This one is about my life

I live in terrifying times. I've been singing the last Taylor Swift song all day long and I didn't go out on a Friday night just because I want to be responsible and not to show up to work all exhausted on Saturday.

Not quite, really. These are exciting times for me -apart from not going out on Friday nights as often. If anyone minds an update on my life, I'm going into an adventure. The current me thinks of himself too young to settle, so for a while I had been thinking of saving a whole year, ask a 3 month break from work and fly to Japan through Europe to fulfill what I liked to call in my head "the big leap." Japan has always been on my mind, and I would hate to die before having seen temples and sakura trees live, explore the Hip Hop scene of Tokyo, and consume as much anime and videogame culture as I can. I am very fond of my European friends and miss people in many countries over there that a stop only seemed mandatory. However "The Big Leap" was never meant to be. Life had other plans.

In my short professional life, the most exciting program I've come to encounter is the European Volunteer Service. I think it is fantastic that part of the wealth that is concentrated in Europe gets invested on sponsoring youth to travel and learn a new language and new skills to improve their chances of finding jobs. That's why we, the humanitarians in the NGO world, write the applications to get funding. The focus is economic on paper. The truth is that each project sends young people into quests and adventures of learning and self-discovery around the globe. Many of these people only dreamed of traveling to an exciting new place and live among the locals for a long period of time. The program makes that possible, and I most of the volunteers who have benefited from it feel affection for the different organizations behind the logistics of their experience. No one ever returns the same after doing their EVS. It is a truly life changing experience, and after joining many projects that enabled multiple people to participate, I get to see it from inside.

I am leaving a stable job to check living in Europe for a second time off my bucket list, but I get to continue doing what I do, sort off. Starting on November and for ten months, I will live in Cagliari, Italy and engage in different office tasks at the organization in there. I am also planning to learn all that I can about Erasmus + (the new EVS) to promote further inclusion of Costa Rican youth in the rest of Europe and European youth in Costa Rica. I am also learning more theory of youth work and acquiring a foreign language. Most of people think of Rome or Venice when they hear "living in Italy" but Cagliari is all I know and I liked the people there far better than the romans at the airport of Rome, so I am completely content with living there. More than just liking the location, I got to know an organization and if I may be bold, I liked the way they work and I fell in love with their passion. I am being offered a challenge that is a reward in experience on itself. That's the equivalent of being pimped for the races if I were a car.

But I'd lied terribly if I said I'm doing it all for professional purposes. The advantage of having lived in Europe already is that I more or less know how to travel on a budget -I am lucky that people continue to advise me on how to improve it. That allows me to organize many trips and being able to afford them. I'm almost fixed to celebrate New Year's Eve in Austria and come back to the coziness of Vienna and the warmest company in the world I have outside San José. London's on my mind for Pride next year, and the north of England calls me. I am excited to return to Edinburgh and visit Glasgow for the first time. Someone told me the cheapest way to fly to Iceland is from Glasgow, and I am going to find out. I still have not climbed to the top of the Tibidabo and I missed the singing fountain in Barcelona, plus there are rumours that I am expected by a gorgeous lady there so flying there only makes sense. In ten months I should at least see a couple of other Italian cities.

And Cagliari, I am already in a relationship with that city. From the taste of the cappuccino by the old auditorium to the panini of the cantina in Marina to the feeling of salt in your skin and the sound of seagulls. I am in love with the color of the Thyrrenian Sea, that turquoise that evaporates my fear of not seeing the bottom and allows me to swim freely. I feel like Sardinia is underrated and overlooked, and I would feel like home in a city that fights off the underdog status, just like myself. Sardinia is Phoenician and Viking, Italian and broken. Sardinia is full of youth honestly making an effort to be something in life: in such places you come across an immense amount of talent. I already think of the city with names and faces. I want to absorb all that and to be able to make memories of that one summer by the sea. I intend to become fluent in Italian and thus check one more thing off the bucket list.

At the moment, it is also annoying how much I am doing in Costa Rica. Work consumes an awful lot of time, but the countdown already started, and that makes the wait exciting and full of plans. I am gathering as many memories from my people to keep me warm in winter and I am taking the sun and the rain and the green and the life and all that is good in the tropics. I am in love with my family because I've also fallen in love with their struggle. I am going to miss my mom and my sister, the women of my life. I can't take enough mental pictures of my baby niece, to whom I am devoted. I am terribly going to miss my apartment. This place holds the happiest memories of my life in San Pedro and gave birth to a true brotherhood with my roommate. While taking to a friend yesterday and finally opening up about what was going on for me, he told me the chance of acquiring a brand new life was huge regardless and that people that cared about me would like to hear it and feel happy for me. I ended up writing this entry.

Love life is not a topic right now. If I manage to stay smart, it will remain that way.

Where does all this traveling leave my writing plans? Hemingway taught me traveling and writing were highly compatible, and I know in my heart that I should not rush something that will happen for me in the most exiting way eventually. I do not doubt my words now. Where does this leave Japan? Some time in the future. I have roots in Costa Rica now, and I will always want to come back, Nevertheless, I have a new adventure ahead of me, and I have come to accept that I'll seek to go beyond my current frontiers until the day I die.

Thanks for getting excited for and with me. I am fully aware that I stand here in life for the effort I've put into things and for the people that insist in making my stay on this planet truly awesome.

Life should be more like Instagram

I also discovered the perfect coffee yesterday. I doubt anybody cares how good that coffee was. Unaware, I poured the right amount of hot water into the fabric filter and there with the right amount of ground coffee and the right amount of everything, I made a coffee that felt like no other before. 

If life would be more like Instagram, I would have taken a picture of this coffee and share it with the world. Based on the quality of the picture, on the angle used (for cup of coffee, I would use above and centered), whether people like the technical aspects of the picture or feel glad for the fact that I just had one awesome coffee... based on that, people would honor me with their "like." If an instagramer likes a picture, he or she takes the time to pay attention to it and hits the like button. If the picture failed to make any impression, the instagramer would simply scroll down to the next, more remote and preferably better, photo that they like. We're the good kind of snobs. Instagram works with a very innocent system of likes mostly. People can't be mean collectively with this system. Life has a lot of moments where people are mean collectively.

Life has a lot of words. People so often misuse words. Twitter, for example, is a lot of words, spat as frequently as you like. That, sometimes, could be a lot of ugly. I insist Twitter in Costa Rica is a whole different experience than in any country. Twitter serves as a diary of the everyday for many of us (us because I've fallen into the trap quite a few times and continue to do so). There we connect to a collective consciusness of the people we follow and the people that follow us back. If at least there's a group of active 30 users at the moment, whatever you write goes there and reaches 30 people instantly. Others may read that later and have a reaction, but these hypothetical group of 30 people got it first hand and may have a reaction that goes from approval, sympathy, admiration, repulsion, disapproval, or indifference (for providing a humble array of emotions,) and it is all happening in real time. The active user of twitter in Costa Rica, at least, engages in a virtual agora. In this pool or words, a lot it is said. That lot can make a lot of garbage and a lot of damage. "It's just twitter, is not the real world" we often excuse ourselves. "Words are wind". Words are beautiful and words have the greatest power, but we often misuse them. Life, just like Twitter, has a lot of people judging us on a word basis, and that's a really harsh world. I, in fact, tweeted that I just had the most amazing coffee. No one celebrated. It is not a something that deserves celebration, I'm aware, but that's what I was experienced at the moment. I have read two tweets after that, mocking the people that often tweet about their coffee. I'm not going to be paranoid and believe they tweeted against the people that tweet their coffee times because they wanted to make fun of me specifically, but how can I be sure it was not? One thing is for sure: that's a lot of contempt directed at someone or something. Whether it was part of my life or not, I came across it and I may feel it was personal. It could tarnish any good experience: any perception we imprint in others—which is a shade of the same problem. If someone has been actively reading the timeline one of those nights when I get drunk and tweet the most irrelevant, nonsensical stuff because I found it funny, they are entitled to think I am one jackass. I don't think anyone following me on instagram would feel something as strong as loathe for me. In the Twitter world, hating someone you don't even know in person is always a possibility. Haters have words, a great lot of them and they are yours and so easily to hate on. On instagram, a hater does not have a lot of material, or not as often. Haters won't be around instagram much when Facebook and Twitter generously satisfy their need for loathe. In real life, people can become haters easily. 

Whether we like it or not, the technological era is full of likes that elicit a certain reaction. If we share it, we are fishing for likes and for Facebook algorithms to keep our post on top of the feed. Likes are stimuli to our brain, and affect our emotions. I've noticed people at large are moved by likes. If someone's gets liked, they feel encouragement. If someone posts a certain content that no one minds, this person is very likely to drop posting the same content. The lack of likes discourages. If we have the idea we have an audience and we like it, we immediately start acting it out for that audience. Anyone denying that the amount of attention we get has a direct impact on what kind of content we decide to publish has not realized the psychological trap of the social media. Likes are not evil. It is alright to encourage people (and even celebrating their skill in something as hard as denouncing and as controversial as dark humor). A like is a little pat in the back. In instagram, if you don't get the like, you at least still have the picture. The like is not the reason, the picture is the reason, and the like is just someone agreeing on the image you captured. I believe so because people join instagram on first place because they like pictures. That much all instagramers should have in common. There, you snap and the image is yours-- the moment is yours. People on Instagram would be so busy appreciating artistic depiction of moments and creating theirs that would have less time to focus on negative feelings. In real life, people have an awful amount of time to dedicate to negativity. 

Maybe Instagram means obsession and social pressure for some people too (#toomanyhastagspeople) and Instagram could end up being just as sickening as any other social medium. This is not the instagram I know, though. The instagram I know allows me to connect to people through purely artistic manifestations. The instagram that I know only pushes you to make an effort to take a good picture or a better picture next time. The instagram I know tickles the everyday person with the curiosity for capturing a moment, a place, beauty (or ugliness so aesthetically perfect that it becomes a concept and therefore beauty) in an artistic way. I don't know. I am very fond of my instagramers, and that's more than I can say for a lot of people I know in "real life." 

The guy in the red adidas.

You’ve chosen to ignore that I think you sensuously. And I like you to believe that I’m not aware. Is in in the effort you put your apparent lack of interest that I see the evidence that you have not allowed yourself to even think of me the way that makes the heart tickle. One would even think you just want me to go away --until you play me, and let me come upstairs and get drunk of you, and take a picture of your naked body against the light of the lamppost outside, and kiss goodbye in the threshold of your door. Only then, I’ve dared to think there’s already a story.

 You serve me every day with stone cold indifference, yet you were happy I remembered your birthday, and told me you were happy for me and my future plans. I would have thought you really wished me to go from the neglection that came after a period of cold feet – until you play me, and make me talk about stars to kiss me right after and get me drunk of you, but for one night only. 

I’ve come to believe that deep inside you know I think you sensuously, and you have the conviction that I savored every inch and wish you so intensively it made your heart tickle. It is in the intensity you devote to believe I am not worth any of your attentions that I see you would naturally feel comfortable gravitating around me if you didn’t talk yourself against it. Contempt knows no hesitation, yet I’ve seen many cracks and oh so tiny but oh so often.  Hope comes not from your long tundra gaze but from the tiny volcanic fire lock in the minuscule part of the iris that serves as the channel to your soul. I’m next to close to give up soon, unless you play me, and remind me of the drink I owe you, and allow me to see how your laughter brightens up your face, and look me like someone you also desire, and wish to test if the kissing was actually good or your senses were deceived. It’s all happening because, even though it has a story rather long and lacking romance,  one night you played me, and you let me come upstairs and even called my name in a moment of pleasure, and got me drunk of you. However, you also drank of me and you never thought it would mean something, but it did.

You may not like me after all, but you like the way I think you sensuously. It is in this contradiction that I find an excuse to keep on hoping you will stop treating me like an enemy and find a temporary accomplice, but it is also in this confusion that I know you could just lock yourself away from me, and in the most inglorious way finally ask me to fuck off.