{"id":616,"date":"2013-12-08T11:25:45","date_gmt":"2013-12-08T03:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamincheah.wordpress.com\/?p=616"},"modified":"2013-12-08T11:25:45","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T03:25:45","slug":"a-new-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kitsuncheah.com\/?p=616","title":{"rendered":"A New Chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"

2013 has been an…interesting year. Most people would call it a leap year. No education, no full-time job, just time to do what I’ve been putting off or meaning to do. This year, I’ve beaten NaNoWriMo twice: first in January, again in November. I’ve published \u00a0a couple of novellas (you can find them<\/a> here). Wrote a half-dozen short stories — some have been submitted to anthologies and websites, the rest will be published eventually. Writing<\/em> a novel – for the second time. \u00a0Professionally, I’ve written more words this year than any other year before. I thought I could transition to being a full-time writer this year. I guess I aimed too high, but now I think, I hope, I\u00a0pray<\/em>, that I’m building the foundations for a fiction career.<\/p>\n

But a man can’t live on words alone. Especially unpublished words. That leap year wasn’t entirely by choice. I wrote because my job applications kept disappearing, either into spam folders or the blue nowhere of the Internet. Until now.<\/p>\n

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be working as a journalist at The Independent Singapore<\/a>. It’s everything I’ve been doing on this blog and others for the past seven years, only more regularly. It’s hard news and politics and commentary. Which\u00a0leaves this blog in a quandary. I built this blog on political commentary, but I can’t\u00a0see myself writing about politics\u00a0here<\/em> when I’ll be doing it, more often and with actual compensation, on\u00a0The Independent<\/em>. And there is the little matter of a non-compete clause in the contract.<\/p>\n

Where does this leave this blog?<\/p>\n

I don’t know, to be honest. This used to be a repository of my thoughts on politics, and later writing. Blogging about politics was a part of my identity, but with it subsumed into my career there’s no space for it now. It’s down to starting anew or letting go. And it’s not really two choices; it’s just one: let go of the past and begin again. With this blog or without.<\/p>\n

Time to walk this new road and figure out how things go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m taking a new job as a journalist at The Independent Singapore. But that means figuring out what to do with this blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[57,235],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-announcement","tag-philosophy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t