Thursday, April 30, 2015

Wealth Gained, Love Lost



Previously:

Chasing Hours
Endless Waltz


"I was wondering why you didn't finish your 5-hour SEO writing on our day 5 of the on-boarding process?" 

I read the words with much horror after the offline message was left on Google Hangouts. It was from my team leader, sent at past midnight, while I was undergoing training for the new technical email support project at my day job. 

"I need you to finish this tomorrow because we are so far already from schedule."

The way the message was written, sounded like it was an ultimatum. Should I ignore the order from my handler again, certain that I might be dropped permanently from the side project.

---

The on-boarding process can be described as the same as call center agents' nesting period. What was supposed to be a five-day training, took me two weeks to complete. One of the reasons for the delay was the hesitation. What I thought was easy work turned out to be repetitive in nature. Also, there was already this sense of accomplishment: That maybe, what I wanted was recognition. I have been looking for freelance work on Elance for months, and as soon as I have received the letter telling me that I was hired by this start-up company, my eyes were set to look for shorter, less binding projects.

The demands of SEO writing were too much for me.

---

To this day, I still have no answers as to what made me decide to pursue this line of work when the odds were stacked against me. It was a mind melting, time stealing, and mechanical writing pursuit that was responsible for my short disappearance from blogging last year. I lose sleep because of it. My creativity waste away for I often write with canned thoughts given the less time to seek and lay down stories, and finally, the hours I used to spend so wantonly now have to be tempered and contemplated, so as to keep myself from going crazy during the weekend crunches. Back then, all I had was the "bahala na" attitude; of using my boss' vintage laptop without his permission to log my details and write snippets to finish the boarding process. It didn't matter if I was using company resources (and time) to complete the task. My colleagues were oblivious to my activities, and that morning, I was intent to deliver despite the uncertainty of my commitment.

I needed money.

---

It was a slow, and often depressing journey towards accepting my new life. Much of the credit goes to my team leader, who displayed infinite patience when I would never - in my own capacity as a supervisor - extend such consideration to a new hire. The ex boyfriend played his part too. His self-made image gave this impression that I was with a well-established guy. His claimed profession, the manufactured stories about his wealth, and the movie and dinner dates we used to do every weekends forced me to raise funds just to keep up with him.

In the end, he would end our story for higher ambitions.

It was just a year ago when the prospects of losing my savings - for the second time - came close to becoming a reality, and looking back from where I stand today, I have nothing but gratitude for the decision I almost didn't make.

I may have given up too many comforts for this venture to work, but assuredly I can say, never have I been more certain of good fortune that will continue flowing, perhaps, for many years to come.



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