Leaving

An elegy for a soon-to-be former life

There is a task inevitable in life that most people cannot or do not know how to navigate: Leaving. The process can be convoluted and confusing. Just take for example, departures from the Philippines, which under new immigration rules (which were suspended under pressure by the public and the Senate) can be just as hard as obtaining a visa to travel to a first-world country. Other ways of leaving are just as difficult — Changing schools, moving out, breaking up and switching jobs. Leaving requires severing ties that might never ever be reconnected, some of which are losses that can never be soothed even after grief has passed and acceptance has set in.

But I have become adept at leaving, at least in some aspects of my life. Particularly, in my career, where I have easily and quickly jumped from one job to the next — notwithstanding the odd looks I get from employers wary of my antics. Cutting ties for me was a breeze, fully knowing that these are bonds that can heal in time as I rarely left in bad blood.

It’s different now, though. My abrupt departure from my last gig and the succeeding job hunt proved that leaving, like most times, can be messy and uncontrollable. It was a storm that I was caught unprepared for. Conditions were unfavorable at the time that I left; competition was stiff for the handful of journalism jobs I wanted to take on. It didn’t help my cause that I desired to take myself to a workplace that prided itself of uncompromised and unflinching journalism — an ideal that a lot of news companies unfortunately could no longer strive for given the political and economic situation.

The walls were closing in on me. I was doomed to precarity, or so I thought. An offer came through to work as part of the communications  team of a politician whom I believed in. Without much hesitation — or even thought — I took it. Second-guessing came much later, when a newsroom I admired announced vacancies for reporters.

But the numbers just didn’t add up in favor of staying in journalism. To say that there is much to be desired in the working conditions of journalists is, unfortunately, too kind. Adding to that is the instability of the industry as it faces another upheaval due to politics and changing audience behaviors. Journalists are being removed from staff boxes worldwide: Will the axe fall on me next?

It was easy for me to leave a job to work somewhere else because it was also in journalism. Now that I’ve been plucked from the comforts of what I used to believe was my calling, leaving is heartbreaking. But there is solace in the belief that what I will be doing is still important, essential even. Turning to a journo friend for advice, she told me that it’s “another path to making a difference.” It is essentially the same work, after all — just a different side of the fence.

For now, I will work well in my new role that Buddhagoduniverse has so generously plopped on my lap while gracefully carrying this grief for a profession that I love.