Opportunities

What do you do when opportunity knocks on your door? There is a saying which says "opportunity only knocks once". Do you believe that opportunity only knocks once?

In life we are given a lot of opportunities however there are some that only happens once yet other times we are given the same opportunity over and over again. Was there ever a time when you let opportunity pass you by? How did you felt when you missed your chance? Did you regret it?

I have a lot of opportunities given to me but I did not take it. The opportunities that I am going to share with happened months after I resigned from my last company. One opportunity was when I was offered a managerial position for a restaurant. My uncle asked his friend to find me a work and this friend endorsed my CV to someone. Connections again. When I got the call, I thought I was going to have an office work but it turns out my credentials were really meant for a food service industry. Sadly, I turned down the offer. It was actually a good offer, a good company and he was going to assign me in a location near me. That time I think I was unemployed for a year or less than a year. I chose not to accept it because I was not prepared to work in a restaurant again.

Second opportunity that was given to me was by my brother. Honestly, I do not know what I was going to feel but he offered me to be his driver. My brother's driver decided to leave so he could try working in company as a truck driver so my brother had no choice but to accept and respect his driver's decision. So because I was unemployed, my brother wanted me to be his driver as he could not find any driver that time. He said that he would pay for my driving school and he will also give me a salary of Php10,000 (around $200) a month. The salary may be below my previous pay check but the offer was really tempting. That money is what I needed for my bills every month but again, I turned down the offer. My brother had no choice but to drive to and from work on his own. But not only will I drive my brother to work, but I think also his mother-in-law, my godson and my sister-in-law. You all know how much I hated driving that is why I never enrolled in a driving school. After a year, his driver came back and is still with them up to this day even if my brother does not go to work everyday due to the pandemic.

Third opportunity that was given to me was when I was accepted to a nearby Korean barbeque restaurant. It was just outside our subdivision so it was very convenient for me. It was also for a managerial position however, again the rate was way below what I get in my previous jobs. Looking back, I should have had accepted it since I do not have to worry about transportation. An opportunity that I was not willing to take but I regret it after.

Another opportunity is knocking but I do not know if my brother is serious. I have mentioned that we had a business talk last time. Now he wanted me to manage his and his wife's new business. He kept on saying that I will manage it but I pretended like I did not hear anything. That is one of my traits. If I am not interested with what the person has to say, I would pretend that I did not hear it but I heard it loud and clearly. The reason why I am not interested is because the location is not around here in Metro Manila but in the province. I think it is 2 hours away from home. So if I will accept it, I am sure that my brother will say that I can stay at his mother-in-law's house there. Even if I have known his mother-in-law since I was in high school and even if I also call her mommy, I am too shy to live with her. She also treats me like a daughter but I am just so shy.

I have said before that I already miss working even more so that I miss earning. However, thinking about the virus, it is something that I do not really want to risk. I do not know if there will still be some opportunities that would knock on my door nor do I know if I will grab whatever it is that is available. But I do hope that there will still be a lot of opportunities for me in the future. If in case there will be no opportunity that would knock on my door, I would create a lot of windows of opportunity. Just like what we are doing righ now. We have the opportunity to speak our minds while earning through blogging. Let us make the best out of it.

I talked about opportunities not only because of what my brother had said to be about managing their business but also because of the Youtube influencer that I have watched weeks ago. He mentioned something about opportunity and I instantly remembered the opportunities that I did not grab. I forgot th exact words that he said but it was like it is pointless to give a person an opportunity but do not want to grab it. What he said had hit me so hard. He was actually right. There will be some people who would not want to grab the opportunities given to them because of various reasons. Then he narrated his story when Youtube was knocking at his door and he grabbed it. He grabbed all the opportunities that knocked on his door and because of those opportunities, he is living the life that he never knew he can have. The good thing about him is that he wanted the people around him to be successful as well. I have only watched a few of his vlogs but he sure has a lot of words of wisdom that people like me can relate to. Instead of waiting for the opportunity to knock on our door, we should also create our windows of opportunities. Let us seize every chance that we can to make everything possible.

P.S. lead image is a photo of my many resumes that I have printed before.