Carpooling Loonies
By Jinki Beldia

We're over the lullabies

We just turned five!

The News Today is now five years old, and so we're turning our backs from those lullabies that cradled us well for the past four years. Like any toddler, we were not denied of perfect sleep, allowing us to wake up fresh each morning and continue to reach for our goals little by little everyday. And together. Now that we just turned five, potty-trained, perfectly weaned from our bottles and free from the prisons of diapers, that means we're doing a lot better. But if there was one thing we never were as members of this family, it was whinny. That is why we could stick together for years without wanting to burn each other's hair. We have always shared a remarkable team spirit that worked even when we're outdoors getting educated by the academy of life.

A successful newspaper means there are determined people working behind their desks, burning hours and wringing their brains out to produce something that is worthy of the praise of tasteful readers. The most exciting part of being in print media is getting an overload of criticisms, constructive or destructive, because it's the part of the game when you know what you have created is getting the attention it deserves. The print media in Western Visayas has enormously improved over the past many years especially with the coming of high-end printing machines. The historical Makinaugalingon Press has pioneered excellent printing system in Iloilo and that put The News Today at heights where others until now can't reach. The Ilonggo readers have also become more analytical of what they read in the papers and that was initially the challenge that left us palpitating. It was like caffeine overload. We were struggling…but we have always understood that once the game has started, there was no stopping in the middle.

There really is no unified definition for the word success. Success as we (the men and women of TNT) understand it is how effectively a method is being carried out to achieve a certain goal (this sounds so academic but this is the only proof I have to show my mother I actually went to college). Our most powerful method for the paper's youthful success has always been respect for individuals. Our ultimate goal is producing a paper we all can be proud of, and create it in peace. No screaming editor, no dilly-dallying writers and the lay-out artists do not lord over the graphics. Every individual's opinion matters. It might come as a surprise why I am baring the human side of The News Today. Some people might not realize it but it is human psychology that regulates a work place.

This piece is an answer to a question I trip on anywhere I go. People always ask me why I continue to write even with the infinitesimal chance of becoming rich. These days, people are so focused on becoming moneyed that they forget what they really want out of life. I'm not going to start shooting the breeze about valuing the air that we breathe, taking the time out to experience the sunrise and sunset, etc., etc…Let's skip the drama. I remember what my friend Kathy Villalon once asked me: “How much money do people really need?” Everybody seems to be unhappy with what they do and it's because that's not what or who they are. It's a moment in history when everybody around us is a nurse, has just become a nurse, attempted to become a nurse and failed, or on her or his way to becoming one. I taught nursing students in a university and more than half of them confessed they were there because this or that member of the family compelled them to take up a course that's even unimaginable for some of them. I realized I was looking at a bunch of miserable 20-somethings. Being the evil cohort that I was and will always be, I encouraged them to pursue what they really wanted out of life. After that semester, the braver ones left nursing for something they really wanted. One wanted to become a chef and he stirred his way to that direction.

Anyway, my answer to that question is another question: Why do you feed your hunger? Writing is a need. It's the best way to free the mind and soul. It's a passion a person is born with. However, I grew up in an environment where, regretfully, writing was not taken seriously. Every kid had to be good at something and it had to be dancing, singing or something to do with speeches. I was the unfortunate one who just wanted to stay out of everybody's way so I stayed in one corner, watched mothers drag their kids to the stage. I sat (not by the River Piedra but, yes, there were times when I wept a little) with a pen and an old notebook and started writing down the series of unfortunate events around me. I haven't stopped until today. I write down happy times too, and TNT's birthday is one of them.

TNT is now five-years old. That means a lot of things. Every issue we come out with is an answer to queries about people like us with holes in our pants, but whose passion for what we do exceeds anything money can buy.

(E-mail the author at jinki_young@yahoo.com)