Not All Smokes.

I be honest with you all, not all designers in Malaysia smokes. Not all. Here's my personal testimony as a graphic designer.

Before stepping into this field, I did my research before signing up for this. The long hours, the sleepless nights, your computer/Mac being your companion for most of the time. Low pay, working like a slave, kissing client's asses and being under-appreciated.

I know being a designer won't land me a fucking 5 figure salary even in 10 years time, and driving a fucking sport car but still working your ass off to pay off them bills, or even staying in a big ass house to return to after work.

Even my dad wanted me to be an accountant, he knows being a designer in Malaysia isn't gonna be as great as what countries can do. I actually didn't care, if you have passion for something, everything else that is against it is pretty much irrelevant.

2 years and still going, I've been through long nights, some till not sleeping for 2 days straight. Rage on why my computer takes too fucking long to render out visuals, or how confusing a client's brief is. Creative block is the worse, when you just felt like giving up.

I've read an article a few years ago, designers tend to face as much stress as doctors, pilots, soldiers and so on. But in a typical Malaysian mindset, designers are most likely to smoke for the rest of their lives after landing a job.

Caffeine addicted, desk all messed up with paperwork and sketches, ashtray full of cigarette butts, that's your typical workstation for an average designer, or that's what you think of la.

But the worst statement to generalize the designers community is to say

ALL ART AND DESIGN PEOPLE SMOKE.

I mean, who the fuck comes up with that sort of statement, I call it bullshit. Just utter bullshit. Saying 6 out of 10 friends you know of in the designing field that smokes doesn't mean 10 out of 10 smokes. I know designers who don't smoke, and refuses to smoke. And I salute the for their choices and their stand to living a healthier lifestyle than the smokers do. 

I am not ashamed to say that I do smoke, going into the final semester of my course I look to smoking as one of the few ways to release my kind of stress. I used to think that was an excuse when in secondary school, only until I've gone through and I realized, there is nothing wrong to release stress by smoking. That is if you had tried other ways, smoking would be your last resort. Right now, I don't heavily rely on them. Just a social smoker.

I've been on sleeping pills, pills from doctors for me to relax and even whenever I'm having a nervous breakdown. My personal opinion, its better to smoke than to depend on these drugs forever. You can control your daily intake of tobacco, that is if you really want to and have the strong determination to make a change for yourself.

Its 2012 already, generalizing by jobs and careers is just fucking pathetic. Not all policemen is corrupted, not all politicians is just talk cock, not all teachers are lazy, not all doctors are grumpy looking buggers. Same goes for designers, not all of us smoke.

Fuck whoever that made that statement.