In grade school, I often represented my class in essay writing competitions. I won some but lost some as well. I still have one of my prize-winning essays called The School Paper Promotes the Intellectual Welfare of the Child.

High school was sadly uneventful for me. I was bored and inclined to look outside the window and dream of escape. I didn’t care for algebra, chemistry, or any subject that required computation because I didn’t like doing the math, which I now deeply regret because I’m a retail forex trader by night. Perhaps an earlier competent grasp of math would have helped to make me a more profitable trader. I excelled in English, Literature, and Speech and Drama. I got nods of approval from my English teacher on my essay requirements. But writing was more of a hobby for me back then, and I never thought of making a living out of it.

In college, my writing started to pick up. While the majority of my peers worked as a service crew in fast-food restaurants, I chose to work as a freelance writer for local magazines. The pay wasn’t much, but it helped with my transportation and meal expenses. That was the early nineties. I had no connections in the publishing world, and I relied on my spunk by walking into editorial offices and bargaining my way past gatekeepers. I discovered it was unnecessary, as my work would speak for itself. I briefly had a short stint with writing graphic short stories for local comics publications as well.

A string of writing jobs followed after college, but they were brief and I was jumping from one job to another in the hopes of landing a better pay. It was too late for me to realize that it didn’t help my résumé, so I decided to re-assess my options. What followed were solid track experiences as an editorial assistant for a women’s magazine, a contributing editor for a medical magazine, and an assistant editor for a Catholic publication.

But in a country like the Philippines, times can often prove tough. Twice I was laid off from my job as a result of downsizing, and my writing was on hiatus for three years. To make productive use of my time, I joined local game shows to earn money including the Philippine edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Though I didn’t win any grand prizes from game shows, the prize I managed to bag was sizeable enough that I got hooked on participating. But then it was not a sustainable gig, and competition for editorial jobs made it difficult for me to land a full-time job.

In the early phase of the 2000s, I landed a gig as an EFL teacher for Koreans. Online English instruction was to become my career for the next twelve years along with freelance writing. September of last year, the Japanese online English school where I worked declared closure, and it was, for me, the last blow. Thankfully I have somehow established a connection through freelancing. Now I am a book reviewer and a full-time freelancer, happy to provide myself with voluntary contributions for statutory benefits, and I never looked back after that.