Having it all, then slowly watching it all die

I've reached a stage in life where I'm so content, that I feel like I have it all. A stable and loving relationship, a great drama-free family, great friends (finally!), financial freedom to some extent, and best of all, the flexibility of being self employed.

I'm past the days of being overly emotional, but I do admit my teenage years were trying, and the two years I spent working corporate jobs was unbearably depressing, it was difficult to even drag myself out of bed every morning.

That all changed when I finally had to do some soul searching and figure out what it was that would drive me in life, and make me happier. That's when I left the corporate world and became self employed.

It seemed like my world was my oyster - I felt I had a lot of untapped potential and was eager to release it without the constraints of being tied down to doing things the way other people wanted me to do them.

It was basically all high flying from there; the money I earned was finally inline with the effort I was putting in. I was seeing instant results, plus I had the time to pursue my dreams. This year I admit I felt like I was at the top of my game. I made my first car purchase; my lovely Volkswagen Polo, something I would never regret buying as its served me well. Then came my first property investment a few months later. I started feeling like I might be in a bit of a pinch, but then, as always, I was confident that as long as I kept making an effort, I would still be making money.

Now, ever since I started being self employed, I'm at an all time low. A big chunk of my income from my lip balm business is now coming to a halt, mostly due to my supplier's decision to double the retail price, making her product so uncompetitive in the Malaysian market, that no one wants to buy it anymore. It's not like she cares; I doubt that I'm a huge contributor to her business and its one market that she's probably willing to let go of.

Another big chunk of income came from my selling on a Singaporean shopping portal, and that was mostly due to the efforts of a very efficient and hard working account manager, who has since left the company. The result? I can't even log in to sell my products anymore, let alone have any chance of them being promoted. How about my eBay sales? Restricted. As eBay has super anal rules, I can practically only post up 6 auctions every month. How can that be effective?

What's frustrating more than anything, is that these three factors are totally beyond my control, and not having that control is what led me to being depressed when I was working corporate. It's the worst feeling ever, and I honestly feel like I'm back at the drawing board, analyzing what other potential businesses there are out there that I can conquer. But seriously with the loans and fees and what nots that I'm having to shell out cash for, I'm once again on a depressing uphill battle.

Oxen have bad tempers

I'm an ox. I'm born in the year of the Ox, AND I'm a Taurus (almost wrote Tauren, I have obviously been reading to many World of Warcraft books. Just for the record, I have the whole collection). So those traits unique to the oxen, probably means times two for me.

I have a double dose of stubbornness. But one supposedly oxen trait that I DON'T have - I am NOT patient. I have low tolerance towards practically everything I encounter on a daily basis. I cannot for the life of me, tolerate incompetence, laziness, inefficiency, stupidity, and KIDS.

In fact, I think my impatience actually fuels my temper. I don't usually lose it, but when I do IT'S BAD!!! No joke. I hate myself when I crack and all Hell breaks loose.

One such loss of temper occurred today, I'm still seething like mad from the cause of my anger, but as I'm sitting he typing, and feeling zen from blasting music from my phone, I'm starting to regret how I handled the whole situation. In fact, I'm almost embarrassed. ALMOST.

You know how some people say never to send emails when you're angry, and just let it sit for a day before re-reading through to judge whether it's effective? Yeah, well I don't do that, I just don't have the patience. You piss me off, you WILL have an earful from me. And I will nag and nag and nag and go on and on and on about the issue and you will never hear the end of it. What's worse, I will always bring in highly irrelevant issues into the whole argument, and at the end of the day, no one really knows what I was pissed off about in the first place.

Yup, that's me. I'm a bit psychotic, but at least I admit it. I'm not afraid to admit it, so I guess I'm not a total lost cause as of yet.

At the end of the day, I just want to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry we argued about dog t-shirts, of all things. It sounds super ridiculous now, but I swear I was so mad. And to some extent still am. But I'll be ok, and look on the bright side, the best people in the world were always a bit quirky :p

Change of Heart

It's been 2 years since my last blog post. My "passion" for writing whatever I wanted to just went "fssst" and "poof" into thin air. What happened? I got greedy and materialistic, sad to say.

I became too ambitious and wanted to keep one of those blogs that everyone reads. The ones which I could make a killing out of from my readership. I wanted to transform this blog into "one of those" blogs!

So out comes the checklist - at that point in time, what did it take to own a "successful" blog?

1. Pictures and loads of them. The most successful blogs I've seen are those that have practically more pictures than words. I know, reading crap isn't as much fun as oogling that hot girl's cleavage.

2. A pretty face and a hot body. I say this because my boyfriend personally ONLY stalks blogs which have pictures (first point!) of the pretty blogger fully decked in make up, false lashes, colour contacts - ok a nice rack is also definitely a plus point there. Someone who looks good, and relishes in their narcissism. I have tried being like that, but after many, many futile attempts, I have abandoned trying completely. I am just not that kind of person. I don't even like to take pictures!

On that point alone, I don't even like wearing make up. In fact, I DON'T wear makeup and can't be arsed to do so! I am a very low maintenance, live-in-tank-tops-and-loose-pants kind of girl.

In other words I'm very lazy.

I could say I'm finally now comfortable in my own skin, and will not attempt to be someone I'm not. I don't mind dressing up for occasions, like the odd wedding and gathering I attend like, 4 times a year, but NO WAY could I do it every single day! I shudder at the thought.

3. Beauty or Food Blogging. Now I ADMIRE beauty and food bloggers, because unlike MOST bloggers which fall into point 2 above, their posts are full of substance. It takes a good handling of the English language to actually come up with all the adjectives to describe products / food. It takes time and dedication to write the posts. Unlike pretty bloggers who can finish up the writing portion of their blog posts in just about 30 seconds*

* I am not trying to be a bloody bitch and dismiss all pretty bloggers. It just so happens I'm very sore about a certain incident. I spent a good amount of money on an advertorial by a famous blogger, just to have churned out a good sized piece of CRAP. To add further insult to the injury, she blogged another post just less than 24 hours later full of nonsense SHOPPING pictures, which totally diminishes the impact of my advertorial!


So I actually tried beauty blogging (see my previous posts) but have failed dramatically. Sorry, I don't actually use enough beauty products to justify turning my blog into a beauty review site [see: Am too lazy to wear make up].

Food blogging is totally out of the question. There's no way I could actually refrain myself long enough to take pictures of food before actually scoffing it down. I enjoy food, I don't ever want to relate food to work of any kind. Plus I don't take pictures, enough said.

After all is said and done, I found that making money from blogging isn't for me and so totally gave it up. Until today. After my horrible experience with the advertorial, which was just last night, I realized that I didn't want to make money from blogs the way some people do, just by being pretty. I wanted to write stuff with substance! I wanted to be myself! Who cares if 99.9% of the global population wont' give a rat's arse about what I write or even come close to reading this?

From now I'll be writing to amuse... even if it's just myself.

Who IS Bringeroflite

Some people I know, must be thinking that I'm this pretentious little girl.

"Who does she think she is? A Bringer Of Light? Who does she think she's kidding?!"

Ok, they don't say it to my face, but I know some people out there do think it! So here's the history of my "nickname".

My sister gave this to me when I was a tiny tot, barely old enough to be able to read the words on this card. But it was from my sister, and boy I treasured it so!

I loved it so much, I kept this card with me wherever I went. It made me somehow feel at peace whenever I felt the world was so unfair.

And then, when it came a time when I started playing MMORPGs, finding a unique nick name for myself seemed easy as pie... "Bringeroflite" the shortened version.

The rest as they say, is history :) I now use this nick for everything!