhengs rally around for my third season of job hunting, I feel ready to return to the peak of my ability: a muse and an opening is all I need.