A writer's free pass

Saying goodbye to CNN Philippines Life

Almost four years ago, this corner was the center of my universe. Way before I thought about things like building permits, three-phase transformers, and customer feedback. I assembled it piece by piece, aimlessly. No blueprint, just vibes. After the cheap desk from Facebook Marketplace came the Shopee posters and postcards from friends. There were a lot of postcards in 2020. There were a lot of things happening in 2020. During this time, Jonty Cruz asked: Do you want to write? Maybe it was the mania, having nowhere to go, the same walls day in and day out… I said, I guess. I’d never really written anything before. Not really. But with the guidance of friends like Gian Lao, I wrote my first profile. Even more shocking was finding out that people had read it and liked it. It felt like unlocking a new area in a video game. A path to progress.

I wanted it all. I took on all assignments. I read ferociously. I studied Alex Jung’s profiles and close read the sentences of Brian Phillips in Impossible Owls (by the way, Sea of Crises changed my life). I took workshops alongside writing profiles (thank you Jessica Zafra, Jonty, and Out of Print), all because I wanted to get better. To catch up with my peers who’d been in publishing for years. During this time Gian told me: Write with blood. Have something to lose. Even when you’re not writing about yourself. Most especially when it’s not about you. I started feature writing. Interviewing experts and researching topics. It gave me a glimpse of the world I’d otherwise never have discovered. This kept me up at night. Fueled my mornings. The sentences kept coming. I’d dream of Google Docs, an essay, a profile I’d been writing. I’d jump out of bed just to write it down before I’d lose them to sleep. “That sounds like flow,” said Bj one evening. He was right. I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be read. Nothing made me feel more alive.

I knew I was late to the party. Long gone were the golden days of publishing and print. Layoffs and budget cuts were the norm in the industry. No matter how much I loved writing, it wasn’t going to be lucrative. Not unless I wrote commercial scripts (aka sold stuff). Even when the opportunity came up for me to pursue a full-time job at a magazine, the job description sounded more like a sales than that of a writer and the pay of a fresh grad. I said no. Did that mean writing was only meant to be a hobby?

Since I said no to that job, I said yes to a bunch of other things. Things that took me away from the corner of my room, Google Docs, and my notebooks. My unread book pile has remained virtually unchanged since 2022. I feel farther and farther from the version of myself that could read an essay and be changed by it. But I never really had the time to stop and think about it. I’m far too tired, too busy to even entertain the thought. But on January 29, 2024, they announced they’d pull the plug on CNN Philippines, save for the sports channel, on January 31. I spent the next day archiving my work from on Life.

Marga wrote on her Substack about how writers may have the talent of making ordinary things feel overly important. But the day CNN went dark, “we get a free pass.” I can still remember the writing process for each of the articles so vividly. Some articles came easily. Some felt like pulling teeth. Years worth of my life suddenly gone. Offline. Now only accessible through Wayback Machine if you know the url.

My archive is just a blip compared to the staff who’ve been on since the beginning. Journalists, production staff, and people who've devoted their lives to the public record are suddenly left with no proof of their labor. Jobs that they held for so long suddenly gone. While there are efforts to archive the site, who’s going to read any of these? Nothing but megabytes on a kind stranger’s hard drive. Perhaps this is grief. A loss I didn’t realize I’d mourn. I’m forever changed by the few years I spent writing for CNN Philippines Life, and I have nothing to show for it.

That’s why I know writing isn’t just a stray hobby. I’ve never struggled this hard for a hobby, not even when I tried competitive sports. I’ve been many things in this life. Taken on all sorts of silly titles to give myself some kind of meaning. But nothing has given me greater pleasure, joy, and pride than calling myself a writer. It is my genuine and sincerest hope that there the staff of CNN Philippines find gainful employment. That there’ll still be places for writing and writers. I want to believe in it so badly.