Last week, someone asked me three questions. One, why did I want to quit my job at the beehive. Two, why do I want to write. Three, why do I want to work at a fashion magazine. Well, I was caught off guard as I always was, red faced and slightly stuttering, failing to make my point. I definitely do express myself better through typing/writing than answering tough questions verbally. Unfortunately, that is a marked disadvantage when it comes to interview skills.

To whom it may concern:-

One. Why did I want to leave the beehive.

I adored being at the beehive. Working as a tax slave is my maiden voyage into the working world (temporary jobs not withstanding) and I definitely learnt hell lot of things in my four years being a worker bee. Useful information like tax rates and how certain employee benefits are taxed in Singapore. Not so informative but equally useful skills like soft communication skills required to get the job done (i.e. how to soothe an irate client over the phone or via e-mail).

However, when the task at hand is not one your heart is into, you start to be complacent and find yourself losing your goal in life. A stickler for punctuality, I started going into work later and later. I went through the motions and of course still got the job done but without the enthusiasm. Opening the wardrobe doors in the morning, I find myself just picking out any old top and bottom because I was just ‘watching the wheels go round’ as Lennon once put it.

So one day, I decided that I had to stop watching the wheels go round as it was giving me a perpetual headache and to break out of the safe environment I had cocooned myself in to chase the little dream I had buried and stuffed deep down. I could continue to be the coward that I had always been and to rise up in the beehive in my comfort zone and ignore that constant nagging in my mind that I wanted to be some place else doing something else. As I expressed to the boss when I told her of my decision, I said the truth, the job was not bad but I am not the one for the job. Like all romantic comedies, it’s not you but it’s me.

Two. Why do I want to write?

I started ‘writing’ when I was in secondary school. Kids those days were not so technologically blessed as the youngsters these days. The internet was just a baby and there was no easy to use Blogspot, Xanga, etc to publish how angsty you were feeling that particular day. I wrote in long hand, various stories and observations under the table in spiral bound notebooks in coloured ink. Writing was a way to express myself in the words that I could not say.

Mr Someone asked me for my writing. He wanted to see it. I felt my cheeks growing hot as I explained to him that I had no published writing and did not have anything proper for him to see. I have not done anything actively to pursue writing only scribbling furtively in class and in the dead of the night. I took what was the safe route for me and only lived out my creative aspirations in daydreams. Building castles in the air. I wanted to show the world what I thought, perhaps my opinion would matter then or not.

As I step out of the hamster wheel, I have to be brave. I only have one life and I want to live it by giving myself the shot that I may have taken a long time ago but was too chicken to do so. Perhaps a personal revolution and revelation if you may call it. To start from scratch on the yellow brick road. If it does not work out, I can finally lay the various foolscaps and odd pieces of paper that I have accumulated throughout the years and a dream to peace.

Three. Why do I want to work for a Fashion Magazine.

Fashion magazines are the instigators of trends. They take what the designers put on the runaways, break down the easy to wear pieces that someone not built like a stick insect can put on and start the ball rolling for masses to dress like a bag lady, to struggle with ’skinny’ jeans and other long or short lived fads that seem to come back after some years because everything is a cycle. Plus, people like to recycle clothes.

I am not fashionable. Not particularly well versed in the designers and the brands but not entirely un-knowledgeable about high end fashion, Lanvin, Balenciaga, DSquared, Philip Lim, etc. On the budget that I can only afford high street clothes at the best, I am aptly described to be a ‘vomit of colours’.

Fashion magazines rule the lives of girls with an iron rod. How interesting it would be to be part of that power. To be exposed to the publishing industry. How an idea gets spit out in raw form and then put into words and pictures. How the layouts transform into pages, how the still life images seem to jump out the pages and grab the reader yelling ‘buy me’. From each issue’s conception to the delivery at newstands, being a little part of the process is what I have set out to do. Ideally in my wildest fantasies, I do want to dictate the rising and falling of hemlines with the printed word.

Some people set out to earn their first fast car, some people want to lie their pockets with luxuries, others aspire to save the world. I want to be part of the team that brings fashion to the pages of the magazines that sit in the bedrooms of females.