Warning: This post will show or reflect the face of the current reader. Do not be shocked! (and hey, that’s not me)

It’s a  beautiful Sunday today. Even if I already had 3 hours of sleep, it didn’t affect my work that much. My other online tasks such as adding blogs on my new drop list that I will be regularly visiting soon kept me preoccupied with no time to feel sleepy, while waiting for calls. We have plenty of time without calls, as it is Sunday and usually from Saturday to Monday, calls are rare. Then, the battle begins on a Tuesday and then Wednesday and then so on. Glad I’m not here by Thursday, my day off.

Well, for the last days of my day off, I didn’t do much. I rested a lot, took a lot of sleep and contemplated on my life and on my goals. It seems like my goals are keeping me too busy that I am losing sight of the present moments. I have denied so many wonderful moments in our lives, just because I wanted to save up so badly. Even leading to some misunderstandings with the hubby due to some opinion differences. But, as full of wisdom as he is, and as eager to learn as I am, we both communicated.

I came up, with an idea, that it looks like I need to stop my goal of stopping work and being a work at home mom in a matter of year or two. Why? This, stresses me out a lot. It keeps my health at stake. I work and work so hard, overly hard, and save as much as I could, denying some simple joys, just because I wanted to save up for a business ASAP. As in, now na.

My husband doesn’t like to see me restless, stressed out with all my goals. He appreciates all I am doing for our family, but he wants to see me at peace and happy with the life that we have, while slowly working for the life that we want to have (mostly, I want to have). He’s pretty much happy with what we have. According to him, as long as we are together, and we are all healthy, he is fine.

I even, thought he is pretty just lazy to think about our future. I wanted him to be stressed out too. I wanted him to take the burden. But, i realized how selfish this thinking is. I just realized and learned through reading some insight books, that we ought to live a stress free life. No money can compensate peace of mind, tranquility, happiness and contentment.

We are entitled to a stress free life. It is up to us. The choice is up to us.

So, i went on to track the things causing me stress. Slowly, I am eliminating those that doesn’t do me good. I really need to focus more on my health now. My health is deteriorating, specially in the kind of work that I have. If I want to live longer and do more things for my family, I have to take care of myself.

I am slowly, letting go of my dreams one by one. It’s not like what you think. I am not giving up on them, and I will always be a dreamer forever. But, I need to set my expectations of myself a little bit lower, so as to prevent being stressed out. It has been reported that millions of people get sick and get hospitalized because of their self-inflicted condition: stress.

I am detaching my self from its end results. But, I will still be working on them slowly and diligently. It doesn’t matter where it leads me. What matters, is I’m doing what I can without sacrificing myself, my happiness and that of my family.I will be putting my trust in God, and I just have to believe that he has some great things in store for me and my family. God prepares the best things for those who love him.

I think, I also need to free up some of my not so important personal goals to give way to what really God wants to do with my life. All my accomplishments will be His from now. I will be doing my  best in everything and in whatever He hands me over to do, and offer it with all my heart to Him.

People want to be productive as much as they can nowadays. It seems like people keep running after things. More things, the better. More accomplishments, the better. We see someone who have much more than what we have and it keeps us thinking to work harder and harder. Even during these times of economic depression, people are buying more and more. Thus, to meet all these accumulation of things, most people have to work harder.

Living in a city, where most of the people you see are “rich looking”, you can’t help it but to keep up with them. Though, this doesn’t seem to be right, it is harder to resist being part of the crowd. Even if you are earning just right, other people makes you think, this is not enough. We all have been blinded.

I never expected to find my place in a city. I call it my haven and hide out. When I’m too stressed out, I go here in this place. When I have fights with my husband, and I end up walking out, this is the place where I go. It is a park, a big park, where there are lots of people at night. These are people looking to be relieved of the daily stresses of life. You can see families having picnic, some are exercising, walking, running, kids running around but despite having people around, the place is very peaceful and quiet. It is half lighten up and half dark. It is well, mostly dark. The air is very refreshing. This park is surrounded by buildings with lights on them, so it is not that dark, really. There are restaurants here, where a lot of korean eats.

I go here in this place to clear my mind when it is so full and I can’t make good decisions. I come here in this place, to know myself deeper, and to be in solitude. I come here to be revived from the stresses and noises of our neighbors. I come here to listen to God and to be with him.

Because of the profound positive effect of this place to me, I made a resolve to come here regularly. Twice a week by my own, and once a week with my family. I would love to bring baby bless there, cause she loves to walk around and there’s no danger, since its grass and far from the jeepneys and cars. It would be neat to bring a blanket to lay on and outdoor pillows too.

There are very few places in cities where you could relax, but for sure there will be places like this one. We just need to find them. Sometimes, we need to find ourselves too. We need to be in silence so we can be in connection to our true selves. The one which is not dictated by other people.

I encourage you to do the same. I remember way back in my early years, my stress free life. I have always been in contact with nature. Now, I never mind about it, as a result, I tend to be stress out a lot.

Schedule a time for yourself when you can be all quiet, all by yourself. Be in perfect solitude. Free yourself from distractions. Turn off your cellphone, turn the tv off, even the radio and disconnect from the internet. I’m sure this works for everyone else. This is a very important part of our lives.

If you are a busy person (which almost everyone is, nowadays), you have a greater tendy to be stressed out, burned out and depressed. Too much pressures in work, in our family life, in our financial aspect, turmoils in our relationships can make us irritable, irrational, easily upset, depressed and negative. Even statistics shows that a lot of people are hospitalized yearly because of mentally made up illnesses, often brought about by stress.

In my job as a technical support (call center agent) I get a lot of this stress. Being on call for 8 hours, exposes me to a lot of problems that I need to resolve, angry customers yelling and shouting at me, strict instructions from heads such as supervisor and manager. To add to that, is my irregular sleep pattern, as our schedule keeps rotating. Everyday, I wake up at 2 am and have to get to work before 3 am. Imagine, how many hours I sleep every night. Of course I take a nap after work, in the afternoon. Being in front of the computer, for 9 hours can surely make your head rebel, specially if you have an eyesight problem.

Now, my work is not the only source of my stress, but also my family obligations. You could expect that I would be all relaxed when I go home, but no. Most of the time, I have to move and do something. Not really because I have to, cause surely there are people in the house, who can fill my place. But, I don’t understand why sometimes I really feel the need to do some things by myself. I feel like, the world will crumble if I don’t move. People have fallen into this kind of trap: having the need to do things all by themselves and if only we can trust others to do the work for us (if help is available) our lives will be less stressful than it ought to be.

Another factor that causes me stress is our finances. Not that we are really scraping to the bottom. We have been hard working enough to be able to meet our needs. But what cause my stress, is the need to save for our future plans. Because of the current times, I always feel scared if there would be emergencies and unexpected situations like losing my job and not being able to provide for my family anymore. So, I try to save as much as I can so we can start the business I have been wanting to have for quiet a time.

At some point, I would say I am a bit successful, cause even if our money is just enough for us, I am still able to save a bit or a portion of it. But, I have sacrificed a lot of things. Important things to say the least. Present happiness, time for family, contentment, stress free living.

I only was awakened by all of these shortcomings when I had a fight with the hubby. He helped me understand that it is not okay to dream, but what is wrong is when we do it the wrong way. I set my own deadline for it, and that has caused me stress. He said that I have neglected taking care of my health and myself just because of this. He doesn’t want to see me stress out. In fact, he even offered to take care of the financial management to relieve me of the burden. He also encouraged me to look within and analyze my faith in God, cause it seems to him I need to improve in that area. He said he observed I have been relying too much on my own self and my own abilities that I tend to forget God.

This hurt, but it is nevertheless true. I had to reasses my prioties and think about how I am handling my life and all the stressors and challenges that comes a long with it. Honestly, I have been feeling this tugging pain in my chest that occasionally visits specially when I feel stressed out.

I know deep within that it is possible to handle the stresses in my life, in my work, in my family and in our finances. It’s just a matter of handling it properly and following effective systems.

First and foremost, I should never forget that to achieve my goal of taking care of my family, I also need to take care of myself. I have to implement a lot of things for now.

=== >> I need to take rest a lot more, and get the right amount of sleep each night

===>> I need to eat the right foods to be healthy

===>> I need to have a regular time to be alone and be at peace

===>> Pray more

===>> do less but do things that have high impact in our lives

I pray that people who are in the same situations find the same consolation that I have found in prayer and being alone. At times, we have to disconnect from the world and be on our own so we can know ourselves more, understand our present situations, get our head clear, be refreshed and be ready for the next battle.

when I have a brilliant idea, specially if it has something to do with improving the status of life. Any new opportunity for gaining more or regular side income, anything that will help my family and my own life become better. I am really good with visualization. In fact, most of the things I have achieved in my life, were part of my visualizations even if I didn’t know I was actually doing it. In short, I did not intend to visualize to get those results, but my mind were racing on those ideas. I just find it funny, that when I am excited about anything, I tend to focus myself so much on it, until it becomes realized. An idea can get me into a dreamy mode, and I start to fill out every detail of my dream, and I find myself waking up in consciousness laughing as I am already far from my current reality.

last night, even If I went into bed early, It took me long to sleep cause I had a brilliant idea again. I want to start a business, by next year. We are saving for it by now, slowly but surely. It is a challenge to save, to tell you. We are living a very modest and simple life, but its still hard. Through, the actions plans I have put up in my mind, which has yet to be solidified through writing, I am hopeful this will pull off early next year. This business, could give us a possible passive monthly income of about 10,000-15,000 pesos so I really want to get this done.

Yahooo! Our greatest competitor in our store, is another store, just on the side of our house. Before we came, they were the most in demand store. As in, almost the entire neighborhood buy majority of their small household needs there. But when we came, it became 50/50. A lot of people transferred buying to us, specially when we bought a refrigerator and started selling softdrinks. Our bestseller is Coke Sakto. Now, I think we sell about 20 bottles per day, not so sure. Yesterday, I just learned they already closed the store and they are moving to another house in another place. It made me happy in a sense that we will have more demands now. So, we are planning to really make it huge this time. We will be making our store complete as possible, with all the necessary goods. Even yesterday, there was already an increase in our sale, and we are running out of stocks. There are still a lot items we don’t have in the store, but we will be slowly building them up in such a way that we have them complete, so we will be their “suki” and our revenue will keep increasing.

I never really thought it is this hard to be a mother and a wife. This I would say, is the hardest and most challenging role I have ever taken. They say, it is best to become one when you are ready. But, what I think is, we only get ready when we are actually in the situation. We learn from experience. This is practice on the go.

It makes me appreciate my own mom and all mothers out there. Sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself and what you want. Even if you are tired, you have to keep going. You have to be strong for your family. Specially for your kids who are observing how you handle your family.

I honestly am not used to big responsibilities like this, because my mom was so protective plus she never opened my eyes to responsibilities like this. She’s the mom who would do everything by herself. She never taught me so much about responsibilities. So, my effort is doubly hard for me.

But I am learning, and I am so much ready to learn to be a better one. I want to give my best and everything that I can to the welfare of my family. I may have shortcomings, mistakes, faults etc. but, all of these, is just because I am human. I will stay strong no matter what, not losing hope in every situation no matter how difficult. Cause, I know, God has a better plan for us. Far far better than my own plans for myself and my family.

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My love communication channel is usually through gifts, surprises and letters. These are ways for me to show my love to someone and for me to think that I am appreciated and valued by someone. Of course, there are also other ways such as quality time and appreciation, among others.

Mothers day passed by. I went to work as usual, and arrived home tired, but when I received and read this letter which came from my husband (knowing that he works from 6 am to 10 pm almost daily, except Sundays, and during that day he is half day at church as well while i am at work), my tiredness just disappeared and my heart was filled by gladness. It has been few months ago since his last letter to me, because of our busy lives. I was so happy cause these are words not taken from research or any book of poems, but he personally wrote this. So filled with love and appreciation, thats just what every woman would ever need from a husband.

Truly, small but greatly valued gifts like these, make me go on and make me strong despite all the difficulties of a family woman. Honestly, I am still learning and I’m really trying to be a good mother and wife. I really didn’t know I was this practical, wise and strong until I finally came to handle all of these responsibilities. I don’t know where i am getting all the strengths.

Though, not easy, having a family is truly one of the best fulfillment a woman can ever have. Something that you cannot find in a career no matter how successful it is. I love my life and I hope to have more years with my loving husband, together with our cute and lovable child. I will be carrying these notes of love wheever I go. It will always be in my heart.

The Letter

Hon, Happy Mothers day. Ginawa ko ito para masabi ko sayo at malaman mo ang pagka ina mo. Hon, maraming salamat na wala kang katulad na ina, your the best mom. Ikaw, ang ina na ginawa ang lahat para sa anak at sa buong pamilya. Para maging maganda, masaya, kumportable ang buhay. Iniisip ang lahat para hindi mahirapan sa buhay. Kaya your the best.

Alam mo hon, dahil sayo ang buhay natin naging maluwag, naging masaya at hindi magulo. Marunong ka talagang magdala ng pamilya kaya siguro nagkapamilya ka nang maaga dahil alam mo na ang buhay may pamilya. Kaya salamat sa mga pag alaga mo sa akin, sa pag-unawa, kahit minsan parang hindi mo na maintindihan pinilit mong intindihin. Maraming salamat hon na hindi mo ako sinuko sa lahat ng problema at pagsubok sa buhay natin. Salamat sa pagmamahal mo sa pamilya mo. Sakin at kay baby at sa lahat ng tao sa buhay ko. Salamat sa lahat ng hirap mo. Sana masaya ka sa amin , sa pamilya mo. Sorry kung may pagkakataon nalulungkot ka dahil sakin. Tandaan mo, na hindi ko yun sinasadya dahil ang gusto ko ay palagi kang masaya kaya gagawin ko ang lahat para lagi kang masaya. I love you. Happy Mother’s day.

It cannot be avoided that there will be instances when your own car is not available so you would need to rent a car for your personal use.
Whether you are renting a car because you are in a different city and you didn’t bring your car with you or your own car is in the shop for repair or cleaning,
you will most likely be faced with one personal issue. That is, whether or not you would buy a car rental insurance or damage waiver which is often offered by the rental car company itself.
Now, before you get pursuaded think about some considerations first. Here are some tips on what you need to do.

Call your insurance agent or company. You need to inquire first if your existing coverage in your own car insurance provides protection for you while you are using a rental car.
This has to be clear, and you need to get the exact details. Most of the time, your policy will consider a rental like our own primary vehicle while you are using it.
Once you get it clear whether or not rental cars are covered in your policy, then you can decided whether or not you need to purchase an additional insurance for the car you will rent.

Call your credit card company. You need to verify with them if they do provide coverage for the rented car without having to pay additional charge if you make use of their card to pay for the cost of the car rental.
It would not be a good idea for you to pay an additional charge for something that is already covered just because you didn’t check or take the time to inquire.

Bring a copy of your personal auto insurance policy to the car rental company. This is in case they still have some questions that you don’t know. It will both save you time.
Once you have taken an active part and asked for the necessary information, you can then decide for yourself whether or not you really need to purchase and spend your money on that additional insurance
which could possibly double the cost of your car rental,

I have nothing much to do on my first day of work for the week, Saturday. There are not so much calls. In fact, it has been almost 2 hours, and I’ve only got about 3 calls, wherein on normal busy days, i usually have 10-15 calls by this time. I have visited almost all favorite sites of mine, and have read different articles on various subjects: personal, self-development, articles about celebrities and the like. I have nothing so much to do, so I decided to change my wallpaper, and put my baby’s picture on it. This is a new workstation, so I have been sitting here only for the 2nd time today. My baby looks great, right? (smile) Coming from a mother’s pride. I just actually came from a fresh 2 days off, and I’m ready to start the week’s work. After work today, I am planning to watch a movie, Goodluck Chuck starring Jessica Alba. I hope it will be a great movie which deserves my time. After that, I’ll be sleeping for some time to take rest. Work on some articles I have been assigned by my direct employer, and then, play with baby bless and prepare for the night. I have to take an early rest tonight, cause tomorrow I have to wake up again at 2 am, in order to work at 3 am. Sounds difficult right? Anyway, I don’t think about it. Every time I wake up, I think about the interesting things of the day that keeps me energetic and helps me forget about being drowsy. I don’t even notice the time goes by, and its already 12 pm. Then, I’m ready to go back home. I always look forward to the day when I don’t have to work anymore. That will be few years from now, I guess. That’s why I’m really trying to save and save and save.