How to Celebrate Mother’s Day in This Time of Pandemic? [4 Tips]

May 9, 2020June 12, 20204 Comments

I think this is the hardest time in recent history for all kinds of moms out there —> for moms who are forced to be at home with their children 24/7, especially school-aged ones; moms who are forced to be away from their grown-up children because of the quarantines and lockdowns; moms who are pregnant and about to give birth and are scared of finding themselves giving birth in overcrowded hospitals; moms with babies, with sickly children, with big kids, with teenagers… basically all kinds of moms.

The pandemic has placed us all in situations that are new to many of us, and for this reason, I salute all moms out there. There is a saying that goes “I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.” by Lance Conrad, The Price of Creation, and I do think it’s true.

Just the other day, Mahal jokingly asked me: “So, where to this Mother’s Day?” I just laughed! Of course, there is no other place to go but to stay home. Whether you celebrate Mother’s Day in the kitchen, in the bedroom, the living room, the bathroom (LOL)… staying home is still the safest place to be in this time of the pandemic. Though some quarantines have been eased in some parts of the country (like in Cagayan de Oro City, some malls have already opened, to the dismay of many residents), it still feels unsafe to do any kind of celebration outside. So we must stay at home. What can we do to celebrate this special day? I have listed a few things I would love to do as I celebrate my special day as a mother. Feel free to add more as you see fit in your situation.

Here goes…

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How Do You Start Working Online From Home In This Time of Pandemic?

May 2, 2020June 13, 20201 Comment

I’ve been working from home a little over two months after I retired from my corporate job in Dec. 2007 as a Human Resources Officer IV in one of our country’s government financial institutions. But I still remember vividly how I felt, what I did, and how it got me to where I am now — living the life I want and doing what I like. Like any employee quitting his/her job, I was, of course, scared… Scared because I was letting go of a job that a million girls my age at that time would probably die for because of how high my income was compared to my peers then. At the age of 24 (since year 2002-2007), I was already taking home a salary equivalent to the income of a manager or vice president. The company I was working for then wasn’t included in the country’s salary standardization law and my salary grade was quite high because my step-grandma was one of the board of trustees and I worked for her as her Executive Assistant V (that’s nepotism in this country which I’m not proud of but grateful for at that time). I was also excited because, for the first time in a long time, I could breathe. That company was laden with politics and being an introvert who preferred working mostly by myself, I didn’t bode well with making chitchat during office hours nor hobnobbing with the higher-ups just because I was the granddaughter of one of the Board of Trustees. I felt like I was surrounded by “plastic” people and I felt suffocated and stressed out most of the time. So it was a breath of fresh air to get out of that situation and take home with me more than a million peso in retirement money. I was lucky!

Nevertheless, I still went through some sort of period of depression for about a month after I retired. I retired effective Dec. 15, 2007 and I was just watching TV series like Dexter and 24 from what I remember that whole time. I kind of felt lost and didn’t know what to do next. I was so used to the hustle and bustle of corporate life then all of a sudden I wasn’t doing anything. So I did what I could… I majored in being a couch potato for about a month, never really sleeping but just watching reruns of TV shows and eating on the couch. I seldom took a bath too during that time, lol! I had a full-time helper under my employ so I could afford to literally do nothing but just be a potato on my couch! Hahaha! After I forced myself out of depression mode (thanks to The Secret which I also read and watched over and over around January 2008), I began to see the light. Someone in my Yahoo groups contacted me to apply as an online executive assistant to a Texas CEO in the US, and the rest, as they say, is history. Here I am twelve years down the line, having had numerous clients from the US, Israel, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, having done all kinds of online work you could think of, including being a ghostwriter who authored an erotic novel (hahaha!) which actually paid for my 2-week Siargao vacation back in March 2012. Those were the days! I’d work online either from home or from anywhere I fancy just because I could.

I’m aware that times now are different. These days, people don’t have this choice to either work in the office or work from home. Many employees now, including high ranking company officials, are being forced to work online from home to avoid getting sick due to the currently incurable Covid-19, formerly known as the Novel Coronavirus. Many even lost their jobs and don’t know where to get their next paycheck to support their families. The economy of 100+ nations all around the world is suffering from this pandemic and companies, big and small, as well as workers of various industries, must learn how to adapt, cope, think outside of the box, and come up with other ways to get the job done to stay afloat amidst this global crisis.

Are you one of those people affected by this? Are you having a hard time transitioning from working in your company’s office premises to now having to work from home with your kids, spouse, maybe even with your parents, siblings, and house help puttering about inside your home while you try to get some work done? Or did you lose your job and don’t know what kind of work you could do next? If you are, I hope my tips below will somehow lighten your struggle and serve as a guide to you in these dark times as I share with you how I did it before and how I continue to do it for more than 12 years now. Just bear with me whenever I make a little side chitchat because I’m just talkative like that. After all, having not seen any “officemates” for more than a decade, and having lived by myself for most of my adult life, writing has become my outlet for all of my stories untold. Hihihi! Here goes…

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Ten Basic Creative Principles We Can All Use Especially In This Time of Pandemic

April 16, 2020May 9, 2020Leave a comment

On my previous post, I was talking a bit about how we need to be a little creative when marketing and selling in this time of pandemic. After all, we need all the help we can get to make sure we can still financially survive this crisis despite all odds. On this blog post, I’d like to delve into the topic of creativity a little bit more by mentioning the ten basic principles I learned before from a 12-week course I took on the Artist’s Way (a course in discovering and recovering your creative self created by Julia Cameron and Mark Bryan). These ten creative principles are: Continue reading →

How to Market During this Time of an Unprecedented Pandemic?

April 15, 2020May 9, 20202 Comments

Speaking from experience, a week after Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), Mahal and I stopped our Tuscany Highlands business. The halt per se wasn’t as abrupt, but, day by day, we just found ourselves not working on the business. It started when our farm people told us that the most recent consignments of fresh oyster mushrooms at various stores in Claveria were being returned because no tourists and customers were visiting Claveria and no one was buying. The shops where we were consigning are located on tourist spots and along the highway where local and foreign tourists usually visit and drive by. With everyone being asked to stay at home, there were no more customers visiting these shops. So all fresh oyster mushroom harvests were sent back to the farm to be dried and stored for future use instead.

Then the sale of our mushroom products like MUSIGA (Mushroom Sili Garlic Paste), PALAMI (mushroom Palapa), Mushroom POLVORON and Mushroom CHIPS stopped as well. Despite our efforts to market, no sales were coming in.

Then our Mushroom Hands-On Cultivation Training was put on hold indefinitely for fear of spreading the coronavirus.

So one day, we just stopped our business from running and concentrated on surviving this pandemic as a family. We have our savings, extra food and other supplies, plus I still have a little bit of income coming from my online work so we’re still okay.

But do small businesses really have to stop marketing? Do we really have to completely stop doing business? Is it being tone-deaf or inconsiderate to continue selling stuff at this time when no one seems to be buying non-essential stuff? Continue reading →

An Epilogue To My COVID-19 Nervous Breakdown

April 14, 2020May 9, 20204 Comments

I must admit that the previously growing anxiety inside of me since the emergence of Coronavirus has hampered my productivity and creativity levels. I mean aside from my own work, motherly tasks and house chores which are the only productive things I do these days, I haven’t done anything else. Before, I was also busy with other things like:

– continuous marketing for Tuscany Highlands and Training Workshops CDO.
– I was actively reading my books and attending online courses I bought.
– I blogged and I did my journal
– I did creative things like making designs for our future home.
– I concocted marketing strategies for Tuscany Highlands
– I planned future family travels, family projects and what-not.

But since this deadly coronavirus emerged and wreaked havoc on every nation, I found myself operating on survival mode: WORK. TAKE CARE OF TUZ. DO HOUSE CHORES. REPEAT. WORK. TAKE CARE OF TUZ. DO HOUSE CHORES. REPEAT.

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Covid-19: How It’s Affecting My Mental and Emotional Health

April 13, 2020May 9, 202019 Comments

OVERVIEW

While most of you have probably been in quarantine / lockdown for about a month or so now, I’ve been imposing it on and off upon myself and my family since I first heard about the coronavirus in the news the last week of January. We were preparing for another batch of Hands-On Mushroom Training at that time when the Coronavirus Outbreak began circulating in the media. My “prepper” instinct tingled and I started having worst-case scenario visions in my head. (“prepper” is a person who believes a catastrophic disaster or emergency is likely to occur in the future and makes active preparations for it, typically by stockpiling food, ammunition, and other supplies.) That was the time I started buying a little bit more than the usual number of masks and alcohol bottles we use for mushroom training just in case the outbreak becomes an epidemic, or worse, a pandemic. And because we had plans of going back to Cebu to set up another Mushroom farm, I almost decided not to go for fear of contracting the virus during our travel. This was around Jan. 25-28 when the rest of the world didn’t care much about the Coronavirus yet, and much less about preparing for it.

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Updates in the Midst of Covid-19: My Health, Tuscany Highlands, Training Workshops CDO, BuQid, Travels and Celebrations

March 8, 2020May 10, 20205 Comments

This is probably the longest I haven’t blogged. It’s been so long that I have to read what I wrote last time coz I don’t remember anymore, lol. And it made me cringe a bit that my last post before this was about my health and my suspicion of having Dengue which happened before all this Novel Corona Virus, now called Covid-19, started hitting the news.

Anyway, as an OC person, I want to have some semblance of chronology about what has been happening to me the past several months so this long overdue blog update might be a bit long. Just bear with me. I’ll try to only give you the summaries and I’ll just write more about them, one topic at a time, on my next blog posts. For now, here are the abridged versions:
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