Blogging with Windows Live Writer

Blogging on my Multiply site is very different from blogging here on Blogger. I felt that in Multiply, my creativity is limited because there’s not much I can do in my blogs there. Also, I could never figure out how to put photos in my Multiply blog.

So far here in Blogger, I have been enjoying writing my blogs with the help of Windows Live Writer. With Windows Live Writer, my creativity is not limited to the few options available on Blogger. Where there are few fonts to use on Blogger, Windows Live Writer has all the fonts available.

Another advantage is that I can write my blogs offline and save the draft. Aside from that, editing my blogs are ever easier because Windows Live Writer pulls my blogs online and takes it to my file where I can edit it.

Publishing photos have also been fun. Here are ways that photos can be published on Windows Live Writer:

Drop Shadow Border

Instant Photo Border

Photo Paper Border

Reflection

Solid Border

View Full Album

One of the ways you can post your photo album. Fun, right?

And that’s just about posting photos, there are so many more you can do with Windows Live Writer. You can post videos, tables, maps, add hyperlinks and so much more.

I learned about Windows Live Writer from Amy Bayliss. I posted a previous blog about this. Try it, you’ll probably enjoy it as much as I do.

Becoming A Home-Based English Editor

One of the first things Gary D. and I did was to look online and in the Sunday newspaper for work. I discovered a website www.bestjobs.ph that has plenty of work at home jobs posted. While I did apply for many of the jobs, I did not get even a single response from those ads. One Sunday, I saw an ad in the newspaper for a Korean company that was looking for Home-Based English Editors based somewhere in Mandaluyong. Now this really excited me. They did not require experience but they did require someone who communicates well in English (of course), with a PC and an internet service at home. They did say that work can also be done in an Internet rental shop, and you can work your own hours.

I applied for this job and was accepted. The job calls for me to download a Korean student’s essay and edit it. Apart from editing, we are also required to write down our comments. There should be from one to four comments per essay. Payment is given for every essay that we complete. The company will pay us between P10.00 to P15.00 (US$0.20 to 0.30).

At first, I was excited to do this job. It’s not hard for me to edit a student’s essay. However, it took me about 20-25 minutes to finish editing one essay. I did some computations and I figured that if I wanted to make about P10,000.00 monthly doing this, I’d have to be editing about 40 essays a day. Sleep would be impossible if I wanted to finish those 40 essays a day.

Gary D., to his credit, was very patient with it all. The two weeks that I worked there, I had to tell my children that I can’t be disturbed. My eyes started to hurt because I was working eight hours straight staring at my laptop. After two weeks, we computed my pay and it did not even reach P500.00 (US$ 11.00)! It was only when Gary D. told me that I paid my helper more than I was being paid that I finally decided to resign from this job.

Now I’m not saying that all home-based work is this way. I’ve read about others doing legitimate home-base work and are earning a lot from it. I will continue my search for that.

Fighting to Stay and Work At Home

The title of this blog actually means two things for us. First, we really just want for Gary D. to stay at home with us. We no longer want to be separated from each other. We have endured the two years that he was gone and now we just want to be together. When he came home, the children has flourished even more. Our Flash Boy, the baby, grew by leaps and bounds since Dad came home. Sunshine Girl has become more confident. Artsy Princess’ constant illness have gone away. Guitar Babe has relaxed and become more like a child again. As for me, I, too, have relaxed in every way possible. No longer do I have to constantly worry about being alone in our home. I’m able to rest more in him. Many of the responsibilities that I carried on my shoulders are now back on his shoulders. We just want him to stay in the Philippines with us. Really, the money earned working abroad is fine, but it doesn’t compensate for all the emotional losses we’ve experienced while being separated.

The other reason for the title of this blog is because I am also fighting to stay and do work from home. We are a family that homeschools and I love being a SAHM (Stay at home Mom). I can’t imagine our life being any other way. Of course, realities set in and the reality of earning more money for our living stares us in the face all the time.

We have considered putting the children to regular school so that I can work outside the home full-time. But we just can’t see that as the solution for us considering that we would have more expenses if I’ve had to work away from home. Expenses by way of purchasing office wear, transportation allowance, daily food allowance, hiring another live-in helper, paying for school bus service and the biggest of all, the kids’ tuition fee. Even if we had combined salaries, we feel that the expenses just does not justify my working full time. Apart from that, there would also be the stresses of not being available to the children when they needed me.

So we want Gary D. to stay in the Philippines with us and I want to continue to be with my children at home.

We are working on ways that we can do that and I’ll be sharing with you in future blogs what we have done and are doing to accomplish this.

On Writing Full Time

One of the first things I've done was to consider what I'm really good at and what I enjoy doing. I know I do considerably well with writing but have never considered going into full time writing. However, writing gives me an outlet with which to express myself. There are just so many thoughts in my mind all the time that writing is much like a brain dump to me. If I don't write down my thoughts, they're just floating around in my mind. When thoughts are floating unattended in there, new thoughts and ideas just can't come in.

Since hubby was in the US, I've already read intermittently about people earning money online through writing or blogging. I was curious about this but never took it as seriously as I should have. However, this did lead me to open my very first blog with Multiply. Multiply gave me my first taste in blogging, uploading photos and videos, etc. This is where I first learned that I can do it.

Last year, I applied to become a homeschool product reviewer for a magazine in the USA. I did not really think that I'd make it since they said that there are over 800 applicants for only 100 spots. Fortunately, I'd been accepted to become one out of the 100. I believe this meant that my writing is good enough for this magazine. So on I became a product reviewer and blogged my reviews in my Multiply site.

A few months after that I attended a homeschool conference with over a thousand people. Imagine my surprise when some people would stop me and say that they've been reading my blog and appreciated my reviews. Some even went on to say that they were so encouraged by my blogs and would forward it to friends. Wow! Then this must mean that my blogs are good. The seed that was planted in my heart some years ago is now being watered and growing.

I still was not that convinced because I kept putting off creating a new blog. You see, on Multiply, you can't apply Google Adsense in your site. So there's no hope of monetizing my blog there. Although, I would highly recommend Multiply for its ease of use and privacy.

What solidified my decision to open up this blog was our need to make money. For me, working outside the home was not an option. I really, really love being able to stay home with my kids. Teaching them at home is important to our family. The option that I had for me was to find work that I can do from home.

Writing for my own blog is one of the things that I'm doing now to earn. There's no earnings yet since I've just started but, hopefully, one day soon, I'll see the money coming in.

Gary D. is Home for Good!

Who is this Gary D?

Gary D is my pseudonym for my wonderful hubby. He loves Gary Valenciano and his first name's initial is D, hence the name.

I thought I'd start out with this post, in celebration and thankfulness to the Lord for bringing him home to us again. For everybody's info, Gary D. left to work for the US last November 2006. I was only three months pregnant with our fourth baby at that time. It was bittersweet, him having leave us. While we were looking forward to the dollars that he would earn, it hurt us to be so far apart. Gary D seriously loves to be with us, you see. If he's not doing anything, he'd rather be with us than be with anybody else. Our children enjoy a lot of playing time with him, and we love to have long conversations with each other. Despite this, because of our growing family, we decided to separate.

It was a difficult two years away from each other. Our children experienced several hospital confinements, and I developed anxiety attacks. One of our children was ill several times which our pedia attributed to missing her daddy so much. My anxiety attacks was brought about by the stresses of living by ourselves and caring for four children alone. For Gary D, his difficulty lay in not being around during those times. When we were at the hospital, he felt helpless and alone over there.

He did come back in May 2007 during the birth of our son. At the same time, his brother died a week after I gave birth. He was here for a total of six weeks. After six weeks, we had to take him back to the airport and say our sad goodbyes.

By the end of last year, he was allowed a three-week vacation by his boss. He came back home with the plan of leaving us again in three weeks. The children and I prayed that he will decide to stay with us instead. Upon coming home, we still continued to experience a lot of emotional stress due to adjusting to him being home. Despite missing him so much, we have already been used to living without him. We developed our own rhythm to life and suddenly he's here, and we have to consider him all the time. He, of course, noticed this and was saddened to see how much we have all changed while he was gone. One thing he did see clearly was the difficulty of raising up the children by myself. Guitar Babe, our eldest, once told me "Dad is not our dad anymore, he is just the giver of money". Sad to hear but I can't blame her, she's telling the truth.

After about a week and a half, he was already unsure about going back to work abroad, but can't decide yet because of the lack of a job here in Manila. However, going back abroad will mean that we will have to go into debt again for the purchase of his return ticket. We felt that we can no longer do that again. We considered for him to go back and return again when he has found a job here. However, we did not consider this a wise move because of the debt that we will incur to purchase his plane ticket and the amount of time that it will take for him to save up for another plane ticket home. We felt that this was already impractical.

The deciding factor, though, was really what God had put in his heart for his family. We are a family that deeply loves the Lord. This family needs a present husband and a father to four precious lives. We had to ask ourselves, “Was the money he was earning worth the time lost with us?” And the only answer was “No”.

After some time, he finally decided he’s not leaving us anymore. It’s a risk we took. He doesn’t have a job here. I, too, am not working. After considering the possible things that could happen to us while he’s still looking for a job, we decided we’ll go for that risk rather than risk losing each other.

This is the reason for this blog and this blog’s title. We are a Filipino family dedicated to staying together here in our home country. We have not given up our dreams to migrate to another country, but as of the moment, we are here to stay. This blog will be about our efforts in making it work here. We’ll be sharing about our income generating opportunities and how it is working for us.

Getting Into the Groove (of this Blog)

Phew! Although I do maintain a blog on Multiply, I haven't been that technically savvy with it. I mean I've seen posts with pictures on it. I tried doing the same thing but have been unsuccessful so far. Not one to give up, I've been researching on ways that I can post pictures within my blog. So far, I've come across Split Decisionz, a website by Amy Bayliss where she offers tutorials, some free blogger templates, buttons and the like. I am subscribing to her site because I know I'll learn much from her.

Now I am going to try to post a photo here and it should appear below this sentence:

Okay, so far I got it to go where I want it to go. But what's with the blue line? Earlier today I kept trying to post photos in my other blog, but I was obviously unsuccessful since that first blog doesn't have even one photo on it. I decided to let it go for awhile and just come back to this.

Now what I've done is to choose to tick box where it says no layout. I then cut my original post and pasted it on top of this photo. Worked, right? Right, but I am wondering how to get rid of that blue line.

By the way, that pix was taken by my Guitar Babe during her beach outing with her grandparents.

Okay so back to the purpose for this blog.