What Is Progress, But Stubbornness Persevering?

"Nothing worth doing is ever easy."

I got that quote from the wisdom of the internet, which admittedly isn’t the best source for such content. But for this instance, I’ll wholeheartedly echo it because it speaks truth to what I am personally experiencing.

For a process that is as organic as listening to people’s stories and then producing documentaries that do justice to them, there are many agonising periods where the process would stall. Sometimes, the ideas at hand are not good enough, other times you just draw creative blanks.

In most instances, these experiences are blips in an otherwise productive pace. Professionals greet these moments like cold neighbours passing by - polite hellos but with a firm hope for little interaction. But every now and then, one stays for awhile - too long in fact.

I had a severe case of this in late 2017. I was in the midst of my third year of university and I was struggling a lot with my second documentary, Trespass: Stories from Singapore’s Thieves Market. My approach to this documentary was to be a one-man band - to prove to myself that I can do this as a career. This was unfortunately ill-timed with the expected but still surprising increase in academic difficulty that comes with third-year modules. 

Socially, most of my peers had already been on internships, exchange programmes or being entrepreneurs - par for the course especially at the NUS Business school. Then there was me, having no internship experience, a good but not great GPA score, and no comfort of an exit strategy should this documentary path not turn out well, a possibility that seemed increasingly likely week after week. All of this was taking a toll on my self-esteem. 

Yet, stubbornly or otherwise, I stuck to it. I cried and I moaned, but I never truly entertained the possibility of ditching my efforts halfway. “See it to the end at the very least,” I told myself. Internally, I justified that the net output from making even a bad documentary would trump most extra-curricular bullet points that my competition would have should I wind up in an interview chair with my resume in hand.

The main endeavour of 2017 was to find out once and for all if I should go all-in on my documentary life. Producing Trespass was the key to justifying that conviction. And that is why no matter how difficult the process, I had to see it through. The destination was worth it, though the answer was always in the journey.

In 2018, I filed for early graduation, having gained a new found conviction through the making of Trespass. In August that year, I was offered an opportunity to go to Norway to produce a documentary. I enthusiastically said “Yes!” with the confidence that I developed through 2017.

Whenever I find myself in a ditch, I remind myself of why I put myself in this position and why it is worth pushing through. And just like the case of 2017, the future prospects have always been of compelling hope.