This blog, and a note about me

This project is all about discipline. Day to day I become more aware of all the slivers of luck that have whittled me in to my presence, (obviously giving and taking depending upon who is doing the judging) and I think it is time to make myself feel a little more deserving of what I have, or otherwise stated, start earning it. After having come to Guadalajara Mexico from my small town upbringing in Ohio to get an undergrad in Hispanic Letters, and having taken off every chance I’ve gotten since to work odd jobs and volunteer experience from schools and humanitarian journalism in Oaxaca to Uganda, a homeless coalition in San Francisco and a random investigation project on stress levels in shelter dogs, I look about like I want to on my resume at the age of twenty two. And I think I am old enough and far enough past all of my self esteem issues to not whine about how I don’t deserve any of it. Deserving is relative, and certainly I did take advantage of a lot of opportunities that I felt suited me from a young age. But I am not the first generation to go to college. I grew up with loving parents in a home where I was always made very clear that money should never be the first deciding factor in any decision, which, while giving a lot of security to someone as a child, it also tends to spoil them as an adult. My dad has quite a few luxuries as an adult, but was the first on either side of his family to go to college and ended up with a PosDoc from Stanford, so needless to say he earned them all. Me, on the other hand, I was born with a million possibilities laid out for me, and never had to learn as much about dedication and hard work. I understand the concepts very well, but think it is high time I began to make use of them in my daily life. I can forgive the little things that make me feel slightly hypocritical on paper; as much as I loved being and working for the short time I was in Oaxaca and in Uganda I am always aware that what I took away was much greater than what I was able to give and do to help, but I did what I could at the age and time, etcetera, that I had. But everything points in one direction. This is my last semester of college, and it is time to grow into a more responsible person, in every way.
In high school my goal in life was very clear. Paul Simon, as I have said many times was my biggest inspiration in life and the way he combined words and music to portray the most universal aspects of our species was the way I wanted to combine words and images in that stereotypical dream of many young journalists-in-progress to save the world. Having landed in something like an English major (but in Spanish) I have now taken an almost complete journey through literary analysis, theory, and Spanish linguistics to wind up with an enriched but only slightly modified version of my same self. No qualms here, no regrets, but after very limited experience in journalism itself in these last four years, again, it’s time to take a serious stab.

So, may my short biography come to an end, and let us move on to the project.

It would be extremely limiting theme-wise to start here by saying that Mexico is the next Colombia, and I don’t pretend to have a deep understanding nor propose any solutions for the problems of the current massacres in Juarez, the drug trafficking and so on. But what is undeniable in the news and on the street these days is that it is a unique country due to a unique people, in turn due to a history truly like no other. What is said in the papers is hardly as revealing as what is omitted, for which a column-like genre seems to me the best way to go about participating in it. So my only real proposal is what I will do in this blog, which is just that; a column-like piece as a kind of free-write prompted by the daily news here in Jalisco that is given to us by the state’s most respected paper, El Informador, visited online or in print, in Spanish and translated to English or vice versa. And as for the discipline, it will be a project not daily to start with but rather with a proposed minimum of three mini pieces a week. The goal is to be consistent and confident; to get that feeling about writing like we get after a full week of going to the gym; one of those revelations that maybe this is something I can do, although sincerely I should expect to enjoy this project more than I do the treadmill. But still Nike seems to have known better than anyone how to deal with the whines and excuses that need to be sucked up in order to get started with anything in life when they came up with their motto, so on that note, time to end the rambling and just write it.