See? I'm not the only one my age who is rejecting the corporate world. This article features twentysomethings who left high-paying jobs to pursue their own interests and start their own businesses. High-paying as in an insane $500,000 a year.

I'm not really counting myself among them, though, mainly because I did not leave a high-paying job to strike out on my own, but one that made me feel like a useless pawn for three years. Now if the article talked about twentysomethings who rejected cubicle life in lieu of working in cafés, restaurants, and at home, then I should be on that list!

Anyway, it's interesting to see how these people place more importance on their interests than their high-paying jobs, and not just because doing what they love will make them more money in the long run, but because they find it more inspiring and meaningful. When I was working, I often wondered if I'd have stayed at my old job if I got a massive raise: "Would being paid 30,000 a month make me happier and push me to wake up every day for this job?" I realized the answer is a resounding NO--not only will that P30,000 never happen, much less P20,000, but no amount of money would have diminished the annoyance of being a mere cog and feeling demoralized practically every day.

I flew with my parents to the U.S. over the weekend and they'll be staying here for a few months. I'll be hanging out with them for a month to get them settled in, though, but far from being a holiday, it'll be just like a regular month for me, since I'm technically not on vacation, having brought all my work for me. I DID skip working during the flight here, though--a very refreshing change!

This isn't the first time I flew to a different place and still had all my work materials with me. Last year, my mother and I went to Cebu and, thanks to my laptop, I still got to do my work, same as the time we stayed in Tagaytay for Holy Week and during trips to Baguio as well. In 2006, I stored my work files on my MP3 player on a trip to Spain, and it was a good thing I did: Instead of going straight home to Manila afterwards, my sister and I had to fly back to the U.S. because my dad underwent triple bypass surgery. I had to let my clients know where I was and what happened, and because I was only supposed to be away for a week, they were worried that I wouldn't have their materials for them done during the time when my holiday was supposed to have ended. Thanks to a little foresight, I managed to keep that from happening.

Simply put, one of the perks of freelancing has to be the mobility. I love being able to do my work anywhere--well, any place that has Internet access, at least!--even though I'm not officially on holiday. Being away from home actually makes me a lot more productive, since I don't have any errands to run, places to go to, and other such distractions.

I give myself around two weeks' vacation time however, and it's two precious weeks wherein I simply don't do a scrap of work. The rest of the time involves full-on working, but because I do get to work no matter where I am, most times it hardly feels like I have jobs.

Not too long ago, everybody went totally nuts for Agloco, which promised to pay its members if they simply install a viewbar on their browsers, which will track the amount of time you spend online. For a certain number of hours, you earn a particular amount. That's not where the real money is made though; people earn best through referrals, and a lot of people have sworn that Agloco is the real deal.

Soon, Aglocomails emerged, which everyone thought was a spin-off of Agloco. This site offers a paid-to-read program, and it sure stands out. Most paid-to-read programs pay only a few cents per e-mail; Aglocomails offers $100 per e-mail, and the minimum payout for regular accounts is $20,000, which they say should be pretty easy to hit. Oh, how I wish this program is truly legit. I mean who WOULDN'T want to get hold of $20,000 in just a few weeks and just by reading e-mails?

Sadly, everything about the program is pretty suspect. For one thing, $100 per e-mail seems utterly impossible; even if they had a large amount of capital, the sheer number of people signing up in droves will quickly deplete that money. Another thing is that they offer premium accounts, which they say will allow you to receive payouts even if you don't make the $20,000 target yet--this means you have to pay $300 for the premium membership, though. It's pretty odd why they don't just shave $300 from your supposed earnings. That will make it easier for everyone involved.
Aglocomails has responded to accusations of fraud by posting screenshots of PayPal payments they made, but it convinced nobody: The images were ripped from another site. If you're interested in signing up for a paid-to-read system, Hits4Pay will probably be your best option. The pay is a lot smaller and it will take you a significant amount of time to make some serious earnings, but at least it's a pretty reliable program.

It's been about two weeks since The Great Portable Hard Drive Crash of 2008, and I think I've recovered well enough to talk about it. Simply put, I've had a certain portable hard drive for over two months already when it suddenly sputtered into utter lifelessness, slowing down my computer and being utterly inaccessible. Even plugging it into another PC didn't do a thing. After a few tweaks and moderately unsuccessful attempts to recover my files, I was forced to conclude that the hard drive just...died. Threw me into a tizzy, it did, because it contained two months of work, most of which entailed weeping in front of Photoshop. Gone. Just like that. Ouch.

I could have had them retrieved by going to people who do data recovery, except their services cost an arm and a leg. I even looked up data recovery services online and stumbled upon Flashback Data, which looks like particularly good provider of this service; they recover data from desktops, laptops, and servers, among other things. Interestingly enough, they are also involved with Computer Forensics, a term which I didn't know existed; I do hear about the actual practice a lot, however.

The hard drive is currently out for repairs, and I think it'll take one more week till I get it back, unfortunately. The whole ordeal slapped a very important lesson in my face: Backup obsessively, and backup frequently.

Wired Internet connection is a bitch. My router appears to have given up and refuses to connect with my DSL modem, thus leaving me moored in my room if I ever want to do any work. Pfft.

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1. Polish wedding article #2
2. Begin wedding article #3(Personal deadline: Sunday, 11 p.m.)
3. Plan Web campaign for ESA and ESF
4. Explore MySpace options for both ESA and ESF

After two years of juggling six different freelance jobs, I have finally, finally decided to trim down my workload. Sure, it's a great thing that I've had a lot of sources of income and opportunities, plus it's a pleasant thing to be able to work with different people and not to just have to deal exclusively with one or two clients. But I've been feeling incredibly burned out lately, and I figured it was time that I finally refocused my goals and my skills and went with the ones that made the most sense and would help me grow.

So I finally let go of three tasks. It's true that they are the ones that are the easiest to complete, the ones that don't really require a lot of brain cells to accomplish, but in the long run, that's not a good thing. I left office work for many reasons, and one of them is the fact that I have absolutely no desire to kill off my thought processes and just do the kind of work I can finish in my sleep.

Today, I'm left with my three original loves: proofreading, writing, and graphic and web design. I suppose I decided to stick with them not just because of the fact that they are the ones that pay extremely well compared to the three that have been let go, but because even though I love doing the work, they pose challenges to me every single day, and I am expected to get better and better at what I do. And that's what I think is really important: to hone my skills and provide stellar output.

Here in the Philippines, Black Friday is known as a day in Holy Week, supposedly the day when Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross. It was actually only a few years ago when I learned that Black Friday meant something entirely different in the U.S. So when I was there for a visit last year, I was able to understand the whole frenzy surrounding the event.

Hours before Black Friday officially began, my sister and her husband were mapping out their strategy for obtaining certain items from Best Buy, Circuit City, and Walmart. My brother-in-law was pretty methodical about the whole thing, and even made sure to check out Black Friday ads and find out what time those stores opened in order to determine which one we'll be hitting first. The best part is that we found that a lot of the things we were planning to buy were on the list of items that were priced much lower for Black Friday. That definitely made it easier for us to find the items and snap them up before anyone else did. (That day, we headed to Best Buy first and was extremely successful in snagging a laptop and a Bluetooth headset.)

It always helps to do some research first before doing anything, and who knew that the Internet would be a great help in buying things offline? Because of sites with Black Friday ads, it turned out to be a pretty amazing first Black Friday experience for me.

Okay, I haven't blogged here in quite a while. That must change, but for now, I shall make a note of things I need to do.

1. Complete enormous cheetah poster and send link to HK
2. Finish sparrow PDF presentation
3. Revise luau article
4. Begin Palm Beach article
5. complete proofreading work
6. two Green Unlimited posts

Who needs sleep after all? For all my advice on managing time wisely, I myself find it hard to follow sometimes, especially since there are things that pop up during the day.