#lance bruner i love what you represent

[imapinkflamingo]

and this is why I do what I do!!!

If you have watched the 65th Miss Universe Competition that was held in my home country last January 2017, you probably heard the questions that was asked to Miss Philippines-

What is the most significant change you've seen in the world in the last 10 years?

Her answer isn’t bad at all but in my own opinion, she probably can do better, but then, who I am to judge her, I probably won’t even manage to enter the screening of Binibining Pilipinas let alone represent Philippines in this prestigious event. So to Maxine, who did all the best she can to bag the crown, I salute you.

But after the pageant, and Ms. France was crowned as the New Miss Universe, that questions made me think “What is the most significant change I've seen in the world in the last 10 years”, and if I were to ask the same question as she had, I probably answer like this:

The most significant change I’ve seen in the world in the last 10 years is how technology advances drastically that it becomes an integral part of our daily lives. Because of technology we have awaken the storyteller, the voices, and the ideas that is living inside of us. Technology became a very powerful tool that can be compared to MJOLNIR the hammer of Thor in the movie Thor or the fish hook of Maui in Disney’s Moana.

From what I’ve read in one of the blogs I usually visits, we’re all born storytellers and I couldn’t agree more on that. It's part of the species. We spend most of our lives, wittingly or unwittingly, telling stories. In fact, it’s not something we have to learn, it’s something we do, day in and day out, every day. It’s something that we are able to do at the age of two.

Jerome Bruner has documented how little children at this age, as soon as they can start to talk, show that they understand the stories that their families tell them, and they start to tell their own stories, and in particular start to tell stories to themselves as part of their first efforts to make sense of their lives.

It happens so easily and so spontaneously and so pervasively that some scientists believe that storytelling is hard-wired into our brains.

If you know me personally, some say that I’m quiet, reserved, monosyllabic, never saying a word at the dinner table, never regaling with stories. So what I am doing, bothering to come out with a story about people being storytellers.

To answer that question, let me tell you another story. My story.

For the last 26 years, I’ve been trying hard to find my place, on why I do what I do. I have tried numerous ways, tests to find and come out with that one special thing people call passion, I thought it was art, but it’s actually just a part of a bigger picture. Just one part.

I’ve tried almost everything and anything that I can get my hands on, building business, finding jobs but nothings fulfills me.

As the saying goes, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything. Nothing satisfies me that it’s affecting not only me mentally and emotionally but everything, people, relationship that involves me. Well just a heads up, this is not a how to overcome story or success story, it’s just a story, my story.

I get so fed up that living becomes a chore. A very boring chore and how badly I pray to anyone to show me the end of this dark tunnel. But then after giving some thought, I came to realize that this is my story and it depends on me on how to write it, in what genre will I be basing it. Be it e a dramatic one, a thriller, a comedy, a horror, it all depends on me.

And so I drag my sorry ass, and force myself to try once more. I wanted to change my story and not just remain in this single page that I keep re-writing. We all have that desire to change our own story for the good. We all keep writing our stories everyday and believing that it will someday not long from now will lead to a better one, a happy extraordinary story to tell our next generation someday.

Well, I do hope that myself and that becomes a driving force for me to find my why, which I don’t know yet until I happen to stumble on Brad Hussey’s blog. The thing is, when I’m in trouble or in doubt, I don’t usually like talking about it to anybody, I keep it all to myself and the internet becomes my only confidante. What I do is, I google everything I want to know and from the robust solutions google offers, I search the most interesting story that I can find, and most of the time, google never fails me. That’s why it became my habit that when people ask me something I always answer: Igoogle na yan, meaning why not try google to search for it.

One of the many reasons why I consider myself blessed to live in this century cause if I were born on the latter year imagine what would I do every time I have a questions in mind, I probably be living in a library or a bookstore by then.

So back to my story, given that I don’t have much choice left, I decided to try a trending career that everybody seems to adore and praises. Become a Web/Graphic Designer. Sure, that shouldn’t be a problem, after all I’m a Computer Science Student in College, that should be easy peasy, So I set a new goal, to become a web designer and have my so called FREEDOM. That was last September 2016 but why is that up until now I didn’t manage to become one and I still don’t have any website that has my name on it.

I don’t even know why, I’m as puzzled as you, as soon as I decided that I wanted t be a Web Designer, I Immediately purchase courses online teaching the quickest way on how to design a website, read numerous books recommend by almost everybody, and boy, I was drowning in information. But I can’t seem to finish what I started, and I get tired and just drop the whole thing then in an instant I shifted to a career that I thought would suit be better.

A wedding card designer, up until I realized recently that I’m not really good with “physical product”. So what’s left of me, back into web designing just to kill time and hopefully earn some extra income.

As a habit, while opening 30-40 tabs of different sites on how to become a web designer, and downloaded countless free-ebooks detailing how can I be a successful Free Lancer, I remember Brad Hussey’s blog, I have always admired that guy because he was able to build a company and work for himself. And you can feel his passion towards what he is doing, just go ahead and check out his courses in Udemy. You will never regret. It’s a really good investment for your hard earned money. So yeah, I reread the entire content of his site, and at that instant I was fascinated and captivated once more by his beautiful, very wonderful story, about his life, his family, his wife and kids, his vacations, about everything that he does, and I tell to myself, this man is living at his dream life, his living life to the fullest. And honestly my heart aches realizing that I can have a totally different lifestyle if I can only find my passion. What I don’t know that time is that I’m actually having the wrong question.

Then I remember that somewhere in my file I have saved his free-eBook on freelancing, a 68page book, The Seven Step Free-Lancing Roadmap: How To Build Your Freelance Business When You Have No Idea Where To Start, and is it a coincidence or maybe just the universe trying to remind to slow down cause I already have my answer.

So here we goes, I open the book and guess what it ask me to do on his Step 1: Define your Why. His explanation seems to hit hard on me, but I feel like there’s more that I want to know, the good thing is on the last part of the 1st Step he gave a link to watch Simon Sinek's Ted Talk, called "How great leaders inspire action”.

Nothing to lose, I quickly head to the link and downloaded it in my mobile phone. So after downloading and listening to it while on my way home, I feel “enlighten” that I literally utter the word “and that’s it, that’s what I’m missing all this years, “that is why I can’t find it, cause I don’t know what is my WHY?...

I didn’t know my WHY. Why do I do what I do?

And in that instant, answers came flooding, reflection after reflection

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever”.

Then I look back, why did I took Computer Science when I was in College, why I love to browse and search information online, why I love the website so much, why I love to read blogs and such, why I can stay in social media for hours. Why I love to write and put my opinion in my blog. It’s because I am a storyteller and at the same I am also a story listener.

We all have our own stories that we love to tell the world. Just look into facebook for an instance and you can see the countless post of individual people going on and on about their daily lives. We are all story tellers.

We all want the world to know our stories, that’s why the blogging industry is booming cause everybody wants to have a say at something. Everybody wants to be involve at something. And what better ways to tell this stories than to take advantage of the technology that is accessible to everybody at any given time anywhere in the world. See, that is the power of today’s technology, it create bridges and remove boundaries.

With the advance technology that we have, any information can be easily access to any devices, ipads mobile, as long as you have the connection. The gap of doubts and questions that we are embarrassed to ask others and keep hidden to ourselves can be easily verify and answer with just a single search in google or yahoo.

But with this privilege comes a heavy responsibility that most of us maybe don’t know, forgotten and usually ignored.

I remember an incident just last year that in my opinion describe this very situation, where one of my schoolmate in highschool was being attacked by a random individual who clearly don’t know his place when he said those harsh words to her. But hooray, my schoolmate backfired with a very witty response that in my opinion, doesn’t only applies to that individual but we should take a good look and learn from it

“I was trained by the University of the Philippines to pursue honor before excellence, to check my facts before sharing, to make sure that I understand the underlying meaning behind these words before I react, and If I don’t understand to ask questions”. Suzie F. Abela

Sometimes we can’t guarantee the credibility and "trueness" of the information that we found in search engines. But instead of checking facts, we blindly absorb or follow what they tell us, what to buy, to eat, what to watch, without even asking ourselves why do we need to. Just because it’s the current trend we tend to ignore the obvious facts underlying. We see bashing/ arguments everywhere and believe what we first read without knowing both sides. And it’s not technologies shortfall which we always used as a shield.

And that is why I choose web development and designing; I want to make a difference on how my story, your story, our stories will be share online. I have never been this eager to listen to your heart warming and delightful stories and make a way on how to share it responsibly so others will learn and be delighted in your success.

So why I do I do what I do? Because I am both a storyteller and a story listener. And I make it my goal to deliver reputable, reliable and accessible stories that can inspire and improve other’s daily lives. I want to create a haven where a storyteller and a story listener like myself can interact harmoniously.

To sum it up, let me borrow the iconic passage that makes Philippines shines once more. Sharing beautiful stories confidently with a heart, that’s why I create and develop websites.

(sorry for all the grammatical errors, I just need to write down my thoughts without filters so I can be at ease.. hahahaha)