What I Do
I have had a love affair with GMA for the last nine years. I call it a love affair because it’s the longest relationship I’ve had outside of my family. I call it a love affair because, like a love affair, it has brought me both wonderful memories and heartache. And yet, I would roll up my sleeves defending it to death at the slightest provocation (”Alam mo, mas magaling ang artista ng ABS” “Kapow!”)
People wonder how I can stay for this long especially since I’ve never worked for any other company since I left college. My HR friend even said that what I’m doing is an unhealthy career move. You should only stay at one job for a maximum of five years then move on.
Well, first of all, I love TV. I absolutely love it. Snotty literary giants have dismissed television for its passivity (”TV again?! Go read a book!”). But I’ve learned so much about how it runs that it makes me love the medium even more.
I love that a TV show, unlike a feature film, is something you can come home to at the end of the day, something you look forward to on a Wednesday night, something to prepare yogurt and Propel for as you plop yourself down in front of the TV set (or computer monitor, for the Limewire users). I love the anticipation of seeing Michael Scofield, Seeley Booth and Eric Delko like surrogates for a real date. That sounds kind of sad, sure, but well… you take what you can.
Being in the network also made me appreciate so much more how the system operates, that balance we have to strike in keeping our shows entertaining, keeping our news credible, hitting our advertising targets, making sure we achieve our net incomes — believe me, it’s hard, as one usually contradicts the other.
GMA is blessed with some of the most brilliant minds I have ever known in my lifetime— as they are equally blessed by being in GMA. And me being a number-cruncher, doing research? It makes it all more fulfilling. You get to dip your hand into marketing decisions, help make programming suggestions, stuff like that. Like I’ve said before, I’m a Squint in the lab and I help catch killers…. I mean advertisers.
So. I love what I’m doing. I love the company. And I know what I’m doing. That’s why I’m still here.
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Here’s the irony. I write this down after a completely sucky day at work. Not because I got scolded or I had a heated argument with someone. The day sucked because I had to tell the truth. It was a truth that could affect my relationships with people I’ve been working with for so long, people I practically grew up with.
“For the greater good”. Sure. But it still sucks sunction cups.
