Investing in Yourself

Mel Bochner's "Right On!" from Basel 2015

This year, I was looking to learn new skills. It's not totally off track and I'm not exactly a total newbie. I want to think that this is a logical tangent or branch I can explore. So it’s not like I’m starting from scratch. 

I heard about this program that takes place annually overseas. It was something that I would have gladly spent for, because it meant exposure and networking in this (newish) path. I applied for and got into a training seminar last March-April. Instead of having to buy tickets and being a mere spectator, the training program allowed for all access, and came with in-depth, really extensive training from the best in the field. I got lucky in a way. 

Now the downside to investing in oneself is, of course, one has to spend for it. It’s not just an investment of time —two weeks in this case. It was good timing that I was able to take off from my day job. But since it was relatively late notice, I wasn’t able to apply for funding and had to spend for airfare, accommodations, daily expenses. I’m supposed to have some kind of subsidy for accommodations but I have yet to hear about a refund. But all in all, even if I don’t get the subsidy, I still feel that it was worth it. Especially since we don’t have that kind of training here. 

When I got home, and hoping to apply these new skills, I invested in a key piece of equipment I could use. 

What this foray into new skills cost me: way less than $1k. Some people spend this much for a holiday abroad. 

What it gives me: two weeks of training and a new network of experts. It will afford me new directions career-wise. This is important to me. Since the industry I’m in is saturated, fluctuating, and I wanted to have some other skill that would differentiate me from others. 

It’s still early days, and there’s still a lot to learn. But already, I got some people interested and partnered with. So I’m hopeful about this. 

The Frugal Celebrity: Give up the glam, buy a house in the US Edition

GMA artist Kris Bernal and her sister in her ~$600k California home. 

Working in the media and entertainment industry exposed me to how it was pretty much a boom and bust situation. When it's good, it's really good. You get projects left and right and one after the other, then it's forty years wandering the desert and the seven plagues the next. Since it's the first industry I worked in, I learned early how to budget my money, how to make it last until the next payday which may be a month, or two, or six months away. Who knows. 

That's why when it comes up in the news, I always have a soft spot for people who can forgo the trappings of celebrity--buying all the designer goodies, #travelgoals, the big muscle cars--and scrape and save for a future when the spotlight is no longer trained on them. One of the first entries on my blog when I returned to blogging was about Scottie Thompson, who saved up his basketball money to put up his own business. 

Recently, there's Kris Bernal, a GMA artist who saved by not hiring a glam team and driving herself to work and then using that savings to buy a house in West Covina, California. Primarily, she got the house because she has a sister working there as a nurse who then fell ill and Kris Bernal thought it would be nice if her sister didn't have to think of making rent on top of health concerns. 

Bernal often taped three times a week, especially if working on a soap opera, and having a glam team--stylist, make up artist, hair stylist--and a driver to bring her to work and back home, are considered necessities. But what gave her pause was how much having this team would cost her in the long run. "Pag inipon mo kasi yun, its very expensive, e." She pegged the driver's salary in a month at PHP10,000, that adds up to PHP600,000 for five years. Add to that the salary of a stylist and a hair and makeup artist. So that makes the celebrity life really expensive indeed. 

She put her money in a time deposit so that she wouldn't be tempted to spend it. (Of course, I think that time deposits don't really do much, but hey, if it worked for her, you do you, ate.) She built her savings for a decade. Recently, she also opened a Korean BBQ restaurant. "Hindi siya ano, na bigla na lang dumami ang pera ko. Hindi nila alam na sobrang tipid ko, as in ang dami kong tinipid at tiniis para lang mabili ko itong bahay, mapatayo ko itong House of Gogi, yung ganun." 

She bought the house in April 2018, and according to Zillow, modern-minimalist home has a lot size of 3,750 square feet and a floor area of 2,022 square feet. Pep.ph, which ran the article, found out that "four-bedroom homes in West Covina are priced from $500,000 to $600,000." So Ms. Bernal's five bedroom home with a loft cost her around $603,000 or PHP32,121,207. If she saved for it for a decade, she was putting aside ~Php3M/year. She's right to be proud of her purchase. Really frugal indeed. 

That's around PHP26M to PHP31M.But based on our research, the house was

Productivity and the Part Time Life

Productivity needs to be quantified. Stress Drilon, mga besh. 

Sometime after that meeting announcing the very real effects of the lean years on our workload, our Soon To Be Boss approached Cube Mate and I about possible higher education outside. It turns out that in the meeting for Full Timers, it’s been agreed that CM and I should take on higher ed since we’re the only ones without it or not currently working on it. STB forwarded details about where to apply. 

So now we’re hustling to make it to the deadline. Which is two weeks from now. And even if it’s not that particular school, will probably be applying to others. 

It was around this time last year that I started to feel the pressure of not having anything to show for my time. Everyone’s favorite question: “What are you working on right now?” This is probably the most nerve wracking and anxiety inducing for creatives and those in academia. Particularly since last year, mostly everyone in the Office had something to show, and were very very productive. 

I’ve never been one to care about keeping it up with whomever, but when the institution you work for asks you to fill up multiple forms about how productive you’ve been in the last x years, and you have to skip whole charts, it’s like your entire reason for being has amounted to nothing. Nothing notable, nothing to contribute. So when the roster of Part Timers had a lot to show for their time last year, it hit me so hard that it landed me on a downward spiral that now requires me regular therapy and medication that eats up a huge chunk of my pithy and pitiful Part Time Pay. 

The Cube Mate also recently disclosed that the feeling of losing passion for what we do, that feeling of stagnation and not doing much also hit her—adding to that desire to get out, even for a while. Which is really odd, because Cube Mate does have something to show, but those “outputs” are not qualified for the forms of “productivity.” 

Also had a really long talk online with a Creative Acquiantance (we’re not that close, but we have a lot of mutuals, we talk about our frail mental health) who has been quite productive with really good projects, and yet has been feeling anxious and depressed. Someone asked her why she's been feeling shitty despite the really cool projects she's been a part of. “Working on cool projects does not guarantee happiness or peace of mind.” People kept giving her work because "mukhang kaya pa naman niya." (Looks like she could still handle it.) But in reality, it’s even made her feel worse. Productivity at the cost of poor mental health. Nope. 

The higher education race life: marathon or a sprint? I prefer walking, actually. 

I don’t know why but a lot of people in my line(s) of work have been feeling this crush, this burden of needing to produce something, even if said productions aren’t really paid that much.

I’ve learned my lesson, a very costly one at that. Even if now I’m trying to get stuff done, I’m conscious enough not to compare myself with how others are doing. When others ask what I’m working on, I’ll be appropriating this response from Financial Best Life:“I’m working on having the best life for myself.” Let them perform. Each one of us runs at a different “phase of production.” Trying to run and lose my breath to catch up with everyone is not worth the price of my peace of mind and sanity. 

Bob Ong: Living Off Writing

Bob Ong's proof of life: his 1998 Webby PH Award

I found out too late that Bob Ong, author of the book ABNKKBSNPLAko?! and probably responsible for getting a lot of Pinoys to read, had an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session at Reddit PH. 

It took place on October 26 between 1-3PM, but because of the huge interest, it took him a good 6 hours to answer all the questions posted for him. 

While I didn’t make it on time to personally ask him a question, my favorite queries have to do with what Bob Ong does with his time. He said he fills his days with “hayop at halaman.” So basically it’s a more leisurely, less stressful life in what is probably his middle age years. 

From Bob Ong's Reddit PH AMA

What enables this life? A reader asked this: “At what point in your career did it become self-sufficient just by writing books?” 

Bob Ong said that he doesn’t really need much and lives with just water and a loaf of bread. Of course I understand that’s *not* literal. But because he lives simply, he’s been able to afford his life of “hayop at halaman,” and his peanut butter and bread by the time he published his second book. 

Part of his “proof of life” post was a picture of his Webby Award from 1998, which he got for the “People’s Choice for Weird/Humor.” This means that Bob Ong has been writing for nearly or more than twenty years, since the early days of the internet. Two decades! Wikipedia (not the best source, I know) lists his second book as “Bakit Baligtad Magbasa ng Libro ang mga Pilipino?,” which came out in 2002. This implies that if he went “self-sufficient” *after* the second book, then Bob Ong has been living off his writing by 2003. That’s nearly 15 years of living as a creative person. 

I’m not sure if he’s still working a day job. But he does mention that only his friends and family know of his true identity as Bob Ong. So if he does have co-workers still, then they don’t know they’re breathing the same air as greatness. (Naks!) 

Still interesting is that someone has been going around introducing himself as Bob Ong and then proceeds to ask for discounts and freebies in restaurants. Not cool. But then perhaps expected that someone will try to steal his identity since Bob Ong is famously reclusive and we don’t know what he looks like despite the two decades of his publishing life. 

But still, this is a goal. It’s possible to live off creative work, but then Bob Ong is like the one in a hundred million in the Philippines. You have to be Bob Ong successful to be able to do this. But the real take away for me is that you need to live simply and want not. I’ll be happy with living with “hayop at halaman” for the rest of my days. I think. 

Steven Soderbergh: A Case Study on How To Avoid Burnout*

Lately, I have noticed that there's a good number of my friends quitting what seems to be perfectly good and stable jobs because they are tired of what they do. There's my friend's husband D, who is a tech guy who does projects with international clients and earns in the ballpark of 6 figures a month. But he grew tired of what he was doing and went from corporate guy to outsourced projects guy and then quit the tech scene altogether to do some kind of multi-level marketing**. 

Then there's my friend V, who quit an office job overseas even when the company offered her a 100% raise. But she said that she knows that even with the raise--and $4,000/month is nothing to sneeze at--she knows she will still dread coming into the office in the working, and will show up at 11am and do facebook all day. So she quit. She's sending two kids to school but she's not afraid that she will find other work. It seems that money is not enough of a motivation to stay in a job you don't like. 

Then comes the news that director Steven Soderbergh is quitting directing movies once he turns fifty. In this interview with Vulture, he has some very interesting points about how to approach "creative" work. In between his 1989 debut sex, lies and videotape and this year's Side Effects, he has directed 26 films, each one of them different in terms of style and genre--the "perfect chameleon" is how the Vulture's Mary Kay Schilling describes him. 

This is a director who wants to go to work--after he got fired off Moneyball, he turned his energies to making the super low budget The Girlfriend Experience. So it came as a bit of a surprise when he recently announced that after his 50th birthday, he's going to stop directing movies to focus on painting. He still plans to direct--mainly, theater and maybe television if there are interesting projects. He explains his decision partly as getting tired of the way we tell stories now, and so "wanting to slough off one skin and grow another." In short, the necessity to reinvent when one is getting tired of the way we do things: 

"It’s a combination of wanting a change personally and of feeling like I’ve hit a wall in my development that I don’t know how to break through. The tyranny of narrative is beginning to frustrate me, or at least narrative as we’re currently defining it. I’m convinced there’s a new grammar out there somewhere. But that could just be my form of theism." 

What for me, what stood out in the interview is Soderbergh's attitude on "creative work." It's not enough to learn how to do things--your attitude and how you relate with other people is equally, if not more, important: 

"On the few occasions where I’ve talked to film students, one of the things I stress, in addition to learning your craft, is how you behave as a person. For the most part, our lives are about telling stories. So I ask them, “What are the stories you want people to tell about you?” Because at a certain point, your ability to get a job could turn on the stories people tell about you. The reason [then–Universal Pictures chief] Casey Silver put me up for [1998’s] Out of Sight after I’d had five flops in a row was because he liked me personally. He also knew I was a responsible filmmaker, and if I got that job, the next time he’d see me was when we screened the movie. If I’m an asshole, then I don’t get that job. Character counts. That’s a long way of saying, “If you can be known as someone who can attract talent, that’s a big plus.” 

And it does make sense, especially for those who work in the creative industries. There's a huge threat of burnout, but guys like Soderbergh, who went on a 26 film run in 24 years, you have to admire them for the stamina to just slug through and deliver project after project. A couple of years ago, Soderbergh made public his daily diet of creative consumption: a list of all the books and things he read and movies he watched interspersed with his work schedule (shooting for Haywire, Contagion).*** So it seems like that to be as productive as Soderbergh, one must feed the creative soul and not just tire oneself out with just work. 

There's the myth of industry vs inspiration: that work can only "flow smoothly" if the muse is there to inspire you. But in the real world, there are deadlines and deliverables. One can't pack up a shoot of a commercial or a television show and risk a blank screen. Too much is at stake. Also, there's the idea of eccentric behavior from artists and geniuses. Bad behavior is inexcusable, and surely, ill temper is not the only sign of geniuses. 

Which reminds me with a talk I had with my boss. It's important to meet deadlines. If you have two workers where one is merely adequate and the other has more polished work but takes a very long time and will most likely deliver late, guess which person will get the next project? 

At the end of the day, it's going to be the one who delivers. And it won't matter that it's "just okay" or "sufficiently adequate." Which means that I need to work on working faster. It's slow going, but this is a quest at improving oneself and one's attitude towards work, so we will try. Or as Yoda says, "There is no try. Only do." 

*Or alternatively: Knowing When To Quit

**I'm not convinced that multilevel marketing or networking is the way to go. In my head, these are all variations on the pyramid scheme: common products sold at a high mark up and the illusion that you have your own business. But the only ones who get rich out of this are the ones who got in really early to cash in. Everyone else who comes in later is screwed. 

*** One thing that makes sense with this list now is that in the interview Soderbergh mentions that he was working on an adaptation/reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. So that's why he was watching all those episodes. So even if it seems like the list was just him "reading" or "watching," he was actually working.