TOPAZ HORIZON

When I was a kid, my dream—aside from becoming a writer—was to become a postman. Yep, the guy who delivers mail. I figured I'd be at the post office early in the morning to get my batch of deliveries, then spend the rest of the morning going around houses and chatting with the people. Then I'll rest in the afternoon, and then—and here's when the real work begins—then I'll sit down and make up stories about the people I met that day.

I tested out that dream by selling tapa, tocino and longganisa one summer. I was 11 or 12 years old, very skinny, and I put the frozen meat in a pail of ice (very heavy) and walked around the neighborhood selling people breakfast. I had a great time. Everyone loved my products, everyone loved that a young girl was so entrepreneurial, and I loved that I met so many people and learned so much about them. After all, people like to talk to someone who brings food!

But the business ended when a neighbor, who had been getting meat on credit, refused to pay me. When I kept showing up at her door to collect payment, she finally set her dogs on me. That ended that business real quick. When I told my parents about it, in the hope they would confront the nasty neighbor and get me my money, my father said, "It's best this way. I don't like you out in the sun because your skin gets dark."

I hope to be a parent who encourages my kids to do crazy things. Hopefully, the crazy things are the sort that makes them money haha. Vince told me he was so charmed by this little girl who would collect rocks around her neighborhood, wash them and paint pretty designs on them, then sell the painted rocks to her neighbors. I wish our sons would be that entrepreneurial!

How inspiring is this?


He earns enough to buy LEGOs. Those things are so expensive! I know because we buy our boys LEGO all the time! He is so cute. And so encouraging to me because I want to sell bags again. You all know how that business failed spectacularly. But I don't regret it because I learned a lot.

As with my frozen meats business, I learned that credit must not be extended lightly. With the bag business, I learned that I can't just assume people are doing their jobs just because they said so. I actually have a business now, my freelance writing. I'm learning a lot, too, the most important being this: Start charging after the second meeting and don't be shy about my rates. Argh, I've wasted a lot of time and energy this year meeting prospective clients and working on proposals and mock-up projects which all went up in smoke anyway. So the project didn't push through but I spent time and money and brain cells on them anyway and I got nothing in return. Lesson learned! Just goes to show you're never too young or too old to learn something new!

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