A Reflection on Life and Work

Hiii! It’s been 19 days since my last post here on the blog and God did I need a break. This post is about a reflection on what happened to me, internally, these past 19 days – I’m just going write. Not going to think about anything else but just… write.

My best friend (Aliana), whom I really consider my other sister came to visit from The Netherlands with her mom, who might as well be my other mom. From the moment I picked them up at the airport, I felt relief. For several months now, I have been living with my heart on my throat because of a medical thing we are going through in my family. Every day, when the phone rings in my house, I have a feeling its going to be bad news, constantly thinking of the worst. But, when Aliana and her mom, Anna, got to Miami, I felt relief.

The first couple of days, I felt guilt too because I wasn’t working the blog. I didn’t take any vacation time from my full-time job because I knew I could handle working full time with Aliana here. We would wake up, go to the gym, eat breakfast, then I would work, she’d help me or do something else and then after 5, 5:30pm we would do something fun. Normally, after 5-6pm, I work on the blog so having Aliana and Anna here left me with 0 time to work on the blog. Strangely enough, after those couple of guilty feeling days, I was okay. I was even happy I wasn’t posting and again, I felt relief. One night it was Aliana, Luis (my boyfriend) and I and we were playing cards. Suddenly, Aliana said something about having blogger friends that are obsessed with posting and she made a comment that I wasn’t like that and she liked it. My answer caught me by surprise, it made me happy and it also made me sad. I don’t remember the exact words I said, but it was something like “I just don’t feel the need to be posting. It’s weird but I think I obsess over it because I’m bored and want something to fill me up, but with you here, I simply don’t need it.“

First, how beautiful is for life to gift you with a long-lasting friendship – I would never change this for anything. Secondly, what am I doing wrong on my day-to-day?

Why is it that whenever I’m with her, whether it’s here or in Europe, I feel at ease? Now that I think about it, every time I hang-out with my friends I feel at ease too but for the sake of this story, let’s keep it to these past 19 days. I wish I could feel more at ease every day of my life.

I spent 19 days, working out, working, talking about life, giving and getting advice, crying, shopping, taking 1 day trips and this past weekend in New York. Yet, I’m not tired – I’m inspired. I’m inspired and motivated to create and live the beautiful life I envision for myself. I realized that my “not feeling” at ease comes from trying to meet everyone’s expectations of me or even worse, me trying to meet the expectations I feel/think people have of me. The honest truth is that no one is really paying that close attention to your steps so it’s ok to relax.

These past 19 days, I posted on instagram 5 times and yes, I lost some followers but, so what? I’m tired of following rules, I’m tired of doing this and that because that’s what you are supposed to do. I watched the documentary on Netflix about Franca Sozzani – she was the Italian Vogue Editor-in-Chief and broke all the rules and now idolized by millions. I’m not saying I’m the next Franca Sozzani but from now on, I’m leading with my heart, with my intuition and I urge you to do the same.

Having Aliana and Anna here with me, helped me realize that work is not life and life is not work. It’s difficult to find the balance in life as we are all moving super fast but you can have fun while you at it and that’s what I was missing… fun. My personality takes everything extremely serious and I pour my heart and mind into my work but often leave fun out of the equation. I realized that quality is more important than quantity. I don’t need to be posting on the blog every single day as long as what I post is meaningful and can help or leave a mark on people; that’s enough for me. So, I’m going to leave you guys with this: Don’t forget to enjoy life, don’t forget to have fun. Do great work but don’t try to find all answers at work. Take time to invest in yourself. Read books, watch documentaries, listen to music, find art, talk to your friends… live a little, it’s easy to forget to live as crazy as that sounds.