Late Summer Sickness (Day 5-10)

Day 5, Sunday. 29^th of May, 2016. Sleeping wasn’t an option during our bus trip back here. With me on two regular couches were my niece, Medley, and my daughter, Reema. The consolation prize for me were the funny things I’ve heard from their conversation throughout the night. I felt my lower back aching when we get off the bus upon reaching Edsa, Cubao. Good thing there were Ate Myrn and her husband Kuya Jhun who fetched us and I loved the free newspaper we’ve got from Jollybee. It reminded me of my crazy-over-newspaper college days. I used to buy a copy everyday and whenever I miss copies whether for a day or a week, I would go to the local store in Naga and buy them all. In our town, there was an old lady riding a pedicab with her husband driving it who were regularly delivering newspaper to the municipal office. Luckily, our shop was on their way there so I became a regular customer and they would also keep copies that I missed. That was the only guilty pleasure that I never regretted spending on.

Nomads as we always are, we went straight to our residence in Caloocan where I only slept the day, I guess. Even when we finally reached Bulacan, I slept early after a glass of ice-cold coke despite knowing that Harry Potter Deathly Hollows Part 1 would be on at 10:00 pm. Yeah, I’m such a fan.

Day 6, Monday. 30^th of May, 2016. I woke up past 12 am and luckily caught the last parts of Harry Potter’s 7^th movie still on TV, and to my surprise, Reema was still awake. Of course I went back to sleep right after the movie ended, so as Reema. I woke up again not feeling well. I took three Bioflu the whole day, it must’ve been the coke. Haha! The Pork Sinigang that I cooked didn’t make me feel better but drinking more water than usual did.

Day 7, Tuesday. 31^st of May, 2016. My nose hurt from pinching all night because of this stupid runny nose but I needed to set my goals while I’m here so I did. Yeah, I’m leaving for Bicol again, sometime soon. Priorities are attending my daughter’s school orientation, buying her school stuff, platforms registration (fiverr, peopleperhour, 199jobs, onlinebookclub, swarmcontent, dotwriter), and fixing my ATM issues which is for my paypal account, a must in getting paid online. Aside from that, I made an investment today. Haha! Well, I registered a promo via Globe’s *143#; an unlimited text to all network and unlimited surfing for 15 days. It cost me Php 454.00. Not bad eh? Though Ate Myrn was like, there’s no unlimited surfing here in the Philippines right now. She said it was just 800 MB or something which might be true. We’ll see. I’m done with my laundry too despite the second day of having to take bioflu. Oh, how I’ve been missing the washing machine!

Day 8, Wednesday. 1^st of June, 2016. Hello June! How about a pair of happy feet to welcome you? We went to Caloocan in the morning and bought Reema’s school stuff in a shopping mall nearby where Papa dropped us off. I was having difficulty in breathing and I didn’t know if it’s because of my cough or it was asthma which made it harder to decide what medicine to take. Throughout the day, there was a lot of article ideas that popped in my mind which are; Kids Should Play Outdoors Than Indoors with Their Gadgets, How to Say No, Another Face of Do-Something-New, and Better Than The Worst (An Election Scenario). Being on the go really gets the ideas going. And oh, before I forget, I was surprised that Reema’s height is now 46 inches. She was just 44” two months ago which made it a little weird.

Day 9, Thursday. 2^nd of June, 2016. I opened my eyes from slumber listening to a whistling sound down my throat. Oh crap, it’s asthma, I can finally say. At least I was able to name the accurate medicine, salbutamol, and took two for today.

I was thinking of pursuing to write Pranksters Promenade for my young adult novel which I’m planning to put in wattpad.  It’s not about the platform but it’s a way to get audience. Pranksters Promenade is one of my long running fiction idea which story revolves around a prankster girl and her friends who decided to get even with her by pretending that one of them is crazy in love with her. The catch is they’re all girls. One accomplice, playing double agent, suggests a makeover for the protagonist to look less boyish than she normally does and of course, to get a boyfriend, or at least someone who can pretend to be. This is one of my college day’s ideas inspired by a reality show in MTV before. Though instead of writing this, I started an article called Preschool Enrollment Musts instead. I think it’s a timely piece.

After the second day in Caloocan, I pushed to go home, I mean in Bulacan since I have to attend Reema’s school orientation tomorrow morning. Even if I’m a certified nomad, there are times when I feel wasted in a certain place and around certain people. I’d say that’s an attitude that I have to work out and get rid of. Going home, the couple (Ate Myrn and Kuya Jhun) tuned in a radio station that was playing mostly 90’s tracks so I was pumped up. I was a bit hesitant to sing along Meredith Brooke’s Bitch because of my husky voice and hurting throat, thanks to my asthma, but I decided not to care when Ode to My Family started playing that I imagined myself on stage with The Cranberries. Haha! Ate asked if I did the acoustic guitar when we played that song in a radio gig years ago because she remembered she’s on vocals. I guess I didn’t, I might’ve brought some percussion, maybe a tambourine or something. Ah, how come I don’t remember clearly?

Day 10, Friday. 3^rd of June, 2016. Okay, now don’t look at that picture asking what the hell is that? Chicken Pochero, you might want to call it that way.  No, no, it wasn’t salbutamol’s side effect. I can assure you it’s edible, though it was missing the chorizo and other important ingredients. Uh, don’t make me talk about ingredients. I’m starting to make no sense.

It was the birthday of my online career mentor, Ate Myrn, but the pochero wasn’t part of the celebration. There was actually no fiesta-like celebration since Ate wasn’t here. In fact, we’ve been getting used to ignoring our birthdays these past few years. Thanks to being broke that we learned the insignificance of parties to the reality of getting old. Haha! The day revolved around attending Reema’s school orientation and how it changed all my plans. Well, yeah. After creating such a detailed writing and posting weekly schedule, Reema’s first day of school changed and so did everything. It included a pop-up of an idea to extend my back-to-Bicol scheme to one more week. I know, I know. Told you I’m a nomad.

6 Reasons Why I Am a Digital Nomad

I am an advocate of comfort that I chose to work wherever and whenever I want. But no matter how I wish to encourage people to do the same for the same comfort that I am experiencing, circumstances differ from person to person that I find it hard to point out the reasons why you should try this job that I picked for myself. So I thought I’ll just enumerate my very reasons for jumping into this so-called peculiar career to give you some ideas. Who knows? We might be sailing the same ship!

1. I AM A SINGLE MOTHER

I don’t think that there is a mother who isn’t a paranoid one. Just the thought of our kids going out of the house without our permission freaks us out, doesn’t it? I am a mother of one little girl who isn’t even sneaky enough to make me worry so much. But worrying seems like a given parenting factor and to me, the worst thing is having to leave your baby’s side every day for work. Also, being single means being able to earn and provide all by yourself while dealing with your kids and all the house chores completely alone. Lucky me, I get help from my parents, siblings, and other relatives from time to time. But in a regular basis, I’m left with the reality that they also have their own lives to deal with. Another thing is that having a little buddy attached to you is equal to having an instant partner in crimes which you don’t want to leave wherever and whenever you’re going somewhere fun. Me as a digital nomad only spells convenience to my daughter and I.

2. PHYSICALLY, I AM A NOMAD

I lived here and there. I was born in Valenzuela, had my student days in Camarines Sur, went to four different schools and rented a place during college, resided in three separate barangays in one municipality, lived in Commonwealth, Quezon City, in Sta. Maria, Bulacan, in Camarin, Caloocan. You ever heard another meaning of NPA as No Permanent Address? That’s where I truly belong. Haha! I didn’t even have a constant vacation place that I used to spend the summer and other holidays in different construction sites within Metro Manila during my childhood, thanks to my Dad’s job. Now the setup is I am residing in Bulacan since my daughter studies here but I need to attend to my Dad’s business in Caloocan from time to time, the same way that I am needed in my Mom’s businesses in Camarines Sur. Not that we’re rich or something but a family of struggling members with simple responsibilities and goals. I’ve had serious researches about teleportation but no luck. Haha! Well, is there any better job that will fit my nomadic lifestyle than this freelance career?

3. MENTALLY, I AM A NOMAD

Gemini is my zodiac sign but before I learned what it says about me, I was already having troubles with my multiple interests and personalities. As much as I don’t want to link it to such astrology, I have no other means of explaining it logically. The thing is I tend to leave things undone because whatever I am into in a moment, gets easily replaced with another interesting stuff or idea. Thinking that it’ll fade as I grow up was nonsense. In fact, there were dramatic shifts in my school days. I was an achiever and the pupil’s government president in grade school; contests and extracurricular activities here and there such as quiz bee, poster making, declamation, folk dance, marching band, press conference, racket sports, etc. The exact opposite of what I’ve become in high school, an ultimate late-comer clown who wrote and directed plays, played drums in a boys-dominated rock band called No ID No Entry or NINE, kicked some skateboard time, played point guard in year-level basketball games, and spent more fun with different group of friends. In college, I joined a tai-chi organization and left it for the basketball varsity, which I also left when important practice days got caught with my band’s gig schedule.

I know that being bad with commitments isn’t something to brag about but this is a narration of my worst self in my worst dynamic times. I had serious troubles during college when I learned that I can shift from one major to another. I bounced from Digital Illustration and Animation to Business Management and eventually rolled to Philosophy. The catch? I did not finish a thing. I always knew that this can’t go on but I always find a way for it to fit in my daily living. Good thing I found a career that suits my ever changing self, something that won’t be negatively affected by my multiple interests but would use it to advantage as part of my versatility, creativity, and resourcefulness.

4. I AM DONE WITH EMPLOYMENT AND SELF-EMPLOYMENT

I am a failed entrepreneur. I always say that to job interviews because it describes me as a doer who always try, fail, learn, and try again. I’ve turned a private family resort into a café where people can go on partying and swimming at the same time, joined my friends in their digital printing business, opened an establishment with the same nature as our family business, operated a 24-hour mini convenience store, joined an online pyramiding platform, created a clothing label online selling clothes that I sew. It’s nice to say that I never stopped but one can guess the worth of time, money, and effort that were all wasted. I was terminated twice in two different BPO companies due to AOLs though I must admit that I enjoyed the working environment and never had a serious problem with them. In fact, I have a pending contract signing in another BPO company right now.

I remember my Dad saying that an employee worries about his job and his family but an employer worries about his employees, clients, suppliers, institutions, and everything that affects his business. That was one thing in my mind when I decided to try employment. In the process, I was introduced to the traffic in Manila, dangerous working hours, distances to travel eating excessive slice of a day, schedules and time that I found to be out of my control, and the long days of not being with my family especially my daughter. I salute all the employees out there for surviving these conditions but as for me, I’m done with it. If one day I have to go back to employment, I will…with my improved self, ready to take on bigger challenges. For now, I’ll say hello to what is comfortably here.

5. I LOVE TO WRITE

Writing is the only thing that I’ve been consistently interested with and I always have this fear of losing my writing skills if I won’t be able to write regularly. When I say writing skills, it’s the typical English writing style proficiency that I earned throughout my student days. Ordinarily, it’s one thing that most people would see as a regular part of their school subject which they only have to finish with a passing score.  To me it was always like every subject and everything I do were connected to it, like I needed it, like it sustained me. I was always looking for a writing opportunity, improvement exercises, seminars, groups, and researching about the topics that I found lacking in lessons at school was an effortless practice. I treat it as a part of my body that leaving it for good will never be an option. I am just thankful right now that there is a way for me to write and earn at the same time with all the benefits of convenience, fun, and my daughter’s companion.

6. PEOPLE WHO MATTERS TO ME ARE EVERYWHERE

As a physical nomad, it’s easy to conclude that my family are everywhere and as time flies, they get scattered even more. Being mentally a nomad is a different thing but produces the same result. Because I involved myself with different businesses, jobs, groups of people, and other affiliations, it gave me instant association with new friends and acquaintances. Although I am not that type of buddy who would get in touch a lot, I take friendship seriously regardless of how long we’ve known each other. I always try to stretch my free time for get-togethers and having friends everywhere isn’t easy. Not that I think they’ll have less fun without me but the other way around, I hate missing chances of having fun with them. Even if they’re already used to my nomadic status and call me elusive, I always end up frustrated after ditching a certain event with them.

Why am I a digital nomad? I think it’s more accurate to ask why not? I in a war against time and space is one entertaining thought but in reality, I cannot beat them. And what do you do, again, with things you can’t beat? Join them, right? So here I am, joining their motion and conquering miles, reinventing their use, but this time, to my advantage.

When You Move, They Can't Getcha. (Day 1-4)

Hi! I’m Yani, a digital nomad in the making. Instead of writing a 101 of my freelancing style, I decided to just share my journey to show you how it’s like. I’m focused on the reality of the processes that it takes, the duration, advantages, identifying troubles, and how to address them without sacrificing fun and our top priorities. So there, enjoy reading!

Day 1, Wednesday. 25^th of May, 2016. I marked this day as my Day 1 simply because my laptop was bought today. After walking around Goa (Camarines Sur) carrying the two square foot box and the free bag that weren’t even tied together, I reached home with my Mom and Reema, my 5 year-old daughter, past 5 pm. I was texting my sibling in Caloocan, Ate Myrna, to tell my Dad that I already have a unit so they didn’t have to buy me one. Yeah, I am that broke that I’ve been asking my parents to get me a laptop, to think that I’m 27 now. Haha!

Setting my log-in password and username was the only thing that I accomplished before I had to go back to our uptown family compound where I was supposed to be having a summer vacation with my eldest sibling Ate Myra and her kids; Marcus, Yuma, and Yara. Mila Rose (aka Bebe), my younger sister was there too. To my horror, the laptop wasn’t turning on after several times of trying to open it. Now I don’t remember how I pushed myself to sleep.

Day 2, Thursday. 26^th of May, 2016. Nightmare alert! The laptop that wasn’t turning on haunted me even in slumber. No laptop, no income, isn’t that creepy? But today it turned on. Guess I’ll get a better sleep tonight.

There was a small piece of the adapter that should’ve been part of the unit but it wasn’t, so I searched my sibling’s old online-working paraphernalia and I found one and took it, without her knowing it. Sssshhhh! From there I started to try connecting the unit to my phone’s hotspot through tethering but failed. I was able to connect to the mobile phone’s hotspot but whenever I open a browser, it says no internet connection or webpage cannot be displayed. I was so worked up with the connectivity problem when my Mom told me to cook early because we’re going someplace to buy something I barely remember because again, I was so worked up. So I shut down the thing and did the house chores including laundry, without washing machine.

While traveling to Naga with my Mom. I asked my sibling about my laptop’s internet issue through a text message. Good thing she was a former tech support handling a Dell account, one of the reasons why I picked a Dell unit, though my concern wasn’t even that serious of a problem and might only take some common sense and resourcefulness to solve. I know, right. I am that much of a slacker to think it off myself. Haha! She said something about customizing the icons that I want to appear in my taskbar but internet connection or wifi was already in my taskbar. But I didn’t bother to ask again and saved my thoughts for later since I didn’t bring the gadget with me. In Naga, we bought three bus tickets to Cubao for a Saturday trip. Yeah, we have to go back to Manila because that’s where we officially reside right now.

Traveling home, I was preoccupied by replacing the blog title of my parenting blog-to-be. From The ReeMania, I thought of changing it to The Reemalistic Approach. I think it has a better catch, doesn’t it? I took note of that particular change in my blog post draft entitled How Do I Plan to Earn Online through Writing. I transferred that draft from pages that I ripped off my notebook to my laptop earlier, along with another blog post draft entitled 6 Reasons Why I Am A Digital Nomad. Now it’ll be easier to edit my writings. Of course that’s one writing problem solved. But to my younger sibling Mila Rose, another writing trouble is having so many drafts, so many ideas that are hard to contain in one and final piece. That was a topic that we discussed at night with Ate Mye while toasting marshmallows outdoor. U’huh, you can say that we are a family of writer-wannabes. We have always been a bunch of fictionists and essayists in our own ways, only unpublished. I call them prospective digital nomads right now and I am positive that they will join us in time.

Day 3, Friday. 27^th of May, 2016. I fixed my internet connection problem today by clicking some sharing option in the Network and Internet under the Control Panel. I created a new yahoomail account for an alternate email and found that even the old yahoo.com.ph gets redirected to yahoo.com.sg, it still contains the news in the Philippines like the way Angelica Panganiban was still sad about her breakup with John Lloyd Cruz as shown in Gandang Gabi Vice. Yeah, that’s what I saw. Anyway, I got a new article idea from Reema’s inquiry about rainbow. Its prospective title is It’s Okay Not to Explain the Rainbow. That’s for my parenting blog-to-be.

Day 4, Saturday. 28^th of May, 2016. The internet connection in our upland vacation place was faster than I expected. I tried it before I leave for Manila today so I would have an idea on how I’ll do my work in case I stay here to run some errands for my mom in the future. Of course, we have to think about such stuff to plan ahead, to be prepared of anything. Ate Mye’s leaving too and there was a lot of things to do. Mama and I attended some Cooperative’s annual meeting where we brought Reema, who only slept there until they served the food which was good. Things like these are always nice to experience. Still, we headed back to the shop quickly after the meeting was adjourned to comply with our travel time which was 6:00 pm. Teary-eyed in the pedicab, Reema realized late that Mama wasn’t coming with us. That’s the difficult part of being a nomad, constantly leaving people who are dear to you because even if you want them to join you, they can’t or they won’t. Honestly, I’m taking this trip to Manila as part of my nomadic status but sadly, a hardship to my daughter. But who knows? She might get used to it.

WHEN YOU MOVE, THEY CAN’T GETCHA. This is the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life so far. Not just moving physically but mentally and emotionally. We should not allow ourselves to get stuck in a place, a mind-set, or an emotion that’s not doing us any good. We have to be constantly moving, learning, deciding, and changing, to beat our old mistaken self and be better. Maybe Jeffery Deaver had a different purpose for this line when he wrote this as Amelia Sach’s reminder from his Dad, but I am owning this as my shining star, guiding and motivating me day by day. Yeah, I am Deaver die-hard fan that even the title of this blog, Halfway Home, was taken from a novel of him, Praying for Sleep. The Halfway House which was an institution there for mentally ill people gave me an idea of a place where people who doesn’t have homes, physically and mentally, can stay and be treated as normal. Eventually, the idea evolved in connection with my job. Halfway Home is now my online space to fill with my journey as a digital nomad, as someone who when asked “Where are you?” will always say “Halfway home.”