What's missing

Lately I've been really stressed out about production. My boss, who used to play the role of senior production manager, resigned over a month ago with no replacement in sight. That and an unusually large number of production projects (as opposed to purely graphics-based) have left me picking up the slack and doing most of the production work myself.

Although I realized I've learned a fair bit about production since I started this job over a year ago, there's a lot that completely escapes me, like costing and scheduling. Juggling all the nitty gritty grunt work of production with my creative responsibilities has left me stressed and anxious. I'm antsy for someone to come over and take the lead; while I've professed my eagerness to learn the ropes, I don't want to be (and I don't think I am equipped to handle) being the sole responsibility for production.

There have been many, many times these past months that I wished I could drop the "/producer" half of my job title and go back to being "just" a writer. Especially during times when an important creative proposal deserves attention and I am bound to spend half the day ringing up all the car rental services in Singapore until I find a red convertible Mini Cooper for a shoot at the end of the week.

Mostly I have been feeling that I haven't been writing as much as I'd like, or giving my writing (when I am called upon to write) the time and effort that it requires.

So yesterday I finally gave in to the urge to write. I picked up an old book that used to belong to my mom, called The Right to Write by Julia Cameron, where I remembered seeing writing exercises and prompts. The first exercise was simply called, Begin. And the result of that exercise was what I posted last night.

For the past few months I've been feeling that writing was missing from my work. And just last night, I realized that I don't have to rely on work to supply what's missing from work.

That's what life is for. :)