2018 was my last post and for three years I have not updated this blog. What happened during the three years of hiatus? Not much (with a sarcastic laugh)...
Let me start with 2018...
It was this year that I had enough. A lot on my hands but "not enough hands". My plate was so full, that it took a toll on my mental health. I was earning well, I can not complain on the compensation benefits that I was receiving. The company's pay was so good. It was the dream of everyone in my field.
The work load was too much that little by little my mental health was deteriorating. I was not happy. I was smiling and laughing but deep inside, my heart was crying. I always wanted to be with my family, I always wanted to got out, eat out, spend here and there. I get irritated easily and I was resorting to "spending therapy" coz I thought that it would help me de-stress.
And 2019 came...
I made the biggest decision of my life, and that is deciding to leave an office set up job and explore the opportunities of working from home. I've finally come into terms that the reason for my unhappiness was the current job I had back then.
I've been wanting to do this but as I said, the pay was so good that I'd always had second thoughts on leaving. I was always on a look out for other ways to earn income apart from slaving myself from 8-5, sometimes even beyond 5 pm when it is the "dreaded" audit season. It was this year when I finally had the courage to leave that stressful corporate life of 20 years and the comfort of receiving a monthly regular income.
I've studied Quickbooks Online and got a local online client for a simple bookkeeping task. It was easy, not challenging though, but this is what I wanted. I wanted to build my clients one by one. Even if it's just simple bookkeeping.
And then suddenly in 2020, all hell broke loose because of the pandemic. It was like a domino effect. Lots of business closed down, even those shops which I never thought would because I knew how stable they already were, did close down. And my lone client's business stopped operations because of the lock-down and I got no more client.
I just thank God, that even if we don't have millions of savings, we at least had enough savings that could sustain us during those lockdown months. And probably because I had always instilled in our family the style of simple living. Even if we were earning much in previous years, we remained simple and not picky with what we eat that's why we were able to survive the quarantine months.
As much as I would want to hate 2020, I can't. 2020 was the year of equalizer and realizations. It's as if, we were on a world war and all human beings on earth had to reboot their lives and start again. Rich, poor, educated or not, we had to go through what everyone on earth had to go through. There were no exceptions. Almost everyone was on equal footing.
The only people who were able to bounce back swiftly from this chaos were the ones who were able to financially prepare long before this could happen. But then again, who would have thought that I, my generation, our generation and the generation after me would experience such tragedy? Nobody could guess, right? Not in this lifetime.
So this 2021 here are my take on what happened for the past 3 years:
1. Be prepared. We never know if something will come and hit us hard. Emotionally, physically, psychologically and I guess this pandemic, financially. I think a lot of people realized the importance of emergency funds during this pandemic.
2. Be not afraid to try something new. Go out of your comfort zone. If we don't try we will never know what we are capable of doing. The pandemic has made a lot of people unemployed, but it also brought out a lot of talents and skills from these people which they never knew they had. They never thought that they knew how to bake, cook nor take care of plants. They made these into businesses and realized that now, they can earn more than what they earn when they were just employees. If the pandemic did not happen, some people will not be able to realize that.
3. Acknowledge that you are unhappy. Once you do, find the reason for that unhappiness and assess what actions to take to bring back your happiness. For me it was leaving my comfort zone of an 8-5 job, getting paid regularly every 15th and 30th. It was a very stable job, but it was making me a monster. So I had to leave and bring back the old me and be happy again.
4. Self-loved. For you to be able to give 100% of affection, attention, effort on people or jobs or whatever it is you want to pursue, learn to love yourself first. Self-loved means for me, letting go of something that does not serve its purpose anymore. Learning to say no and mean it. Prioritizing your well-being first before others (this is not selfishness, this is self-loved). If you love yourself, happiness comes easily without struggle and doubts. You are more open to accept the love that others want to give you and you can easily return that love.
And lastly...
5. Pray. You can never go wrong with prayers. How do I pray? I never asked for material stuffs. I always pray for guidance, acceptance, discernment and protection. Guidance to help me decide, acceptance is for me to learn to accept things I can not change. Discernment to help me know if this is what God wants for me or is this what I want. And protection to guard me from all evils specially temptation. The pandemic has toyed our minds with a lot of negative things. But if we pray, instead of focusing on the bad things that this crisis has brought about so far, we will realize the reason behind everything that has happened and finally see the positive side that it can offer.
And that's what happened to me for the last 3 years. Not much, huh? I am ready for 2021 because I've always believed that God is with me, guiding me along the way and showing me what He really wants me to do and pursue.
With that, I welcome myself back to blogging again...
