Enjoying a Warm Spring Day

Me, posing under a bright colored tree

Probably the hardest downside of being self-employed and working from home is the limited social contact with other people. Most of the time you´re alone, scheming for ways to build up your small business.

Being stuck at home most of the time make me appreciate the gift of being able to go out, walk around, and spend some time away from my computer.

As you know, living in Europe has its own cons too and one of it is the long winter. Cold seasons are much more longer than warn seasons. That means staying home where it´s warm most of the time in a year.

But yesterday was different. It was gorgeously warm and sunny, my husband picked me up from home (on his way from work) so we could drive to the city and walk around. I enjoyed it immensely.

It´s also a form of bonding for us. We talk as we walk, we laugh, hold hands, and just enjoy each other´s company. I also got to enjoy my favorite fish burger teamed with some ice-cream, yummy.

On our way to the parking lot, we saw this beautiful pink tree. It looks like blooming fully with flowers although the pink aren´t its flowers. Click the photo for a bigger view. This is a remembrance of a beautiful spring afternoon spent well.

Dream Interpretation: Turtle

Last night I saw a turtle in my dream. It was a green, clean and healthy looking turtle. It was guiding my way. I saw myself walking in an unfamiliar narrow road and the turtle was leading me, I was following.

The catchy part of the dream is that somewhere down the road, the turtle took a right turn and left me to continue taking the route that we were supposed to take. "Where are you heading and why are you abandoning me?", I asked. "You already know the way, you can do it now by yourself." He said.

I saw myself wondering what made the turtle left me. I thought I could trust him in leading me.

Whenever I have dreams that stay vivid once I wake up, I try to understand its meaning. So I googled for the dream interpretation of turtle, and this is what I found from Dreammoods.com.

To see a turtle in your dream symbolizes wisdom, faithfulness, longevity, and loyalty. It also suggests that you need to take it slow in some situation or relationship in your life. With time and patience, you will make steady progress. Alternatively, a turtle indicates that you are sheltering yourself from the realities of life. You are putting forth a hard exterior and not letting others in. As a result, you are feeling withdrawn. To dream that you are being chased by a turtle indicates that you are hiding behind a facade, instead of confronting the things that are bothering you.

Because I was following the turtle and not chasing it, the last meaning, "hiding behind a facade", is eliminated. When it comes to relationship, I and my husband are so close and we´re very compatible, we hardly have issues in out marriage. We do argue, but nothing that we can´t fix before the day ends.

The first meaning, that turtle symbolizes wisdom, faithfulness, longevity, and loyalty, applies to me. I keep searching for wisdom. I´m also faithful and loyal to my husband, my family, and friends.

But given that the turtle which I relied my safety on left me, I figure that my dream takes the third meaning, that I am putting forth a hard exterior and not letting others in. I find this quite true to me at the moment. There are people in my life right now who are literally living close to me whom I don´t want to be close with because of some reasons. I feel that being too close to them results to the invasion of my privacy, so I keep a distance.

This dream is quite interesting because this is the first time that I´ve dreamed of turtle. It leaves me with so much to ponder upon.

photo credit: Elena Kalis via photopin cc

What Would You Do If You Arrive at the Fork in the Road?

Choosing which path to take isn´t always easy.

You sometimes find yourself at a fork in the road. For someone like me who isn´t good with remembering landmarks and finding directions, if I´m at a fork and I´m not sure which path to take, I stop.

I look at each road for a moment, pray, and then listen to my guts. I rely on my instinct.

Because I have a big trust in God, I believe that through my instinct, He will let me know the right way. And for how many instances, more than I could count, He never failed to show me the way.

Right now I find myself at a fork of the road once again. I´m not at loss of my way home literally, but I´m lost in terms of my career.

See: Why my Dad Changed Career

I remember a post I wrote in 2010 about my rant on changing career. Well, I actually did change career. I left my teaching profession to become a full-time blogger. I hoped that online publishing will open doors for my ultimate dream, to become a published writer.

I concentrated on my passion for fashion. I focused all my time and energy in my fashion blog. But after almost two years of hard work and I´ve achieved the goals that I first set for my blog, I´m starting to lose that loving feeling. I blog just for the sake of maintaining the blog. And as a result, I see the downfall of my blog on a daily basis.

When I think of how much I´ve put on this website, I know that I have to do something to save it, bring it back to where it was in terms of google rankings, and keep it from complete ruin. But another side of me tells me, probably it´s time to follow my good old dream?

I recently read a quote that says, "Don´t abandon what you really want to do because of what you want to do now." It hit me, that´s true. While I love fashion and nothing makes me happier than writing about fashion, my ultimate dream is to write a fiction book. At this fork of the road, I have to decide.

photo credit: Stevie Rocco via photopin cc

How Your Thoughts Control Your Happiness

"The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts." ~ Anonymous

I met this proverb in facebook, it´s circulated around, shared by many users to inspire those who read it. This proverb isn´t new, it´s been said by many people in different mediums and in different ways. But are we actually reading the message?

Everyone of us seek to be happy. We have different definition of happiness. Other people search for it by acquiring more money, others hope to find happiness by looking beautiful, while others hope to be happy by inflicting misery on others. But no matter how much we chase for happiness, it remains illusive to many. Why?

The answer is simple - unless you learn to entertain only quality thoughts, you will never be happy. Instead, you´ll feel stressed.

Quality thoughts are thoughts that make you smile, give you hope, inspire you, make you thankful of all your gifts and blessings, fuel you with gratitude, encourage you to be content, and above all, thoughts that praise your Maker.

Although negative thoughts are often stronger than quality, positive thoughts, the good news is our mind can be trained. You can control your thoughts the same way your thoughts control your happiness.

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Insomnia Makes Me Unproductive

I never understood how insomnia can SO negatively affect a person until I myself was plagued by it. In fact, I never thought I would ever have insomnia because for almost all my life, sleep was never a problem.

But until I became self-employed and worked from home, when my working days are full of sitting in front of the computer with very less physical movement, I started having problem getting sleep at night.

I go to bed together with my husband at usually midnight and while hubby quickly doze off to sleep, I lay wide awake until four, and later, until seven o´clock in the morning.

As the alarm clock goes on signalling it´s time to get up and prepare for the day, only then I´d feel groggy, terribly tired, and I´d sleep. I would then spend more than half of the day sleeping.

The bad effects of this are that, as I rise from bed at past noon time, I still feel tired, unhappy, uncreative, and overall unproductive. I´m already at the point when I feel frustrated. In order to combat this insomnia, I and my husband agreed to actively go back to exercising. Starting this week, we´ll go to the gym daily and we will see if this will help regulate my sleep. I´ll let you know.

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Why People with Pets are Happy People?

My adopted pet named Orange

Did you know that people with pet are happy people? They´re also usually nice people. Well, that doesn´t mean just because you haven´t got a pet you ain´t nice. You probably are busy, no time to care for a pet, or that the place you live in isn´t conducive for a pet. But let´s say everything is perfect, would you love to have a pet?

Just when I craved to have a cat and my husband adamantly said "No", he found an abandoned cat in a cold, lonely street one Friday of November. It was the beginning of winter and the temperature was starting to get freezing. The cat was sick and clearly needed help. My husband debated not in himself, he quickly brought it home.

We named him Orange because of his color and because we were uncertain of his gender at first. We didn´t know if somebody i looking for him so we waited for a week, hoping that nobody would look for him and take him away from us. But in case somebody did, we were ready to return him. But after a week and we didn´t find anybody looking for him both in public "lost and found" boards and in news papers, we decided to take him as our own. We brought him to the vet to fix his bronchitis, and slowly, he regained his health.

He is currently the joy of our life and the center of our attention. He´s very spoiled especially to dad and is so loved by everyone including grandma. He simply the greatest gift I received last Christmas.

So if you ask me, why people with pets are happy people? It´s simple, there´s someone who always love to snuggle, to pet, and there´s always someone who makes you smile, making you forget any trouble you have. A pet is a perfect distressor.

My Growing Dislike On Kate Beckinsale

I used to really admire her, I was head-over-heels in love with her on that good old movie "Serendipity" and I was in big awe with all the stunts she did in "Underworld". I saw her as a dainty, sweet little creature with a beauty to admire.

But when I learned about how she stole someone else´s husband and father, when she started that affair with her Underworld director who was very married with a young kid, my admiration completely turned to dislike. I hate reading all the news about her enjoying a really hot and over-the-top sex life with her now husband but, don´t you really think how painful it is to the family that you broke? She simply didn´t live up to my adoration. And oh, I´m neither impressed with her bragging that she doesn´t wear knickers!

When questioned about her stealing someone else´s husband, her defense is that universal defense of the world´s mistresses and home wreckers, "their marriage was already on the rocks when we started dating. They were already separated when we became together." Which of course, the first wife claimed wasn´t true. Kate was always rude and had nothing good to say to her when the first wife visited her husband in the sets of the Underworld.

"Kate Beckinsale doesn´t know how to treat other women well", was how the first wife describes her.

I don´t have anything personal against Kate but I have this big thing against people destroying a marriage much more a home just to pursue their own personal happiness.

Oh, and please don´t hate me if you love this actress!

The Pangs of Bullying Bully Me In Dreams

For three days I was haunted in my dreams, the dreams appeared in pattern, always at dawn. I see that young girl again, at times a tiny primary school girl, then suddenly, she turns into an inferior high school girl.

Her classmates make fun of her, bully her, tease her because of her clothes, tease her because of her old, spoiled shoes that she keeps wearing even if her socks are already showing out, teased her until she could not bare her anger anymore and she turns violent.

She fought back, kicked that one bitch who leads the high school mean girls in shaming her, kicked that bitch hard in the face, and then jumped on her, brought her to the ground and punched, pounding her face until she lost her teeth.

I woke up. I still feel the anger, the hatred, and I see clearly how that girl returned her bullies evil. She used her fist, she beats them. Good for her!

You´d never think this grown up, self-made woman who has already reached a level of success still transforms into that little girl who´s being made fun of, a small girl who needs to defend herself from bullies, whenever she goes to sleep.

The Perils of Over Creative Mind

If there´s one thing that I´d want invented, it´s a mind recorder.  You know, like those things you see in sci-fi movies,where wires and tubes are attached to a head which allows the tranlations from the mind to be entered and recorded in the computer.

I know that there´s a new technology that enables paralyzed and unable-to-speak people to command things and make them move through their mind. But there´s nothing I´ve heard of, which records your thoughts and then translate them into texts.

I know that this invention can cause chaos and your privacy is easily ruined, but I´d like to look at the good side. I need this invention so all the creative thoughts that occupy me at night will come to terms.

I suffer from insomnia because of a very hyper mind. When I go to bed, I´m supposed to sleep, but I have a hard sleeping because my mind works all the time and keeps introducing me with great ideas. There were times when I want to get up and go to my laptop and write the things that just came to me, but then my body is too tired.

I write five blogs, in fact six. Three of them are professional websites while the other three are personal sites (each with different niche). Well, except this one, it´s too general it has no niche other than my personal rambles. But I still want to write three more sites. I have three more topics I´m very fond of and want to build and launch.

The big reality however, even if my mind is so creative it wants to work more, the body can´t just keep up. It gets tired quicker than my mind. And that´s the biggest problem with an over active mind.

10 Things I am Most Thankful Right Now

Last week, in my effort to seek divine help on the personal struggle that I was dealing, I learned that being more thankful on every blessing and good thing is one effective way to live happy.

Last week´s sabbath lesson challenged me to write the top ten things I am most thankful right now, to take a moment to thank God in prayer, and then observe the difference on my perspective afterwards. I did. I kept my note because I thought I would love to share it with you. So here are the things I´m very grateful.

1. A happy marriage - I´m a little less than two years married to my husband and for the entire time, I´m happy with him. He´s very loving, caring, thoughtful, fun and responsible. Although some personal differences at times come between us, we find ways to iron them. He loves me so much and that makes me love him even more.

2. Good health that I, my husband, my family and my friends have - good health is something I never miss thanking God whenever I speak to Him in prayer. Without it, one can never fully enjoy life. I´m always thankful to God that He keeps me, my husband, my mom and my dad, my siblings, my loved ones, my in-laws, and my friends healthy and safe.

3. A job I love -  after years of praying for a job that would truly make me happy, God granted it. I can´t be happier.

4. My happy parents - my parents raised six kids on their own and even if they were heavily burdened with all the education bills, they hanged on. Now four of us are already professionals and the younger two who are still in the university are doing well. My parents are very happy and their happiness influence us.

5. My successful siblings - being an eldest of six, I took the responsibility towards my siblings seriously. I studied hard and finished my degree early with the help of a scholarship. I went abroad at an early age, strived to earn big and helped my parents finance my siblings´ undergraduate education. In return, my siblings worked hard, looked up to me and carved their own success.

As of now, my sister after me is a successful business woman. A brother graduated from nursing last year, immediately earned his license, got a good job and now prepares/trains for his plan to go abroad. Another brother is a teacher who enjoys working in the Philippines and whom, despite my persuasions, says he´s happy working for his country although he too considers trying his luck abroad.

The fifth sibling and the youngest of three brothers is currently in his third year taking mechanical engineering. He also earned certificates for his electrical trainings. Simultaneous to his studies in mechanical, he does apprenticeship in electrical field. My youngest sister on the other hand, the youngest of the six, is a freshman in computer engineering. I´m very happy and proud of them.

6. A visit to Paris - it was a long-time dream of mine to visit Paris. Last month, with God´s grace and with the help of my husband, we spent our summer vacation in Paris. God is so good.

7. My husband´s great job - I´m always thankful to God for giving my husband a job that he loves and that´s stable. He´s the main breadwinner and what I do is simply to support his income. Because he´s happy at work, his happiness also radiates when he´s at home.

8. A growing closet - because I´m a big fan of fashion, I thank God for giving me a big closet which continually grows.

9. Trustworthy friends - it´s not always that you find special and trustworthy friends. I found them and I´m very thankful for it. They´re scattered across the globe but we still keep in touch.

10. A great laptop and a fast internet connection - because what I do involves the internet, I´m thankful for the gift of a good laptop and internet connection. Through them, I am able to connect with the world and keep in touch with families and friends. They keep me from being lonely here in Europe.

So those are my top ten gifts, what about you? What are you most thankful of right now? Do this activity, write down on a piece of paper the ten things you´re thankful right now, then silently thank God through meditation. Have a great day!

photo credit: wehearit.com

Why I Need to Be More Thankful

Last Friday I was having an emotional struggle. My husband was aware that I was feeling unhappy and he comforted me blaming the change of the weather and some hormones as the cause of my sadness. But in fact, it was much more than that.

My husband´s effort to comfort me helped a ton but not completely. The struggle inside me was too much for me to beat in spite of my husband´s care and love. I knew there was one thing I had to do. I silently prayed.

Because I could not sleep, I went online to review the Bible lesson study we had for the past week. The next day, Saturday which is the sabbath, the lesson will be discussed among the members in the church. For some reasons, the words of wisdom in the lesson were targeted towards me.

Joy in life is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22; see also Phil. 4:4). Open your eyes. The gifts of God are all around us; we just forget to thank Him for them—often because we’re so focused on the trials and struggles of living. If we would cultivate an attitude of thankfulness to God more and more, our walk with Him would be much closer and our lives would be filled with joy. ~ SDA Lesson Study Sept 4

These words were really a turning point for me. Whoever causes my grief and whatever trials are there that cause my sadness, I should focus with the good things instead and be more thankful because in the process, I become joyful and happy. It made me feel so much better.

photo credit: wehearit.com

Dream Interpretation: Fresh, Green Leaves

I know when a dream´s worth interpreting because it sticks in my head all day. Just like one of the many dreams I dreamed last night. I saw these very fresh and green tiny leaves in my hands, they´re rounded in shape.

According to my dream, they were very special leaves. They couldn´t be found anywhere on Earth but under it. I saw myself digging the ground until I found little tunnels where the leaves have enough space to grow, I was actually wondering where they get oxygen.

The dream ended with me enjoying the sight of the very green leaves on both my palms, I was standing somewhere in the forest.

Being a dream interpretation addict as I am, I googled today what the leaves meant on my dream. I found out that healthy and fresh leaves denote happiness and wonderful improvement in your business. While withered leaves, indicate false hopes and gloomy forebodings will harass your spirit into a whirlpool of despondency and loss.

These findings fueled me with inspirations. Is something good awaits my thriving business? But on the other hand, another interpretation said that leaves can also denote achievements you had during the day. And I´m like, Oh, no! I had actually a very productive day before the dream, I´ve worked for my business even it´s a Sunday, I´ve cleaned the house and did almost all the ironing. But it can´t be the dream, is it?

How to Enjoy Doing Something You Hate to Do

photo credit: weheartit

It´s Sunday night, a quarter to midnight, and after a very long day, I´m able to sit at my working table to check my emails, facebook, twitter, and to quickly do this post. I´m spent but I feel very satisfied. My house is as clean as brand new and the piles of clothes for ironing worth two months are now saved wíth only a few pieces of long sleeves and a couple of bed sheets. I was quite worn out and I decided, it´s enough for today.

You see, when I do decide I´d do ironing, I don´t want to leave it unfinished. I want to do everything, three or four baskets of  (overflowing) clothes, for seven to eight hours of work, because I know that it´d take me months to again find the energy and interest to put my hands on it. I simply hate doing ironing.

But I´m a wife. My husband needs his working clothes ironed so he´d look presentable at work. I´m really lucky that my husband has a big closet to support him for two months until he´d completely run out. I know when I have to iron because it´d start feeling the stress on him on mornings when he´s dressing up. That means he´s starting to run out of clothes.

So how do I find the drive to actually keep up for long hours of ironing when I actually hate it? Well, first off, I need to have the mood. When I feel like I´m good to do the work, I make the most of that mood and sustain it by thinking about happy things. The television is also turned on and whether it´s a news report, a football game or an Xfactor singing competition that´s showing, I listen intently on the words spoken, it helps to improve my Deutsch. I feel good working while learning at the same time. Oh, how I love multi-tasking.

But once I do ironing, I can´t leave it  to prepare a meal, otherwise, I´d be lazy to go back. I have to take advantage of the mood. Then comes my husband´s help. He does the cooking and prepping for dinner. He knows I can´t be disturbed. That´s what I call teamwork. This must explain why my mood to do house chores always strikes on Sundays, when my husband is around to help me complete the chores.

The Horror of Having a Monster-in-Law

Whole day I´ve been so disturbed by the MMK story I saw over the internet last night. MMK is a filipino tv show which airs the true-to-life, usually heavy drama stories of filipino viewers. The story I saw last night was about a family which was broken because of a manipulative, arrogant, selfish, and money-seeker mother-in-law. The husband went to Saudi as an OFW and he made his mom live with his wife and three young children. Then started the calvary of the wife.

The son sent his salary to his mom and the mom controls the money and how it is spent. She also controls the daughter in-law in everything, literally. This story really pisses me off because the wife ended up so helpless. At one point she was beaten by her mom-in-law and when she fought back, the mom-in-law screamed for help and the neighbors came for her aid, driving the daughter-in-law from her own house and away from her kids. The monster-in-law then invented stories that the wife had an affair and is not a good mom, which the husband immediately believed.

As it turned out, the husband was all the time having an affair with another woman who then replaced the position of the first wife when the wife was driven away from home, raising the kids as her own. Whenever the mom wanted to see her kids, she simply wasn´t allowed to enter her own home. She tried to call her husband abroad but she couldn´t reach him. The mom-in-law then poisoned the mind of the kids turning them against their own mom.

The whole story was just so pissing me off that I can´t even continue telling you the story but here´s the point. Sons who couldn´t defend their wives against their manipulative moms, who are one-sided believing only what their mother says without clarifying to their wife, who makes decision alone with his mom excluding the wife, and who are all the time still mama´s boy, SHOULD MARRY THEIR MOM! They don´t need a wife, they just need a mom, so they might as well marry each other!

And for the wives who never learned to fight for their rights and who bow down to manipulative mother in laws, here´s what I´ve got to say. Nobody treat you bad unless you allow them to treat you bad.

The Joy of Visiting Paris

We recently just got back from our five-day-trip to Paris and it was a very fulfilling and wonderful experience. Visiting most of France´s historical places, taking photos with the Eiffel tower and enjoying an evening cruise, are just a few of the good things about this trip.

Most importantly, I and my husband learned that spending some time to travel as a couple is good for our marriage. It gives thrills, adventures, as well as problem-solving and doing it together strengthens our bond.

We were really delighted with this trip and we plan to do it every year. In fact, we already have a long list of places to visit every summer and Christmas holidays.

Dreams Do Come True

Visiting Paris isn´t a big deal for people living in Europe because it´s just a neighboring country. But for someone like me who grew up in Asia and had to work her a** so hard in order to afford a tripe to Europe, it´s a big thing.

In the poem "Sometimes" which I wrote sometime in 2006 when I was stuck in a job I hated in Asia, you´ll see my longing to be able to afford a ticket to Paris. It´s been  my dream to visit Paris, yes, but at the time I was writing the poem, I had no idea my dream would come true six years later.

My husband knows that visiting Paris is my dream trip and he made sure that within the first year of our marriage he´d give it to me. So today, we´ll be on our way to this city of fashion and will spend a gorgeous holiday. I will surely show some of our photos when we´re back.

You see? Dreams do come true!

When Does One Become Qualified to Babysit?

I recently read the article Mother Arrested for Using 13-yr-old as Babysitter and just like the many readers who commented on the article, I found the thirteen year age of the girl capable of baby sitting. That, if she was taught responsibility early.

I was babysitting my siblings ages 3 1/2 and 1 yr 8 months, every weekday for like a year when I was 5 years old when our young family moved to Zamboanga del Norte. It´s an island in the Philippines where there was Muslim-Christian fights and many rebels and government military encounters.

We moved to this place when my father was hired by a municipal mayor as a private engineer to mine his land which they thought to have gold stocks. My dad was an experienced mining engineer. However, after less than a year of working for the mine site, my dad found out that it wasn´t gold but coal that the land bears. The income from the coal stock would however suffice to reimburse only the capital. So the mayor and my the mining team decided not to push through the plan. But our young family have already moved at the place. We´ve travelled for two days across the sea to be in this place and we´ve sold what we had back home.

My parents decided to put up their own business selling herbal medicines that were important from another big island, Cebu. Once the medicine stocks would arrive, my mom and dad would go house to house to canvass them and deliver. They would leave early in the morning at six and would come home late at night at around ten. Then started my ordeal.

My parents did not trust to hire anyone as babysitter because of the rampant poisoning in the place. We were instructed to not leave the house and not accept any food from strangers. My parents made me understood that there´s nobody they could trust to take care of the little ones but me. I was five years old but my parents told me I´m old enough. I had to take care of my sister who was three and a half, and my baby brother who was a little over than a year.

I did a really good job babysitting, I was forced to grow up. But up to now when my parents and I talk about my babysitting, I still cry.I was a one year of torture for me. Every morning I woke up early and as I see my parents prepping to go, I´d beg them to stay. But they´d tell me if they stay, we won´t have anything to eat.

My parent prepare our food early at dawn and they´d instruct me hat to feed to my siblings. They´d keep the knives and matches away and make sure that if we have fish for lunch, it´s free of bones. I remember they usually cooked fried eggs for our lunch. They also prepare the milk for my brother so I just had to feed him when he´s hungry.

I dreaded cleaning my brother when he pooed and I hated my little sister for being so lazy, she just wanted to play and refused to help me whenever  I needed help. But what could you expect from a three year old girl? I never learned to smile.

After a year my parents business became big and they had over ten people under their wing. My mom started staying at home every other day. My burden started to ease.

I know that my parents were always proud of me for taking responsibility at such early age but to their surprise, when I was already working and one night after dinner the topic about our life in Zamboanga was brought up for the very first time, I cried like a baby. It was a deep rooted pain from my childhood that was peeled open. My parents never had any idea how much torture the babysitting was for me.

I was able to bring out what I had buried down in my heart and memories for my parents to know. They apologized and explained their reasons. After that very emotional talk, I was able to move on. To date, I no longer cry whenever I talk about my babysitting, and I´ve learned to smile.

The Pain of Losing a Loved One

I recently lost my grandpa on my father´s side. He was a dear old man who was bed ridden for over three years before he finally gave in. We received the news via text message from my dad that he´s gone last Saturday night at 1am here in Europe which was early Sunday in the Philippines, and I cried my eyes out. Throughout my grieving process, my husband was beside me, embracing. My grandpa´s burial was today.

There´s a lot to share about this event, but it´s still very painful to share as of now. Once the pain subsides, I´ll go back to this story and share it here because there´s a lot to learn from it.

For now, check the poem I wrote for him two weeks before he left - The Medicine. I originally posted it at my poetry blog.

Photo credit: weheartit

Do You Play Online Casino for Real Money?

Photo credit: wehearit.com

I and my husband love to play a game, we call it a pretend game. This usually happens whenever we´re cuddled on our sofa and the conversation flows to our finances.

The game would start with me asking, "What if we win 10, 000 euro? I probably would buy me five pairs of Jimmy Choo." Then hubby would interrupt, "Ah, that´s not a lot at all. Make it a million instead." Then we´ll drift into day dreaming thinking how awesome it´d be to renovate our house here in Germany, we´ll build a pretty house in the Philippines, and my husband would build my parents a bigger house, give them additional capital for their grocery store and add security equipments. We´re free to dream but we think only of the most important, based in reality.

But the problem is, we sure will never win any money because we don´t play lottery or casino. We just don´t.

Although I was never enticed to play any form of gambling, for fun or for monetary aims, I do wonder how addicting it would be. I recently came across  casinobonus and was amazed with how big its audience is. Is this site for people who hate wasting time in facebook or watching some nonsense YouTube video and prefer to spend their free time playing for fun hoping to cash out some money and buy them some beer instead? Or is this site for people who seriously wish to win big bucks? I wanted to know so I probed deeper.

They have thousands of feedburner subscribers and over twenty thousand facebook fans. That´s honestly a lot of figure. Reading more about the site I gathered that readers are enticed to play casino online because the site offers no deposit bonus. The way I understand it is that you can play without actually paying out some real money and when you win, you can cash out quick your profit. It´s like profiting without the need of capital.

Reading through the comments in the site I understood that the players usually receive casino bonuses in their casino account and emails and they can use it to play casino just for fun. There´s nothing really wrong about this because they´re not spending any money, but the danger lies on being engrossed with the game and once the free chips ran out but they still have the drive to play eager to salvage back the chips that used to be theirs, then they´re tempted to use their own money. And this is how it works. It´s very easy to slip and get overwhelmed, there´s a lot of excitement. But is this really a win-win for fun kind of game?

My grandfather who used to be very well-off was forced to file for bankruptcy after he was addicted to gambling. It all started with friends inviting him for fun, fun which eventually ended in misery. So you see, this urged me to be very careful in trying to play casino. And to be safe, not play at all.

How about you? How do you find online casino games? Do you play for fun?

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Thank God, Burn Out Finally Hits Me!

I´m really turning into a computer geek! For a year now since I moved to Germany, my life has evolved around my laptops, my websites and my online entrepreneurship dreams. I´m very ambitious, I want my fashion blogazine to grow big, quick. I also want my marriage blog to grow into a fulfilling and active community, but boy, how much work they require?

On top of that, I also have my personal style blog that I couldn´t afford to totally abandon so after half a year of not publishing it, I just found myself crawling back to it. Then here´s my online journal, while it´s not demanding too much time, it´s page rank and traffic decreased a ton after not writing on it actively for like a year. Could you believe that I´m still launching another website? Yeah, I´m prepping for it too, the launch of Creative Fashion for Kids. That´s how ambitious I am. I want to expand my online territory.

Bu I´m happy that today, I felt very burned out. So much so that I started planning what I have to do in order to get some me-time. I decided I better sacrifice this week writing two quality articles per stay for my fashion magazine, four articles for two weeks worth of posts for my marriage blog, and some alternating posts for my personal blog, then schedule them to go live until next week. That way, I get the entire week next week having more freedom, enjoying promoting the blog by visiting other blogs, do my yoga routines here at home before I start to work, and start to deal with my overflowing stash of laundry for ironing. 

I owe myself some free time, I´ve punished her enough to to work hard so much without enjoying much of life. I´m up into this challenge and I´ll update you soon how it´s going.

How about you? How do you deal with burn out?

Photo credit: wehearit