The Tourist Gaze

A day in a beach means relaxation punctuated with a chance to get some of the new members in my professional circle. Though my original plans for this year were thwarted due to unfortunate and unforeseen circumstances, I have been trying to focus on silver linings the past couple of months, punctuated by me enjoying this quick weekend trip as best as I could.

I went with my new, uhm, colleagues (is that the proper term?) to Club Laiya in Batangas for some midyear thanksgiving. I needed this trip, if only to act as consolation for all my cancelled trips for the rest of the year.

2023 sucker-punched me with an insurmountable tidal wave of frustrations and stress. Those actually started in January: as I was enjoying my Morocco trip, the company I’ve been doing freelance work with for nearly the past seven years announced that they would be shutting down due to decreasing enrollment rates as a result of changing trends in the academic industry. It caught me off-guard, unsure how to deal with the bills as well as the loans, which I borrowed because I had big plans for this year.

February to April involved a lot of Zoom interviews, exams, and existential crises involving me lying on the floor asking the ceiling where the heck am I going to go from here. I had no idea how a random Viber message would lead me to somewhere really unexpected.

To keep the story short, I steered myself into the finance and sales industry, as well as learned some new life skills. It’s still going to be a long journey to stability, but I have faith I’ll get there.

As for my professional life, yep, I have become involved with the insurance industry — I underwent training, took a couple of exams, and about a month later, I have become a licensed financial advisor. It was initially done out of necessity, but this journey has evolved into one of self-discovery: one that involved many challenges and trials, but ultimately, a test of character and a revelation to what I can do further.

From reading academic essays, I have now been reading up on investments and other financial topics. From teaching students how to strengthen their writing, now I’m preaching to those who care to listen about the importance of saving and being responsible financially. If there’s one thing I regretted from the past three years I freelanced, it was that I didn’t invest part of my savings and was so single-minded in my goal to travel that I put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

But maybe most importantly, I have learned that even if one needs to be financially secure, many of the most important things in life can’t be bought. I was reminded of the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. We need to hold on to the right people and have the courage to let go of the wrong ones. It’s that letting go that allows us to reach greater distances and heights.