“I have nothing to lose by telling you that I have made mistakes that have affected all that I have worked for, bled for over the past thirty-six three years.”

Please allow me my Sharon Cuneta moment as I bring to you this blog post. Alam nyo naman.. feeling stariray din ako at times! 😛
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Once upon a time, before I was a wife & a mom, I had a life of my own. I was an EVP of a corporation. I led people, and they listened to me. My word was law. Then I got married, settled down, had a family. All of a sudden it was the life I wanted. Everything else that I was, all that I had before, paled in comparison. I was happy & content. I turned my back on career & concentrated on what was more important to me. Building a family.

Coming from a home with busy, accomplished but absentee parents, it was my ultimate goal to be a plain wife & mom when the time came. So that’s what I set out to do. I wanted a normal childhood for my kids where they had a mom to come home to after school even though the cookies on the counter were store-bought & not freshly-baked. A make-up free mom in worn shorts & loose, comfy t-shirts who picked them up daily & spent plenty of time with them.

With my new position as the light of the home, my voice slowly simmered to a whisper in the background. The hubby’s & the kids’ voice grew louder while mine diminished in the background.

That is until I got into blogging. Slowly but surely, my voice came back with a vengeance & I was attracted to the glitz & the politics of it all. I was suddenly a social media influencer with sponsors left & right who believed in me.

But then I was slowly losing myself as I was mesmerized by the glitter in the blogging world. Suddenly, I had people I didn’t know from Adam writing to me, praising me, loving me. So I wanted to please. I’m a people pleaser -which is more often than not, to my downfall. What used to be random posts became a forced daily habit because I was addicted to my new found voice. Blogging daily became a burden for me because I wanted the hits. I wanted the influence I was beginning to have on people I barely knew.

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It’s been stressful making sure I stayed on the Top 10 weekly list. My ranking fluctuated weekly between 8, 9, and 10. Grabe ang effort ko! But now, by taking myself out of the rat race, I can fully enjoy blogging again without the pressure. I am leaving at #9. YOU guys have put me there. Thank you! <3

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My posts are still long, but the contents are sometimes half-hearted that even I cringe when I read it. Somewhere along the line, I lost myself. I didn’t write for me anymore, but what I thought my readers would like.

So now, I’ve decided to disregard the ranking by taking myself out of TOPBLOGS, the hits counter and everything else that has been making me crazy, and just go back to writing like before. Good if I have news, pass muna if I don’t. I won’t stress anymore if I don’t have a post scheduled for the next day. And if I get sponsors, I will accept. But if I don’t, then I just have to leave it be.

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Even my kids have been complaining that the whole day my face is pressed to the laptop tinkering away. I have awoken, and it’s time to refresh. 😉

Thank you rugrats1981 for waking me..

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In exchange, may I request that you also employ the carrot & stick method, and see not just the bad -but also the good. Huwag naman kayo mag-comment kapag may ayaw lang o puna. We bloggers live for nice comments. We share, we put ourselves out there. So although we welcome the constructive criticisms, we also welcome the positive feedbacks. We’re also human, afterall. 😉

Thank you all for bearing with me. Now, I blog again for myself. I’ve taken out the ranking for the past couple of weeks & I must say, it’s very liberating not having to worry if I’m up, down, or somewhere in between! I just finished all my sponsored posts para wala na akong utang. And now I’m wiping the slate clean. From hereon out, I’ll start writing at my discretion & timetable, only when I want to, & only when I feel like it. No more pressure of delivering the daily news. My love & gratitude to you all! <3

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PS: SSEN is open to anyone who wants to guest blog. Send me a funny anecdote, a romantic story, or a new resto you want to be featured here. My only 2 criterias are: 1) You must not have an existing blog, 2) I shouldn’t have a nosebleed & brain aneurysm editing your content -spellcheck please. Email to SUGARGOSPICE@GMAIL.COM but let me just make it clear that sending it doesn’t guarantee a post here. I still have to determine if it’s something I, and my readers, will enjoy. No hard feelings please.

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