While my work may have contained my life in the four corners of my home, it also brought some unparalleled events and evolution not just in my life but also to others who were directly attached to me in the offline and online world. I personally believe that I experienced some things that you can’t get in a real office environment. Of course, I also recognize that there are also things I have missed. I guess I can just say “C’est la vie.” I think that if I was working in the city, it would have exposed me to different places and people. Unfortunately, that’s not my circumstance and that being said, I’m relying on my holistic dynamism and upbeat intellect that have brought advancements despite my situational constraints. I believe it will continue to push me forward in the next years to come. After all, I think and dream about my future every day and I parallel that with hard work.

Recollection and Evaluation

When I started my work 2 years ago, I had nothing else in my mind than just four goals that boosted my motivation:

• to find an opportunity to visit, work, and live abroad,
• to solidify my career in Information Technology,
• to make money to help my parents and brothers, and
• to find new special people that I could integrate and be part of my life.

My first goal didn’t happen yet; I kind of fulfilled the second one but not to a sustainable point due to changing circumstances; the third one is a continuous work and that’s evidenced by what I do online; and the latter, I believe I managed to find special people that are now part of my life.

The past two years working at home have taught me many things and brought realizations that I have presented in the past milestone posts listed below.

• 18 Months Home Work Performance as Freelance IT Professional and the Bed!
• 365 Days Of Home Computer Work
• My Workplace After Nine Months Of Home Work

Professionally-talking, I think being a freelance developer has a risk especially when you’re not eager enough to teach yourself to be better in your field of expertise. As in my case, I have no choice but to develop my knowledge. It’s the key to realizing my goals and it has always provided me ways through life’s obstacles.

What’s Ahead

As uncertain as the future can be, I can only pledge to be consistent with my hard work to realize the goals I have and to be dynamic with each new circumstance. I’m looking forward to meet my online friends, I’m excited to the development of my tech news show, to start new venture and engage more in online business, to hone my I.T. expertise, and most importantly, to fly somewhere. With all these goals I have, it only means there’s an opportunity to do more in the years to come.

Reviewing it will give me hint where the direction of my life will point this year and I will be able to find out necessary ways to continue my pursuit of happiness and success for myself, for my family, and for the top people directly connected to me (top 10 of them were listed in my previous post). It has been noted that the year has been pleasant in 2007, let’s find out if this was the case in 2008.

January 2008

• I’ve set the official goals of this blog for 2008. Its objectives were to be able (1) to be able express what I have in my mind and heart, (2) to be able to monetize this blog, and (3) to be able to entertain a greater number of readers with what I write. These goals were achieved successfully.
• I stumbled online and befriended John MacDonald, a computer skilled bachelor blogger from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
• Six months milestone working at home alone as web developer.

March 2008

• I’ve met and befriended Chris Morris online, through connection with John MacDonald. He is highly-skilled computer guy from Melbourne, Australia.
• I’ve made a teaser video for this blog using 3Ds Max. A big  professional accomplishment for me.

April 2008

• Made a post on how bloggers should spend their breaktime: do the locomotion.
• I bought Altec Lansing VS3251 surround sound system to amplify the celebration of my father’s 50th birthday.
• John Raul Dot Com gains Google Page Rank of 3.

May 2008

• Nine months milestone working at home alone as web developer.
• I had my 21st birthday. I entered the age of adulthood by concept.

June 2008

• My online friend Gregory White of Perth, Western Australia, Australia, passed away from kidney failure.
• I opened up the feeling I have for my boss. He didn’t feel the same.
• I’ve met and befriended Gerardo Velasco. He is very good, highly-skilled computer geek from Alhambra, California, United States.

July 2008

• I upgraded my laptop’s RAM from 1 GB to 3 GB.
• John Raul Dot Com gains Google Page Rank 4.

August 2008

• One year milestone working at home alone as an IT professional.
• Brad C. from Melbourne, Australia, popped up from my channel’s chat page on Justin dot TV and we became friends.

September 2008

• The Google PageRank of this blog shrink from 4 to 2, and two weeks after, to zero. It was the greatest loss of this blog this year.
• After 21 years, I got my own room (no bed yet so it can’t be called bedroom – LOL ).
• I met new friends, Dimitar and Alexander Avramov, executives of Host Color.
• I bought an external mobile SATA drive.

October 2008

• I got an aircon through monthly installment payment basis.

November 2008

• After 7 years, I met Lynden Libres again after arriving from Brisbane, Australia. She was a girl of my past.
• When the love I have for someone in Montreal became clearer, it encouraged me to slowly open myself up to my family and some trusted friends about my same-sex feelings and self-identification. They were generally accepting and supportive about it — but action speaks louder than words. Of Kinsey’s scale, I put myself between 3 and 4 from 0 to 6 — that’s bisexual, but you can call me non-effeminate, manly gay if you want — not an issue. After all, I agree with what modern psychologists found out that sexuality is fluid throughout lifetime and I’m motivated to succeed. The issue is with narrow-minded, less-evolved and fearsome people who find it hard to deal with people like me. I believe I can continue to be more productive and compassionate by being myself. I know what I protect: home and family, the younger people, and the people on my side directly connected to me, regardless who they are. I want everyone to be happy and each of them deserves equality and respect as a human.

December 2008

• No bonus. Slightly lower salary due to monetary crisis — yet I was still able to make my family/relatives happy with little gifts full of good thoughts. I am happy about it.
• I sent cards to the people who matter most in my life in year 2008.

Conclusion

The year 2008 has brought many changes with my standards of living and my life, due to the hard and consistent work I did in 12 months. I got my first room and aircon, something I didn’t have for 21 years. I am grateful to what I have and to everyone who contributed and involved in this.

Before the end of the year, however, I had to define myself better based on what I feel so that others will be able to define me and they will know how to deal with me personally and professionally. I would have been more productive if circumstances were favorable but it turned out that I was still productive enough due to my personal commitment, selfless love, and promises. The number one person in my 2008 was instrumental to all of this so I can’t let him down, neither are the people and friends who stayed on  my back regardless of circumstances.

Happy New Year and peace be with you.

This website just breathed to life and started barren on the Web last December 16. In my spare times I have worked on writing and posting blog articles that would express my mind and heart. Now, this is my eighth blog post and more yet to come.

In the Year of the Earth Rat (2008), this website aims primarily to be productive in whatever ways it could – productive in a sense that it would benefit, invoke and entertain a greater number of readers including myself. Secondly, I want this site to monetize and find out what online money-making fuss is all about. I know it is true; I just want to experience it.

Now in connection to that, the advent of 2008 comes with a major facelift for John Raul dot Com. I’ve started integrating ad networks into this site for fun (never tried it before) and placing them strategically. If you browse my blog’s pages, you will see. I decided to go for Google AdSense, TTZ Media and BidVertiser as my merchants. Initially, I cannot jump to more ambitious affiliate networks yet because they require high traffic and substantial amount of regular visitors. As of this writing, I only have three RSS feed subscribers.

So, today I will mark the commencement of my efforts toward this site’s goals for 2008. Let me do it by showing you my initial income stats from my ad networks.

We will see in the upcoming months if the barren figures above will change. I’m sure it will. I want give credits to popular blogs like John Chow’s (he visited this site!) and Maki of Doshdosh. I’ve been reading their blog posts and awed by the success stories of their blogging ventures.