Old habits die hard.

When I decided to take up the job offer from JiFFEst last year, little did I know that one of the very dearly parts of me would be neglected. That part is what we are reading right now: my online version of me, aka my blog.

Of course, I couldn’t be happier to see myself being in a field of my lifelong passion, i.e. film. Ah, yes. The joy of immersing oneself to the celluloid dream, the fun in relating ourselves to a better celluloid character, and the excitement to fill this space with more and more words.

Or not?

Behind the white screen and the DVD eject button, beyond the line-up of films in papers and magazines, a hard work awaited. So hard that it left me close to no time to prepare. After all, what’s to prepare? No guidance or clues from the previous year’s works on how to do what I was supposed to do. No templates or any form of blue-prints of how I should assemble everything into one. It was like being sent to a jungle when you wore your most comfortable Prada, without having paraffin in your Samsonite backpack.



Luckily, the jungle wasn’t that wild. At least how I looked back at it now. It just took me some days, make that weeks, to stay up until 5 or 6 am, and going back to the office at around 11 am. Also some weekends to go by, since one of my friends reminded me that the day was Saturday at 11 pm when we had our online chat.

Yet, I enjoyed the process. I don’t know if you, my friend, or anyone understood how I felt at that time. Yes, it was tiring, and as much as I hate to do, there were times when I had this urge of consuming bottled Vitamin-C pills, something I had secretly detested. But I found a great joy of reading my research materials, choosing the right stills for whoever or whatever media needed them, and writing whatever kind of writing under the sun about them. Talk about the success of working under pressure, eh?

However, happiness comes with a sacrifice. Cliché it may sound, but honestly, somehow I couldn’t share those moments with this blog. It could be because I chose to publish my write-ups in a printed media, or maybe because I began to lose interest in writing here. As simple as the latter or as slightly complicated as the former, they lead me thinking as I am typing this write-up: I wouldn’t be here without this blog.

I made this blog when I found myself at dead-end with my previous jobs. Seriously, if I had anything to regret, it is definitely for not having any guts to leave those jobs any soon. So, as a solace during the dreadful and overloaded working hours, I decided to make myself a blog, where I could write about whatever I wanted. Especially about films. I had had locked my desire to comment about films for a terribly long time. Whatever they were about films I had watched, or any news on films I had found interesting, I just couldn’t resist the urge anymore. You see, I was living with inner conflicts all those years. Thinking about films inside, but responding to angry customers on the outside.



This blog was my daily oasis then. Everyday, I couldn’t wait to write. Make awards prediction, write reviews in pretty horrible grammar. Still until now, though! Hahaha!

Well, they call it ‘bad memories are the one that you can laugh at’. Of course, these memories are the ones that tickle us most to revisit.

So, it might be a revisit, or it might be a permanent affair. Whatever it is, I just want to say that one shall not be away from anything they love most. Anything that brings them to life, anything that they see themselves in.

Those meaningful things are our habits. The habits that drive us to become who we really are.

For me? Let’s just say that what you read here is what I am.

Old habits die hard.

And so did the flood apparently. :)