[Lecture]

Cúcuta, Colombia: Fundación de Estudios Superiores Comfanorte (FESC). 2019

What was I doing?

I wanted to be someone, but I didn't know who I was. I wanted to be a successful idea .

What do I like to do?

I like to travel, that is something that I had there since I was a child. I was one of those who collected issues of newspapers and kept magazines. I had an old collection of postcards from my dad that I would look at and imagine knowing what it was like to be there.

What privileges do I have?

Oh people, this is going to be fun. Yes, we all have one or two privileges. I had a place to sleep, something to wear, and food. When I recognized that, in that February of 2014, I felt like an idiot. Because I had the most important thing and I was ignoring it. I was getting desperate to be someone, but I didn't even know what I had. Now, finally, I began to find meaning in the word “work”.

I want to work on what I like to do, it was that goal, something far away, four years ago.

And this is something I want to talk about, because a large part of my life, what I talk about and the main reason I'm here is one: work. Yes, I am a traveler, but I have never been unaware of the enormous power of work. I am spinning difficult terrain, because although many people see me as a traveler, the truth is that I am also a worker and the two go hand in hand.

Am I here to tell you to get out of your comfort zone, to quit your job so that you can travel the world?

No.

I'm so sorry to disappoint you. I am not one of those who share this idea of ​​giving up and traveling the world because, I have experienced firsthand the honeys of unemployment and juemadre, getting a job in this country is too difficult to give up. Just because it worked for others doesn't mean it will necessarily work for you. And yes, I think this is deeply linked to the privileges of each person and that ranges from sex, money, religion or race.

And it doesn't work for everyone.

It was clear to me that I wanted to continue traveling, which was what I liked, but I recognized something in this crisis: traveling was the means, it was not the end. If I thought that my goal was to continue traveling, one way or another this life project would become unsustainable. Traveling is the medium where I show what I like to do, it is part of my life but it is not my life.

And what do I like to do?

This was the resume that he sent to the architecture offices of the country.

In red, work experience.

In purple, the publications.

In blue, the contests and prizes.

In cyan, exhibitions and conferences.

In turquoise, the projects.

And out of all this, these are the ones I sent a resume to.

Oh. Why had this happened? The people she had known. The work she had done, even if it had nothing to do with what she was studying or what she was looking for.

He had never stopped sharing what he did. I hadn't stopped showing what I was passionate about, even if it wasn't related to what I had “studied”. It's like I was secretly self-sabotaging myself, for the better. I had never realized that since my first international trip, the purpose of the trip was not to know but to share what I was creating.

I understood that I had been trained from the academy to work on projects, but I had never seen my life as one. Berraco, right? And I understood that we all have the ability to turn our life into a project.

So I started to see my life as a project, complete with sequence of steps.

Job. It is important to work. It is where we are going to produce money, it is what puts our talents on alert. It is the exercise that gives us competitiveness.

Sacrifice. Let's face reality, nobody here is a millionaire. Far as I know. In order to focus on our goals, we need to sacrifice several things. In my case, I am a very austere person: I focus my resources on what represents a need and not a comfort.

Investment. I invest money and time in what can produce me or in what enriches my work. If I am going to buy a camera it is because I know that this camera will bring me benefits, it will enhance my work. It will be a work tool.

Production. Now, everything I have invested I focus on producing. From a video to an architectural project for a competition. Production is the result of a process, in my case creative, and it is the result of intelligence, talent and sensitivity.

And finally, the most important: sharing. This was the most important part of the cycle, it was what launched me into the world. It was precisely the most powerful tool I had, the thing that connected me with the people I met on my travels, people to whom I shamelessly showed what I was doing.

I started noticing the relationships on my resume. That I obtained this through this means, that this work was on his recommendation. That going to this conference made him meet this person and this made him able to accomplish that. All thanks to the fact that I never stopped to show what he did.

And best of all, I began to see that he had done work that he never mentioned. I was an altar boy. I had a play. I was in television campaigns. I made a YouTube channel. He was in TV commercials. Each and every one of them forged who I was and so they searched, from all of them I learned that I was creating and sharing. He worked, saved, invested and produced. So I was already traveling. Further and further away. More and more time.

The power of people, to connect with each other, like constellations. The power to recognize how work was not that oppressive condition that limited happiness but a part of life that conditions and dignifies us as human talents. I didn't want to get my hopes up again based on my frustrations.

Now I travel the world, working and visiting territories. Gathering stories, finding people and sharing them on my social networks.

We are ashamed to show what we do: that if you studied business administration, you may be ashamed to show that you know how to draw because that "is not your thing". I know many talents out there who shut down their creative capacity or their administrative capacity because false modesty works against them.

They are not ashamed to say what they know how to do. Don't be ashamed to tell the world what you like to do. Do not be ashamed to say your achievements, your merits, because you and only you are the person who can do it.

If no one does it for you, who else will? Take pride in what he does and show it off.

Make noise.

Use the tools at hand. Don't worry about being good, worry more about being unique.

Be your best resume.