Back to R.AGE rant

I am frustrated with myself. I know this fact before I've even consciously acknowledged it, because my face is covered in angry red welts – a sign of the compulsive picking that takes over whenever I get stressed.

You know that feeling when you know you can do more, but end up not. Not doing better, not living up to expectations, not performing, just not.

The worst thing is when I see it in Ian’s face, or hear it in Ian’s tone, and I know he doesn’t mean to make me feel like the biggest failure ever whenever I forget to email the contestants about something important, or when I end up drafting some really bad copy, but he does. And I do. Feel like the world’s biggest failure.

 It was my second month at The Star when he passed me my first project: R.AGE Food Fight – the search for Malaysia’s next food celebrity. I don’t know why he passed the project to me – whether it was because I was new and had less on my plate than anyone else, or if it was because he honestly thought that I’d be up for the task – and maybe I’ll never know. But I know that I’m not.

I am, at best, a decent secretary, who occasionally forgets to do things like update our social media accounts, or keep everyone in the loop about a new update. So okay, I’m a shit secretary.

I am, I thought, an okay writer. All along I’d been hard pressed to live up to Ian’s standards, and all along I thought that I’d been doing okay. He tells me when I write up to par, and even when I impress him. Ever since I rejoined R.AGE, I haven’t heard a peep.

I feel like a girl who’s been told all her life that she’s pretty, so much that it becomes an addiction. My writing is my only source of validation; my only indicator of value. And just typing this down makes me feel sick. I always told myself that I’d never become that girl. But here we are: different shades, same color.

 The project is drawing to a close, and to that I feel equal parts relieved and mortified. I tell myself that everything that’s been done has been done, and that all I can do is do my best not to make the same mistakes again.

Will I get the project next year when we go to ASEAN? Probably not. And it’s probably for the best.  But for now I’m using this disappointment in myself as fuel for whatever I’m working on now. It’ll burn dirty, sure, but it’ll burn.

I’m not consciously trying to end this on a happy note here. It just happens to be one of those days where I’ve somehow found it in me to not collapse under the angst. I tell myself “I can do this” again and again, until I’ve done everything. And even then, everything’s not enough.

I’ve written down a list of the things that I should or shouldn’t do:

1. Don’t be complacent, Clarissa. That’s what got you to this slump remember? Complacency. Think you wrote a good story? Double check it. Get your friends to proofread it. I mean come on, it could be so much better, why are you getting lazy?

 2. CC everyone. You learned this the hard way. I can’t believe no one taught you how to do that in high school.

 3. Don’t blindly follow Ian’s suggestions just because you’ve put him on a pedestal and can’t get him down. That’s your problem. Always ask yourself if you can do better – do more. I mean seriously, do you want to end up rotting away your brain at 21?

 4. Make your work your life. I know you thought you could excel without doing it, but some people can and some people can’t. You can’t. And anyway, is it really that torturous to write, come up with ideas, and interview people for a living? It isn’t. Stop playing video games all the time.

 5. More like 4.1 but anyway, write even when it’s not for work. I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You’re better than that.

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