THE GREAT BEYOND: SEOs and other stories

i'll be flying off to singapore by tuesday next week, and i've started creating a path for extra income that i could generate while i stay in the merlion city. recently, i was accepted as a home-based freelance email writer for an online content provider. this is my first venture as a PAID freelance writer. my first assignment came last night at around 6:16pm. and of all the topics that i had to write on, i got the most wicked of all: sports. LOL

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i've never been much of a sports buff, and you'd wonder why. my dad was a former varsity player for Don Bosco Academy during high school in Tarlac City and for FEU during his college days. He was also a reservist for the swimming team and did tandem boxing.

with all the sporty things my dad did during his bachelor days you'd think his first borne would catch up. well, guess what: i didn't. i never took a liking towards sports. it felt brutish to me, especially because i got bullied in grade school by jocks and all other boys who were either into basketball or was a member of the boy scouts. yes, i was one of the taller boys in class, but my body frame was flimsy and feeble because i was often rushed to the hospital due to some complication or allergies.

i didn't spend a lot of time outdoors. since i was the firstborne nephew in the philippines (i had an older cousin who was in san diego, california), most of my then bachelorette aunts bought me books, indoor games and some betamax tapes (ah, the beta max. but that's another issue, este blog) of popular cartoons in the 80s. i took little affinity to playing sports, since people thought of me as the homebody type who read a lot, knew a lot, but couldn't shoot a ball. i was stereotyped as a nerd. and i guess because i didn't like to socialize much, i accepted the label.

ten years after formal elementary and secondary schooling, i never got over the indifference towards sports, finding little time nor effort to get involved in it other than those forms that were set indoors. i tried wallclimbing and weight lifting for a while. i took a liking towards cross-country cycling too. but all these passed, seeing that in the end, the bad memories of sports haunted me even more.

*** FLASHBACK

it was a typical day in gym class, and we were playing volleyball. sadly, it was a one-on-one exercise. i was in my googly glasses and my opponent was a school varsity. you know what happened next. humiliation 101. and then there was a time i was walking along the school field with friends, and lo and behold, a baseball hits me right on the noggin. this happened twice. sometimes i would start thinking that people intentionally hit me with a baseball, or a volleyball or a basketball. i was an ostracized yapping nerd who found no solid clique. i was a drifter. now you know why i hated high school.

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and so i write my first SEO article today. my due is monday, jan31st. can i complete all five? i'll have to try. sayang ang raket. but i'll have to muster more than words to make sure i can write what i need to write. sports has always brought bad memories of bruises, both for the elbow and the heart. heaven help me.

still here. hey.