Sunday, January 10, 2016

Retired @ 40

I dreamed it to be this way, not working by the age of 40. I think it's cool to be working at my own pace, my own time, no longer under the command and control of somebody in a corporate world --- just consulting.

But I never thought this could be boring, to have nothing to work on routinely. I never thought this could be that scary, to think of many ways to raise income pr funds to defray recurring obligations. I am grateful nevertheless to be that way so that I could attend to my ailing and aging mother and my little but growing very fast niece, because we don't have househelp.

I've been jobless for more than 3 months now. Although, my last quarter of 2015 was still busy conducting series of training for the proponent groups of Philippine Rural Development Project or PRDP, a project of the Department of Agriculture, funded by The World Bank. The I-REAP component was building the capacities of the people's organizations which will benefit the project. I got a total of 4 contracts with them: Regions 1 and 3; Mindanao and Visayas.

I was confident I have saved much to pay for my car loan amortization. I was also expecting collections from the training fee I earned. But waiting is indeed painful, and uncertain. I needed to adopt this sort of earning for a living as I will be dealing with the same when practicing fully the consultancy.

So I decided to give teaching profession a second shot. I was able to obtain 18-unit load with the nearest St. Dominic Savio College in North Caloocan City. Despite the meager pay, I considered it as a way of keeping myself busy professionally. I was being paid P150.00 an hour here, versus my current rate of P1,000.00 when conducting a training.

With it came a drab and dragging month of January. In fact I celebrated my 40th birthday in a simple house party with immediate family. This was one challenging time because all of us were ill and went to the doctor for checkup and then medication followed. Another chunk off my savings.

And I was still waiting for consultancy engagements. I recently drafted a project proposal with the Provincial Government of Palawan, through its Provincial Economic Enterprise Development Office about the conduct of financial management system training for waterworks systems constructed by the province and turned over to the municipalities. That proposed 6-day training is expected to happen sometime in March or April of 2016. Then I accidentally stumbled into contracting a technical assistance program for DSWD Region 8, related to my former project with the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the Kalahi-CIDSS Project. This was about the Organizational Development and Management of completed Income-Generating Projects in select municipalities in the region. This was quite the challenging contract so far because I have prepared the project proposal indicating therein a team of experts with myself as the Team Leader.

Yet again, I was still waiting... There were more prospects. I collaborated with my former mentor, Ma'am Stella, on more water service providers which need assistance in the preparation of their Business Plans. Small jobs were also availed in collaboration with another mentor, Ms Nene.

While waiting, I preoccupied myself with preparing lessons and test question for my college classes.

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