De visita con JD: "El struggle de los jóvenes hoy en día" por Mónica Palacios

Si te pones a pensar, siempre nos preguntan desde temprana edad qué queremos ser cuando seamos “grandes”. Con esta interrogativa en mente, nacemos en la sociedad rápido con aspirar ser alguien entre medio de 7 billones de personas en el mundo y de alguna manera ser productivo e impactarlo. La presión realmente se inicia en la escuela superior, en donde comienzan a preguntar sobre qué vamos a estudiar; algunos – porque no todos – ya saben qué estudiar. Otros, como yo, se tardan un poco más. Rápido nos sentimos como los extraterrestres del universo, simplemente porque no sabemos qué ser todavía. Quizás escogiste una concentración de preferencia de tus padres. Le hiciste caso a tu abuela y comenzaste estudiando Ciencias Naturales para ser médico. Te inducen a que busques un trabajo seguro con un ingreso alto, ¿pero realmente es lo que queremos?

No me malinterpretes, tener un trabajo fijo con buen ingreso no está mal. Pero considero que lo peor que nos puede pasar es trabajar lo que no nos guste. Los jóvenes hoy en día se rigen por lo que les apasiona, aunque sea difícil. No muchas personas se descubren a los 17 años de edad cuando apenas saben del mundo. Hay muchas situaciones de por medio que también nos pueden influenciar en nuestra decisión de vida; está la economía, el acceso a la misma educación para la carrera y el apoyo de la familia, entre otras cosas.

Adam Powolsky, autor del blog Quartz, explica: “Millennials need to ditch their parents’ outdated career ladders and embrace job-hopping”. En su blog, Powolsky profundiza que él tenía todo: un trabajo estable, buen ingreso de $70 MIL, un apartamento envidiable, y sin embargo tenía un montón de estrés que incluso le causó culebrilla. Cuando dejó su trabajo, los síntomas se aliviaban y empezó a entrevistar a jóvenes para darse cuenta que un 75% de los entrevistados muestran que los trabajos de hoy día no tienen metas para mejorar la sociedad, sino que se enfocan en sus propias metas de empresa. Los jóvenes de hoy día no quieren vivir para trabajar, sino trabajar para vivir. Nuestros valores no están siendo reflejados en los trabajos tradicionales. Han habido estudios donde exponen que muchos de los jóvenes estarán en trabajos que no se han inventado todavía.

El conformismo ya no está de moda, el riesgo sí. De todas las carreras que tenía en mente, todo el mundo me decía: “En eso no hay trabajo" o "Estudia algo fácil y que deje chavos.” Lo único que pensaba era que mis gustos o eran extremadamente raros o que yo lo soy. Empecé por publicidad, porque me gustaba dibujar y me lo sugirieron, ADEMÁS de que tenía en mente irme por artes gráficas. Las clases de comunicaciones me gustaban, pero no me encantaban. ¿Estudiar arte? No puedo, lo veo mucho como mi ocio, cuando alguien me dice que tengo que dibujar "por tal razón" me quita la pasión para hacerlo. Sí, lo sé, raro. Me cambié a psicología, campo en el que también me dicen que no hay trabajo, pero honestamente me siento mil veces mejor que hace un año por la angustia que tenía al no saber qué escoger. Soy una persona bien creativa, aunque sé que quiero ser doctora, me veo haciendo otras cosas también. Me gusta escribir, me gusta hacer prendas, pintar, dibujar, me gusta crear. Aunque para muchos suena bien raro que esté estudiando algo tan “serio” siendo una persona creativa, no me molesta. Me siento cómoda en donde estoy.

Así que si te causa malestar que la sociedad no entienda los nuevos valores de nuestra era, no te sientas mal. Sí, la economía de nuestra isla está por el piso, nuestro gobernador electo es un corrupto fabricado, en EU eligieron al hombre más fascista del planeta, nuestra isla todavía cree en el partidismo, todavía no saben qué es la perspectiva de género, son más los que se van para allá fuera, pero ¿sabes qué? Por más que digan que los jóvenes no hacemos nada, que cada día hay menos los que son educados, a nosotros nos toca cambiar la visión para el futuro. Dime tú, ¿vivir para trabajar? O ¿trabajar para vivir?

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Este escrito es trabajo de Mónica Palacios. Como parte de mi compromiso con escritores, estudiantes y personas con deseos de explorar su creatividad, pongo a su disposición mi blog para escribir y contribuir a una comunidad creativa, comprometida al diálogo para todos aprender, compartir y crecer. Para esto existirán entradas en este blog tituladas de visita con JD. Esto incluirá una pieza en respuesta de mi autoría. Agradezco a Mónica por su tiempo y sus palabras y le deseo lo mejor en un campo que le tengo mucho aprecio y respeto. 

Un abrazo

JD

Allowing yourself an off day

Time after time you see some people who are always bright, always in a good mood, always optimistic and we are often lulled into believing these people are always in the green and completely in control of their lives. More than once I’ve seen people who have told me that in fact they are not OK and when I ask why they post positive things, there are two responses I typically receive.

On one hand, some people are afraid of showing that in fact they’re not Ok. They don’t want people to know they’re not Ok and for the sake of appearances, they write happy go lucky things in the hopes that no one notices that there is grit, pain, and frustration along with the happy go lucky. That has always been a worrisome answer because people worry more about how they are perceived than how they feel and that leads down a destructive path where you continuously do things in the name of your “image”. Some people might think this is laughable, but this is actually very common.

Actually, people often want to project an image to elicit a reaction. People show that they’re awesome to hear things like “you’re amazing”, “I’m proud of you”, and “you’re something else”. Other people crave attention to the point of always putting negative things to elicit the “there-there” reaction from people. They crave being cared for and would rather always feel poorly and write that they’re not doing well to see that people do in fact care. Then you have the righteous people who fight the good fight on social media but not much else. The people who keep you in their thoughts or prayers but who aren't there for much of the rest of your lives and those who always comment on posts if only to cause someone to smile and feel useful. 

At one time or another, it’s possible we’ve all written and posted things like this, but going back to those positive posts; there is a second reason for that type of content and it's because some people write those things to get in a better headspace. If you want an example, then take me. Some days I’m not doing great and I try to write something positive in the hopes of getting to a better headspace. Sometimes it works while other times I keep slamming into a wall of frustration. And guess what, sometimes you need to have an off day and to feel the freedom to not rejoice in it but at least process it and understand what you’re feeling rather than bury any frustration and ignore it. I'm also not saying I haven't done any of the other things, I'm pretty sure we've all vented, or voiced an opinion, or written something to have an impact and elicit a response. But for my part, I often try to write what I need to process to better understand and accept. It's not because I'm awesome, though. It's because I've tried the alternative and didn't like the results much. 

Ignoring emotions and feelings is something we are wayyyy too good at and during this season, it’s actually very common. 

You’ll deal with it in the New Year, you don’t want to ruin Christmas and countless other alternatives instead of allowing yourself an off day… as if it’s a crime or sin to have a crappy day. 

And by the way, crappy days can just happen, they don’t even need a motif or reason why. Maybe you need to drink more water. Maybe your colon is a bit blocked. Maybe your hormones are doing the emotions cha-cha-cha and you take two step forwards and three steps back. Whatever the case may be, acceptance and understanding shall always be the best options.

To clarify, I’m not saying embrace the crappy day and wallow endlessly. I’m saying accept them and make the most of it. We’re Only Human and although we have the potential for a great many things, we also have a great potential to feel. Denying pain or any sort of malaise is almost guaranteed to be counterproductive and end up setting you up for more pain.

So what to do? Write honestly about it on social media? How about no? In the end, we have the right to feel and we also have the right to share what we want to share. We don’t need to write anything positive just for the sake of it and we don’t have to pour out our emotions either. It’s all a matter of choice and sometimes we forget that we have the choice to feel, to understand, to explore inward, and to NOT post.

Your life is not a social media thread and you don’t have to document every single thing you do, think, believe, or feel. But if you do feel the need to do so, make it a conscious choice, not a kneejerk reaction. In the end, the more you take control of your life, the happier you’ll be.

Peace, love, and maki rolls

#NaNoEstrada results

It seems that for many people the month of November was all sorts of crazy for so many reasons. Apart from the myriad of things that were going on, NaNoWrimo was also in full effect and although I didn’t do full on NaNoWrimo I wanted to push hard for a lot of my projects.

If you’ve been following me on social media, you’ve seen the progress. As does tend to be the case when I have a lot going on, I was able to tackle the smaller goals and the larger ones got progressed but not completed. The reason for this format was that I did expect November to be a tough work month and BOY did it not disappoint lol. Long hours, several projects and in one month probably produced about 8 radio spots, two campaigns, plus I went on a mini vacay to Orlando with the missus which was lovely and a half.

That said, I wanted to retake several projects and before I give you the total, here’s why I did what I did.

Blog posts – I felt I was not writing in my blog nearly as much as I should and I wanted to rectify that while also challenging myself to write either something deep and heartfelt or something funny. I wanted variety and to show just how random my mind can be.

Songs – Although I’ve posted many songs on my youtube channel this year, I’ve often gone into recording the vids without lyrics. This is something I want to change because I want the songs to have an identity so I can grow more accustomed to playing them.

Poetry collections – I have several collections going at the moment and chose the two that were more ahead but still had to complete, transcribe, edit, and polish. It was the thing I wanted to tackle the most and I’m very happy with both collections and how they turned out.

Podcasts – In my search to connect to more people and further challenge myself while also doing my best to make a positive impact, I experimented with a few things on my Soundcloud page. Although I don’t have many followers there, some people did enjoy the podcasts and in a few instances words resonated.

YA novel – Finding time to get in the mindset to work on this was basically impossible. I got interrupted about 10 times when I got time to work on it. Still, this project is very important to me and will be one of the books I take to the 2017 Puerto Rico Comic Con.

Sci fi Novella – I’ve had this novella sitting around too long and want to get to it and finish it. That said, this was a bonus goal and it took a lot to not dive in when I hadn’t finished the YA novel. Although I’m normally adamant of flowing from project to project, I’ve decided to finish the novel first, then this novella.

Spanish content – For a long time I’ve been mentioning I would be doing more Spanish content and I wasn’t delivering. I changed that with a couple of things but expect more Spanish content because I want to and because it’s important to me.

So that said, here’s the final tally with links to each item that has a link.

15/15 English blog posts - DONE (TOTAL WORD COUNT: 10,995)

• No NaNoWrimo but yes NaNoEstrada
• Driven Volume 2: Veronica Brannon
• Peel Off those Labels
• The Estrada Interview Depot
• Four legged angels
• Method to Madness: Soundcloud and Youtube
• Finding your Second Wind
• Hope is my choice
• The Long Lost art of giving a compliment to women
• Liking Crap because it’s what’s cool
• The Free Book Fandango
• Standing Rock and Beyond
• Don’t Read Me
• The Raven Writing Desk & Data vs Data conundrum
• The Violence Stuffed within

10/10 English Videos - DONE

• NaNoEstrada – not NaNoWrimo but good enough for me
• 5 Random tips for writers
• The Estrada Book tour
• Tea with JD – Finding your Writer Voice
• Tea with JD – How do you know when a story is ready?
• Tea with JD – 5 unconventional writing tips to break the block
• Tea with JD – write something only YOU can write
• Tea with JD – Calling creativity
• Tea with JD – Voices in the Head
• Tea with JD – 100 Random ass facts about me

3/3 Spanish blog posts - DONE (TOTAL WORD  COUNT: 1,587 words)

• De dónde soy y dónde vivo
• Sin padrino pero con ganas
• Un Boricua en Georgia #1

2/2 Spanish videos - DONE

• JD Estrada en español – lo prometido es deuda
• JD Estrada en español NaNo Estrada y más allá

5/5 podcasts - DONE

• ThinkWalk 10 – The Need to Believe
• Morning Drive Volume 1 – Morning Routines
• Morning Drive Volume 2 – important steps in life
• Morning Drive Volume 3 – Living a creative life
• Morning Drive Volume 4 – What to do when you’re tired

2/2 poetry collections - DONE

ROR - (TOTAL WORD  COUNT: 8,666 words - no acknowledgements or foreword)

BTA - (TOTAL WORD  COUNT: 3,811 words - no acknowledgements or foreword)

2/3 songs - INCOMPLETE

• The River
• Hands Off 

0/1 YA novel - INCOMPLETE

• 2 chapters written 6 to go

0/1 Sci fi Novella - INCOMPLETE

•  19 scenes pending to be written

Before

After

All in all, not a bad showing with 25, 059 words in between my projects, without counting the chapters in the novel. But will admit I’m a bit peeved I didn’t get to the bigger projects… so NaNoEstrada continues until I finish and will give myself til the end of the year for the YA novel at least. Stay tuned.

Thanks for all the motivation, encouragement, comments, likes, and shares. To those who actually bought or reviewed my work in November, thanks as well and here’s to pushing for our dreams.

Peace, love, and maki rolls.