Chronicles of a Freshie Journalist: Putting "Un" with Fashionable
What to do when you’re covering an event that you’re awfully under-dressed for?
I remember what an old editor once advised, “I don’t trust a journalist that’s well-dressed! It shows that he has time to care for how he looks!”
I’ve learned to look put-together for the business beat ever since I got sent to an impromptu meeting on casual Friday. I was dressed in pink leggings, an oversized shirt, and ratty vans at a corporate office. That is not an experience I’d like to repeat.
In my defense, no dress code was given in this event invitation. So I was “officey” at a nighttime event. I could have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for the fact that it was organized by a fashion magazine. (Yes, I am a newbie journalist who has not “read” all the people in the neighborhood!)
At the very least, I was in heels. Still, I knew I was in trouble as the fashion editors went around asking for details of outfits. I was surrounded by little black dresses, evening gowns, and purses that were probably flown in with their own private jet.
“This is from Zara, and my bag’s from a boutique in New York!”
“My shirt’s from Ukay…but my bag’s Vuitton.”
I was actually asked about my outfit details, “Uhm. The cardigan is from my Mom’s closet and my skirt’s from Baguio ukay.” I smiled meekly, took a gulp from my wine glass, then fled.
I gave a fellow writer, Denice, a call, “I have an emergency. Get down here, now. Get dressed–well-dressed, but don’t dress more than meeeee!”
Denice caught up an hour later. After one glance around the room, she downed a few more glasses of wine with me.
Would it have been worth dressing up for? The event was for a photography exhibit followed by a short film premiere. I checked out the exhibit, and found nothing much to write about. It was a standard fashion showcase. The styling was gorgeous, though by the signage of the model’s name below the photo, it was obvious that fashion was only an excuse to make connections.
Sure enough, no model outfits were shown in full, from head to two. The models were in profile, the most shown were from waist-up, if not up-close.
Then came the film.
I’m all for a showcase of fashion with film, especially in the era of engagement. While visually rich, it fails in very simple continuity. It had a motive coming out of nowhere, which makes it all a waste. I also have an ax to grind as it dared call itself “noir” when it was shot in full, lush color.
I took one last look around. Glamour wear all around, plates of fine cheeses, glasses of scotch, freeflowing wine — and all this put together around honestly so-so features.
Time to leave the bubble and put on some sensible flats.
Aim for Heaven 2011
The title is a play on JK Anicoche and Sipat Lawin’s slogan for 2011.
It has been a rocky start. As soon as work started for 2011 the bills came in, and I had to get used to the fact that I was the one picking up the tab. So this is what adulthood’s like: like having a stone in a shoe at all times.
I have learned to roll with the punches. This season’s punches just happened to upgrade to brass knuckles.
To get by, I learn to thank the little things. Last Christmas I got enough gift certificates to get a Moleskine 2011 planner. Somehow, the emptiness of the planner gave me a sense of relief. I looked forward to filling it with to-do lists, quotes, pictures, and whatnot. I knew that as long as the pages had something, there would be something to look forward to, and work to do. As long as there was work, there were things in store for me and my sister. As of writing I have a magazine to put together, a tournament to organize, and a few meetings to manage.
I also started marking daily accomplishments. At the end of each day I marked a star and a completed task, or something I enjoyed within the day. So far, I had cleared out a few boxes, and kept a friend company for his birthday.
There are challenges ahead: ongoing hospital debt, bills, my sister’s schooling, but am trying to take it one at time. That’s the only way to go, I think. It is too easy to get lost in everything we have to do, and get bogged down in the process.
There will be defeats, but failure is not an option.
Of Grief and Other Things
It has been four months and counting since Mom passed on.
The only thing that keeps me alive sometimes is the idea that it could be worse.
People ask me if I miss Mom. I’ll be honest: no. When I wonder if I should begin to miss her, instead I become resentful of the things that she didn’t prepare us for, of the wasted assets that could have gone to so much more.
I become more tetchy towards unsolicited advice; People tell me to miss her (see above), or People say that I shouldn’t regret the things I haven’t told her. What if I feel, honest-to-goodness, that I told her everything I felt? Both good and bad? Would I be accused of being in denial?
People tell me to relax. I don’t know how. Close family friends sympathize with this, and have always told me that what I’m dealing with now is not usual for the someone in her mid-twenties. Well, story of my life, I’ve always had to grow up faster.
But aren’t Mica and I strong? Mixed bag there. We get by on the things we HAVE to do. I guess that’s our strength when all else fails.
I have grieved–or would it be more accurate to admit that I am grieving? Not for the person per se, but for the new normal we have to define. For the extra work involved that we would rather, as “normal kids” do, declare to do on their own.
Depression runs strong in my family, and it comes out in the most mundane things. Mom worked her butt off. Mica stays up for days at a time. Just when I think I’m fine I get hit with hyper acidity and I find difficulty holding my meals in.
This is a profile of Mia in depression. I admit that this entry got triggered by the death of Dobby in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows part 1. What was first normal cinema tears turned into unstoppable weeping, all over a CG character. Good movie by the way, I’m actually glad I watched it ahead. I don’t think I can bring myself to watch that again for a while though.
I have been functioning, but I have become even more sensitive to things: A little rejection here, a callous remark there. The idea of huge groups make me a panic. I can chatter on and put a smile on my face for hours then suddenly my mood will shift, and I can’t explain why.
I have goldfish moments. I think this is best exemplified by the start of ‘Garden State’, when Zach Braff zones in and out of his work at the Japanese restaurant. It feels like an out of body experience, when everyone slows down and talk, noise, is muffled out. It feels like autopilot, like I could prop my body on a huge-ass stick and be pre-programmed to mingle or something.
Work is good. Work THRIVES when I’m at rock bottom for some reason. What I lack in social skills or in relating, I make up for with productivity.
Why am I writing this? Because while I had same vague idea that all this is totally normal, no one else talks about it. I rarely read of anyone who writes about it being this way, it’s usually a fluffy carrying on of a torch of memories with a flurry of doves or something.
Friends tell me they miss me. I miss ME most of all.
There are the stages of grief. I just never really realized that it is actually a cycle.
I know this too will pass. I wish that time would come in…now.
[Day 14] A non-fictional book
I recently picked up ‘I should have stayed at home: The worst trips of great writers’. It’s an anthology of anecdotes from different writers on the worst trips they’ve ever been on. Among the writers featured are Pico Iyer, Isabel Allende, Paul Thereoux, and many more.
Isabelle Allende writes about going around Europe on $1 a day, while Pico Iyer and a companion dodge sexual predators in Egypt. In another chapter, a writer talks about an impromptu trip around the world by a US president and the toll it took on his press corps. It’s more than little cautionary tales while on the road, it is, in essence, the best of the worst.
After all, as Mary Morris says in her introduction, “But it is not our comforts we remember–or that anyone else cares to remember for that matter. What is memorable is misery. It is our dismay, our disbelief, and the fact that we made it through. There is some perverse natural law that makes adversity lead to inspiration.”
Oh whew, finally reached the halfway point of this meme!
Part of the 30 Day Writing Meme. Next is Day 15: A fanfic.
[Day 13] A fictional book
I’ll count the last entry as the one for day 12.
Funny, when made to name a fictional book, I’m at a loss for words. Where to start? I already wrote about Harriet the Spy.
Ah, I know, I’ll write about the Jessica Darling series.
I make no excuses: this is chick-lit. I actually like chick-lit when the female protagonist is not so simplistic. It isn’t all about settling down and getting married after all. As a twenty-something girl who often feels like someone in a chick-lit setting, it’s a juggling act of work, love, friendship, and coming to terms with myself. It is a cliche because it’s true.
Jessica Darling from books one to three narrates through a compilation of letters to her best friend. She is a frustrated achiever, smarter and more aware of what goes on outside of her little town. Of all the people to empathize with her, it’s with Marcus, the high school druggie. What follows is a rollercoaster relationship with Marcus, as well as struggling to stick to the bigger picture no matter how small-minded the world around her is. As she enters Columbia University in New York, she finds that even she looks as small as the town she left behind. Add to that is the complex on-off relationship with Marcus, who has chosen to tread an alternative approach to life.
In book 4, Jessica Darling chooses to make her life without Marcus. It’s not a spoiler, I think this is a plus in the Jessica Darling series – book 5, she encounters Marcus again. They don’t end up together, but they finally understand what it is that has kept them together for all that time.
The Jessica Darling series was lent to me at an interesting time. I had a Marcus, one I’m still coming to terms with. It is one of those things a friend and I often agree to be, “when smart people become stupid”. I’m not ashamed to own up to my smarts, but I know I have HUGE potholes in my rationale.
I always appreciate female leads who don’t have to be right all the time. That is more real to me than someone who actually makes the dream of having it all. I only know one person who finally had it all, and it was a lifetime struggle for her. I like that the series writes about the struggle. Jessica Darling is often unsatisfied, but it rings true. It helps that McCafferty made it so timely: she did her research and grounded it very well into the time it was written.
Everything just read so well and felt so real. I still read it from time to time when hit by nostalgia, or confusion.
Part of the 30 Day Writing Meme. Next is Day 14: A Non-fictional book.