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| What was once shelter turned to flames |
OVER
TEN YEARS ago I was burned -- as in Burn
Notice burned -- out of the TnT Media in which I had been a
professional for 20 years.
I
should take it personally, but I was not the first person it had been done to,
and I was not to be the last.
With
my expertise, knowledge, vision and guaranteed following I should be able to
get a job in a nation rife with newspapers and media houses. But bigotry,
insecurity, greed, fear and other dread human failings drive some in power to
desperation and tyranny.
They
deemed I should never write publicly again; just as they had done, and continue
to do, to many another dedicated and talented adept. So very often they try to
"out your light" ... in all the various ways that phrase can be put
into action.
I'm
talking abuse. I'm talking oppression. I'm talking terrorism.
Yet,
all that they try to cut your throat for could never be appropriated and
actually possessed by the likes of them. They could never take from you the
things that ultimately save you in the long-run: strength, hope, talent,
courage, love-love-love.
I
love hard work. I don't mean the swinging-sledgehammer-to-mash-up-big-stone
kind; but the very hard work any of us might have to do in the field we have
deeply, wholeheartedly chosen to pursue. I've always wanted to write.
I've
had to work three times harder than peers to get half, or less, the earnings.
Loving the work I was doing, loving work for itself, was so fulfilling it
helped me let go of much ill-feeling and kept me working well.
Still,
I was pushed out of my occupation by entities that create nothing; just ride
the colourful coattails of those who can create. Nothing on
Earth gave then the right to destroy a successful, constructive and highly
popular writing career built on ardour, determination, and long hours dog-work.
Now
... on permanent edit
The
editor (so-called) who announced the end of my column after five years said,
"It's lived its shelf-life."
I
asked, "So all the things I write about have been fixed in society, thus,
do not need to be addressed?"
He
had smirked then, and shrugged, entirely enjoying himself. So petty.
Hear
what, people like that (and there are many in the local Media) are trying to
hurt you in a very big way. It's just small thing, though, precisely because
such people are exactly that: small things.
And
how dumb are they, anyway? This is no longer the age when a media cabal can
decide who gets to live the writer's career forged by one's own skill, own
will.
Oh,
they damage you ... so deeply that for a long time it feels like you will never
create again. But the likes of them can never know the "indomitable
summer" of the creative wellspring residing in truly talented people.
What's
more, they do not realise that after a while their terror attacks, spirit
murdering attempts, productivity slaying actions add up to "prod, spur,
goad" and drives you to succeed.
Here's
what I tell myself every day when I face the fight-down in the land I love and
battle to improve: Pick your Self up, brush it off and get on with the business
and purpose of building something that will be exactly like your Self: BIG.
So
this blog is part of that war effort: an archive for all my former columns and
some of my other Media writings.
You,
dearhearts, decide whether my work (and myself by extension) was indeed as they
deemed: "past its shelf life.
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