A New Beginning...

I’m transferring to a different department tomorrow… and I’m feeling somewhat uneasy about it. I never saw it coming until my boss told me about it a few weeks ago.

It’s been years—nearly eight years as a matter of fact—when I turned my back on a field for which I spent six long years in college studying and slaving over plates and research for many, many sleepless nights.

I remember, during my fourth year in college, sort of regretting pursuing the study of Architecture for reasons I have now forgotten. At the time, I lost much interest in what I was doing and it cost me dearly… an additional year in college.

Then, I recollected… I realized that I’ve got no other better choice than to straighten up, get through with it, and let the ensuing chain of events take its course. I thought, at least, after I’ve earned my degree I’ll have a key to one of the locks of the seemingly impenetrable doors of a wonderful and fruitful future.

I found myself on the stage of the PICC two years later to receive my diploma together with my brother.

A few weeks after graduating, I was referred by my then girlfriend (wife now) to her friend Ping who was working at an animation studio. Ping had informed her earlier that another studio, one that’s owned by a friend of her boss, was looking for trainees.

Eagerly wanting to start earning my own money, I hurriedly turned in my application. I got accepted soon after and, modesty aside, became the first trainee (out of 11) to be given real and paid production work after training for about three months.

I stayed with the studio for, I think, about nine months (including the three-month training period) when, due to the comically depressing amount of money I was getting for my work, I decided to leave… me and all of my batch mates, as a matter of fact.

Soon after, a former classmate got in touch with me and informed me of a job opening at a small construction company in which I eventually got accepted.

My first two months there went fairly well, but it gradually turned into hell.

In that company I was a draftsman, a site supervisor, a site inspector, a secretary, an errand boy, a messenger, a collector, and a few others. I’ve got no one to help me since I was the only office/regular employee. I received only the minimum wage (which was, I think, P250 at the time) for doing and being all of those… no extras, no benefits. And, as if that’s not bad enough, on the start of my fourth month, my boss started blaming me for mistakes I did not commit.

I got fed up and left the company at the end of my fourth month. And with that, I developed a tendency to shy away from anything related to that field.

It would take a long torturously depressing month before an opportunity would come again. That opportunity turned into a long (and quite fruitful) career in graphics design, lasting for seven years five months and seven days (last count today). And it ended at 7:00pm tonight.

Just to make things clear, I’ll still be in the same company tomorrow, only in a different department.

It’s a very busy department… that’s for sure, and I’m surely going to be up to my neck with work… work related to the field I’ve turned my back on many, many years ago. It feels a lot like my past has come back to haunt me in the guise of a new start, a new opportunity.

I shall go to bed later tonight wishing that I am indeed going to wake up to a new day, to a new career… I hope, this time, it’ll be different.

How I wish I have something to fall back on to should things go awry.

What will tomorrow bring indeed.