With tons of enthusiasm I am pleased to announce to my estimated reader, that if he/she is reading this, it is because by working hard things can be achieved. Yes, we can learn from the hard times. This is, literally, a letter I’m writing to the future. If you are reading it it’s because the website has finally been opened, and even if we had to row against the odds in the hardest of situations, we can always go forward and achieve success. Being humble but also proud, I hope that you, my avid public, can estimate this open diary that is named Naufragia as a piece of my soul that I deliver to the world. I invite you to join me on this crusade. I’ll try to be as open and honest as I can with you, my beloved readers.

Now then, before celebrating, I must tell you a slice of my life –of my emotions– and let it go into the air.

Today hasn’t been an easy day.

I woke up with a lot of enthusiasm, earlier than I’m used to, but later than I would like to; excited because the big day had come: I would finally open Naufragia, a project in which I’ve been working on since two months already, from it’s conceptualization to its design. It would have been impossible to make without the marvelous Isabel Olmos (a beloved friend who developed the website with her firm, Sensmedia) and Gabriela Rodríguez (my model, supporter and great friend for life). This is likewise, of course, thanks to my family and my significant other, who have supported me strongly along the way.

However, it seems that the aperture wouldn’t get done today, 7/7/2017. Why? You see… I hadn’t planned to talk, not even a little, about the situation in my country, Venezuela. I believe that people have had enough of it, and for those who don’t know what the situation is in here, there are many websites that speak about this. This blog is about my work, my art, my creative journey and discoveries; it is not a place to complain about things, this is something that I could do with my private social media.

Even so, what occurred in my region was impossible to ignore: a big failure of the Internet service, that affected the whole Los Andes region in my country, would stop me from opening the website as planned. It seems that some thieves stole the main cables from CANTV (a company owned by the government that provides to most people the Internet service), and who knows when will the fixing get done. I will publish this article using alternate ways, so that the date in which it was published gets registered.

It is very unpleasing when something made with devotion and hard work (not only mine, but also done by my fellow partners in crime, Gabriela and Isabel) is delayed by external factors. However, my ranting stops here. This is not the way I want my blog to be, this is not what it’s supposed to be: I’ve learned as a life lesson, that if one is not flexible enough, one cannot reach nothing. “One must be as flexible as bamboo”, is what some say.

And thus, this is how I announce through this media that, against wind and sea, I will keep rowing on the sea of life. The adversity must be taken only as an advantage of exploiting new opportunities, to look from the other side. “When it’s not for you, then it isn’t”. I went through my day in a different way, searching for materials in my garden for my upcoming photo-shoot tomorrow day (which I hope you enjoy!).

Art, creativity and passion must be understood and used in the context of liberty… this liberty, which is an ambiguous concept, must be defined and captured by ourselves. Nobody can give it to us, and nobody can take it away from us; which is why if something cannot be done, you must do something else; but never stop making and creating. You never stop living with passion for what you do, and if you happen to forget where your passion is, you must make an effort to recover and find it.

Be it that we live in a world as Parmenides thought (conceiving the universe without the existence of movement), or as Heraclitus imagined (conceiving the universe as an eternal becoming), the important thing is to remain faithful towards ourselves. This is my clear conviction in any situation, be it crisis or not.

I say farewell, wishing my best for everyone in this piece of earth. Without knowing, by the moment that I’m writing these words, when will my plans be done; but with the certainty that I will work hard towards their consolidation.

I wish you the best, and a lot of strength, my “náufragos” (sea-wanderers)!