A new chapter opens today, or perhaps I should write: an old chapter closed yesterday. I left Puebla for Barcelona to start a full time job at Factorial. Factorial is a Human Resources software, I'll be taking a full time position as a Product Designer, and I will be working under/with my friend René Galindo.
I know better than to aim to write my own chapter. Life lives through me rather than the other way around. When I've aimed to "take control of my life", life has responded with no uncertain terms that she is the boss. The most I can do is humbly put my hands together and pray to life for what I would like from this period:
To become engaged with this company and product in a healthy way. It is difficult striking a balance with work: you either care too much, or you don't care. My idea of a healthy relationship with the company that employs you is to consider their problems your own while you are on the clock, and that said company does not exist while you are on your personal time.
To re-engage with my career. It's been almost a decade since I dis-identified with my profession and begun exploring unclaimed inner-territory. I now understand I'm much more than a Product Designer, yet now I wish to reclaim the ownership of this label. I contribute to the world by bringing my professional talents to the great unfolding of humanity.
To reclaim the ownership of my attention. This is the biggest problem faced by humanity, and a threat to our very existence. I think it was Richard Dawkins that lamented all the potential geniuses that may have existed, yet dedicated their efforts to mundane tasks such as tilling fields or sweeping floors. Well, now we can lament a tremendous amount of intellectual and spiritual energy wasted scrolling social media, engaging in senseless arguments about trivial stuff, gossip, hate and such. I don't understand why this happens in myself, I browse reddit hating what I see and yet I can't seem to help myself. This attention should be directed towards creative endeavours, I want to stop consuming and start producing.
Bringing these three points together into a single purpose, I say a prayer to life:
Please allow me to collaborate with other people to create a good product which will free people from administrative overhead so that we can put our human talents, values and attention to good use.
From here, everything else will fall in place (for me). Great untapped spiritual energy runs through the lands of Catalunya. I shall swim in the same spiritual stream of St. Ignatius, of Gaudí, of Dalí, if only for much more modest aims. Yet, in the view of life, there is no such thing as a modest endeavour, we all contribute towards life's unfolding.