Yesterday I got Italian citizenship through Jus sanguinis, and I was looking for a way to write about it; this is a catharsis of what I passed through.

I arrived almost a year ago in Italy by plane; I remember going from the airport to my previous apartment with a sense of calmness and incredible happiness. Part of me understood that what it was before, now it would never be the same again.

Then suddenly I asked myself: where are my things? Where do I leave my books? What’s all of this?

Going back to when I was a kid in a small town in Argentina, one of my biggest concerns back in the day was to keep the information I found on the internet safe. Why? Because I didn’t know how long I would have Internet at my place; that’s part of why, by now, I’m a collector of bookmarks & good articles.

Living in a country in constant crisis leaves scratches on the surface of your behavior, making you what you are nowadays. The rush of adrenaline after finding a jewel of the article, the perfect tutorial on how to build something, being in forums all day discussing with strangers that are not strangers anymore; a genuine rush that pretty much shaped me the way I’m right now

I tend to live my life at the most; I do & try to allow myself to do everything my parents didn’t have the opportunity to do. I don’t care if I don’t like it. I don’t care if this food taste like shit; what I care about is that I’m able to do it, and that’s what sticks with me after a while; the experience and possibility of allowing myself to live, knowing how many other people are suffering right now even while trying to get a glass of water.

Sometimes, surrounded by information on this period of time, it’s pretty normal to see how many people panic in this bubble we call the tech bubble, but what, for me, is a chamber. Nobody, or I’ll say 0.0001% of the population, does, about the latest trend in the web, called HTXM. Almost nobody.

I live towards the attitude of believing we should never forget from where we come, a place where knowledge was not that vast, not that good, or even not that curated.

Now that we have a thesaurus of products, algorithms, indexes, and even books about books to keep track of knowledge, a few of those actually have meaningful value for you.

There a plenty of movies, music, books, and even talks with people who made a living using this as fuel. I know it’s not new to write about “doing what you love,” but I’m not trying to write about that but what fulfills you and makes you a little bit of yourself.

Quit trends.

Chunking Express portrays love in an authentic manner, always looking for something that does not exist in the first place.

Everything is a trade-off, and deciding how to go deep down the rabbit hole is also your decision.

Staying late at home coding a compiler is OK while YOU enjoy doing it, but if you are doing it to be up to date with the latest trend, sorry to inform you, but… you should try to escape from the pattern because, in the long term, it won’t help. Back in school was a real pain to memorize things about topics utterly irrelevant to me, because of that, I tend to not over commit myself to things I don’t enjojy.

Contemplate a paint,
Write a book even if nobody will read it,
Listen to an album,
Sit in silence

It might sound hippie (while I hate the term), but it will allow you to understand that even if many people say it does not make it accurate.

There are people still using COBOL and living life to the fullest. People still use their hands to craft art, not even knowing AI’s existence. People are people in the outside world.

It’s understandable to seek knowledge and understanding of current events, but it becomes problematic when it causes sadness, anxiety, or anger toward our society. Embrace being an average individual. It can be beneficial for you.

Meaning is something we put onto things; meaning is where we should put our attention on. While having fun, we should be able to allow ourselves to loom towards the reality of what we were before, even five minutes ago, before taking this train.

A hike through the mountain,
A sad song in a pretty happy place,
A movie while enjoying tea,
All of these things we take for granted,
Once we are doing it.

The Past is a Grotesque Animal but it’s part of what we are.