Motherhood or Career? Your Choice is as Good as Your Filipino VA's

I've been constantly told you're one of our more successful freelancers here in Zamboanga. But am I really? How do I measure my success? Let me just take you back in time then. I used to work in Makati City as a call center agent. And a typical day for me then would be to wake up at 3am so that I can get ready for my 7am shift. And it would usually take me up to three hours to commute to work and I'd leave for work to look. And then when I got home to lug nayumang a nako some days I had to miss work. The nanny suddenly quit and wala pagiwanan sa kids because all of my relatives and all of my husband's relatives were in the province. I realized that I wanted to really be there for them. I wanted to be part of their formative years. I wanted be part of all their milestones and gusto. Kona Naga Guide as they were growing up so in 2014, finally we decided to move back home to Zamboanga where my husband turned into the sole provider for our family and I had to scrounge for cash just to make ends meet. I was able to actually find work as an online content writer with essays ph so I was able to earn at least usually around 300, 300 to 600 pesos every few days. Once my writing outputs were submitted and pagna bayara nasha I would earn a little bit of money. That gig helped, but finances were still really, really tight. I even had to sell or pawn our stuff. Even our wedding rings. I had to pawn our wedding ring and also the event like 300 pesos yung nebulizer just to have enough cash for us to e at least two to three meals for the day and kinabukasan ibang struggle to make things worse, at that time all of my gadgets were broken, my laptop was broken, my tablet was broken. So whenever I had to do a writing assignment, I had to go to an Internet shop. And usually when I would work at the mall, I would go there at 9am Kasamakayong four year old at that time. And then I would work for about three to four hours and then we would go home around 12 noon. So since super in it, my daughter would often fall asleep. I had to tie her to my body using my jacket. I would wrap it around both of us and then tie it behind me so that while I'm driving she wouldn't fall off. So that was also another part of the struggle and then I stumbled into ESL teaching where the pay was good but only if you spent all of your waking hours working. Yung kids. They would mostly just nakatutok lang sama gadgets. They were too skinny because I didn't have enough time to cook them, cook healthy meals for them, whatever was just available and then wala kaming mother daughter bonding whatsoever. When I resumed searching around 2015. By 2016 I was able to finally land a client on onlinejobs.ph and I'm very thankful for that client because he actually taught me all the foundations of all the things, the skills that I am doing right now. This time around I was able to take it slow and to just really enjoy their childhood and really enjoy being kids. And right now I was elected as president of the Zamboanga ICT Council. I'm planning to offer mentoring sessions for interested people who want to learn how to work as virtual assistants or WordPress developers. And I am planning to do that. I'm still trying to iron out the details of that. So that's it. Happy life. That's my real success. Happiness. My kids bonding. My kids learning to communicate well with each other and my kids learning to, you know, just laugh and be happy. That's my real success. Thank you for listening to my story. Freelancing has given me a chance to live my dreams and find deep satisfaction in my success. May you also find the type of success that satisfies your soul.