How I Ended Up Where I Am Today

An overly wordy blogpost about personal experience, by yours truly. 

It’s that time of the year again, when bright-eyed fresh grads start filling out countless job-applications. There’s nothing quite like that graduation high. For a number of days you feel like you’re on top of the world, especially while on that traditional class trip to Boracay with comrades that have been with you every step of the way. But when that powdery white sand is dusted off of your unreasonably expensive rubber flipflops and that sunkissed glow begins to fade, a ball of anxiety you’ve been pushing down with summer cocktails at happy hour slowly resurfaces, and you’re faced with the question whose answer you fear may define the rest of your existence – what am I going to do now??

Here is what I did.

After Graduation, Taking That First Step

First, I took a deep breath. I remembered a similar feeling from 4 years earlier, filling out college-applications and browsing through university brochures to figure out which course was the right one for me. I considered business management, I considered marketing, I considered communication arts – all of which seemed like practical degrees to hold for someone who couldn’t see herself committing to the number of years it takes to become a doctor or applying herself to the tedious study hours required to achieve an engineer’s technical know-how. While they may have been more "respectable" tracks (because most of society doesn't think the arts should be categorized as legitimate collegiate courses), I had to be honest with myself. I wasn't going to be bullied into picking something "socially acceptable." Luckily, my parents were encouraging and supportive of my craft. 


I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I had to choose something that made me excited about going to school everyday, that allowed for me to be mentored by professors that inspired me. I ended up choosing something I’ve always loved, and I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the Ateneo de Manila University in March 2009.

Upon graduation, I felt a tinge of panic. What on earth was I going to do with this degree? I looked for something lucrative but was faced with the harsh reality that a writing career wasn’t typically financially rewarding right off the bat, especially for a fresh graduate like myself. So I decided to make use of my American citizenship by moving to California to work any blue-collar job while writing freelance. The goal was to eventually write my first book.

It wasn’t the most glamorous plan, but I figured at least 2 good things would come of it: earning in US$, which, although minimal, made a decent amount in it’s Peso-equivalent, and growing from the experience of living outside of the sheltered community I was raised in. I figured I could return to Manila years later with a nice little nest egg saved up, first novel in hand, and explore entrepreneurial opportunities with enough start-up capital. All this after a couple of months on vacation, of course – we all feel like we deserve that freedom after 18 years in the standard educational system, don’t we?

Then Comes the Unexpected

A few months into what I thought was a well-hatched life plan, I was presented with a job offer that turned my life around completely. In the middle of my senior year, I had interviewed for a sales job at the Manila office of an international advertising agency. Although it wasn’t primarily a writing job (writing was about 20% of it), I was attracted by the opportunity to travel the world. I was discouraged when I didn’t hear back from them right away (that “we’d like to hire you” call came half a year later), but I opted to look on the bright side. I would be moving to America to chase the American Dream together with my longterm boyfriend at the time.

I was in the US for what only seemed like a heartbeat, however, two at the most. That boyfriend and I were a few months into our new life in California, 5 ½ years into our relationship, when I took the job that forced us into affixing the term “long-distance” to what we had. I was relocated to a different country every 12 weeks, moving straight from my last assignment to the next with no pit-stop at home, living out of one suitcase for 11 months out of the year. I worked in Hong Kong, The Czech Republic, Brazil, Taiwan, and Sweden, selling advertising space for promotional newspaper supplements and writing business reports about companies in each country looking for potential investors or partners.

I know exactly what you’re thinking if you’re reading this after drooling over my travel photos, “That lucky Cara, she was paid to travel, she wasn’t stuck at a desk job.” Let me give you the first lesson you will learn post-graduation, nothing is ever as glamorous as it appears to be.

I wasn't paid to travel, I was paid to work. My first job as a media sales coordinator was nothing short of demanding. It was challenging but it was empowering. It was exciting but also emotionally draining.

On top of the travel, the job description sounds interesting enough, noh? But it wasn’t all fancy suits and business meetings. Landing in a new country knowing nobody else but the teammate beside you, being unfamiliar with the geography, let alone the language, while taking public transportation and losing sleep to prepare for sales pitches took a lot of the glamour out of what everyone following me on Facebook thought I was doing, travel writing.

I had the same amount of administration and back office work as someone at a desk: phone calls, emails, staring at spreadsheets, scratching my head at accounting, hours and hours of research. After proper training and a promotion to a position as project manager, the job became more challenging in a way that allowed for personal growth, i.e. designing, developing, and implementing marketing strategies appropriate for the local culture in each country and building market lists of thousands of companies to meet sales quotas.

Working in sales, I faced rejection 90% of the time. I was 21 years old when I started, balancing the pressure of not wanting to be fired from my first job on top of the responsibilities of living alone for the first time in a foreign country (managing my apartment, cleaning, cooking, doing laundry – all after a 13 hour workday), PLUS being in a long distance relationship. It was taxing, but it taught me to be resilient and exposed me to a global business culture where things don't run on Filipino time. It made me realize there are so many things about the world that I don't know but that I want to know about.

The perk was obviously the travel, which was what I spent my hard earned money on. Our job was the epitome of that saying, "Work Hard, Play Hard." My weekdays almost always ended in tears from exhaustion or from missing my loved ones, but my weekends only brought tears of joy. One weekend I would be in Barcelona, the next in Paris, the next in London, the next in Berlin, months later I would be in Buenos Aires or Tokyo. It was looking forward to those quick trips that motivated me to get through the week, knowing I would enjoy my weekend so much more if I had worked hard enough to reel a couple of sales in and make enough commission to afford those trips. 

Fresh out of college I wanted to find the kind of job that allowed me to set goals, to work towards the completion of something I could be proud of (in this case it was meeting sales quotas and building strong reports), not just clocking in and clocking out daily. Some people prefer that kind of structure, other people just like to coast.

Evaluate your own strengths and weaknesses. Are you a people person or do you prefer not to socialize? Do you like to exercise your vocabulary or are you gifted with mathematical skill? Do you eventually want to call the shots or are you more comfortable being guided by a leader? Are you a solo-artist or a team player? It is very important to pick a work environment that is most suitable for you so as to optimize your performance in the workplace.

Every aspect of my first job forced me to grow up, and I am eternally grateful to my first employer for giving me the kind of overall training that I wouldn’t have been given anywhere else.

After Firsts, What Comes Next?

I spread myself pretty thinly my first two years after of college. As great as my first job was, I knew from the very beginning that it wasn't something I could do for the rest of my life. It wasn't something to build a career on. The erratic schedule took its toll on my health and on the health of my relationship with my first boyfriend. I could easily blame the deterioration of our romance on logistics and constantly changing time zones, but beyond that we both knew that the time apart was turning us into different people. After spending our entire adolescence together, the separation gave each of us the space to get to know ourselves and to grow as individuals. I won’t desecrate the dignity of our 7-year relationship by giving you a sob-story of how we grew apart. We agreed that our romantic relationship had simply run its course, so we decided to end our relationship in order to save our friendship. 

You shouldn’t be afraid to break-up with your first boyfriend if your intentions for doing so are selfless and good. Likewise, you shouldn’t be afraid to bid farewell to your first job, either, especially if it isn’t bringing you any closer to whatever it is  that you have envisioned for yourself in the future.

I pushed myself as far as I could go with my first job, but I also made sure to set aside enough of what I had earned to be able to support myself financially when the time came for me to leave the company in pursuit of other things. Whatever it was I would end up doing, I knew I wanted to stay financially independent and debt-free. I prayed hard every night for guidance as to when the right time to leave was and whether or not I should return to California.

When that time came, I again thought back to how I had chosen which degree to pursue and applied the same formula: What don’t I want to do, and if I could do anything, what would I love to be doing? If I could do one thing for the rest of my life, what would that be?

For The Love Of What You Love

I love to sing. I have loved music ever since my new-born ears could recognize a melody. To relieve stress while I was living abroad, I used my laptop to record vocal mp3s that were shared on the internet for family and friends. Those mp3s generated more attention than I had originally anticipated (many thanks to Saab Magalona for blogging about my first YouTube video), and something in my stomach told me that I could pursue music back home, even if only on a small scale for a while.

After almost 2 years at my first job, I decided to move back to Manila. Today I am a singer, a freelance journalist & copywriter, and a business development consultant. I am not a big time recording artist, dancing on noontime television and endorsing fitness beverages. I sing at jazz clubs, music festivals, wedding receptions and corporate events. How do I get these gigs? Simply by word of mouth. Performing makes me happy, and the audience enjoys watching a performer that is clearly enjoying herself (case in point: Anne Curtis). Singing is a passion I was born with, writing and sales are skills I developed over time.

At 24 years old, I can’t plan out a future in complete certainty that things will work out in my favor, but I can set goals and I can dream big.

If I don't pursue what I am passionate about now, I may end up regretting it for the rest of my life. Yes there are thousands of talented Filipina singers (many of them make me sink deep into my sofa when I watch those young'ns on American Idol), but the trick to fighting away demons of doubt is by looking ahead. One day I want to be a wife & a full-time mother, and I know I can only throw myself into those roles by giving myself a chance to do what I love wholeheartedly while I still can. I'm not trying to be self-righteous or poetic, I'm just honest to goodness thankful that I was blessed with the opportunity and the confidence to do so. I know I will never be Lea Salonga, Regine Velasquez, or Charice Pempengco, but I am an entertainer in my own little right. Singing takes me to a place of happiness like nothing else on this earth does, and I'm grateful for the people that appreciate what I do and that encourage me to keep doing it - people that are like family to me, and people that I've never even met.

I can't call myself an artist, I can't call myself a success, I'm just another 20-something-year-old with an experience to share. I'm far from being where I want to be, but this is where I am now and this is the story of how I got here.

Being in your 20s and considering a career-shift is part and parcel of that awkward quarterlife-crisis, when you feel like you're getting old but in reality you're still very young. Embrace the energy and freedom that comes with youth and the ability to pursue what you are passionate about without it affecting anyone else. Don't be afraid to reinvent yourself if you are dissatisfied with your current job, because at this point you should only be looking out for yourself – you have the time. At the same time, be considerate of your ever so gracious parents and make sure your decisions don't come too costly to them, unless it is a business venture that you promise to pay them back for, with interest!

If you aren't sure want to do, still don't know what you are passionate about, then at the very least be passionate about why you are doing what you are doing or what it is you are working towards. I mentioned wanting to stay financially independent and eventually wanting to be a full time mom, that is a future I'm passionate about. If you are inline to inherit the family business, be passionate about inheriting it responsibly. You may not like your first, second, or third job, but take what you can from it - learn from it, earn from it, and when you're confident enough to do something entrepreneurial, go for it. 

Personal experience has taught me that genuine gratitude is appreciated and reciprocated by forces of nature that I can’t explain. When you show gratitude to whatever higher power that you believe in for everything good in your life instead of constantly complaining about the things that don’t seem to be going your way, the universe will continue to provide you with things to be thankful for. Be it new a career opportunity or a new special someone, space must be made in your life for the “new” to be welcomed. Whatever wasn’t working out for you before, set it aside and move forward, never settle.

One last thought, and I won’t be the only person to tell you this: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I sing, but I have kept strong ties with the business community through my consultancy work. In fact, I've recently accepted a job offer at a corporate firm without sacrificing my ambition as a singer. There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, plenty of time if you marry ambition with dedication. Whatever it is you choose to do, always have a plan B and a plan C. You’re in your 20s, you can multitask (am I right, colleagues in music and publishing?).

Most importantly, don't ever sell yourself short.

**By the way, I’ve recently (finally) started working on that book. It is a non-fiction coming of age story that tells of love and of loss, that narrates a young lady’s adventures in 15 countries across the globe, and that chronicles the excitement brought by constant change. It is a story of ambition. Hopefully it will meet your eyes someday.

**Part of my story was published in The Philippine Star in an article by Ralph Mendoza: http://www.philstar.com/youngstar/ysarticle.aspx?articleId=783030&publicationSubCategoryId=84