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2019 year in review

Jan 20, 2020

My previous year ends include 2016, 2017 and 2018.

2019 Midyear Review

May 31, 2019

I very simply stated some 2019 goals stated in my 2018 in review post. I additionally chose the guiding words of execute, simplify, and inward.

Hey, how has it been going?

Honestly, it was a rough start of the year for me. I started with broad but exact goals and felt confident that I could start off on the right foot after a quick and fun trip to Poland over the New Year.

But my life and schedule took control in a way that I was not best prepared for. Starting rightaway in January, I was traveling on a weekly basis from coast to coast for work, struggling with maintaining any semblance of a sleep and exercise schedule, interviewing and rapidly preparing for more technical interviews (therefore was overall distracted), and losing touch with a team of people who were organizing a hackathon for Venezuela in SF.

And as a result, I had to face immediate and painful rejection in multiple forms and then a sudden physical health scare. My habit maintenance was inconsistent. I couldn’t run or exercise without my knee. I was set back in multiple ways and was utterly disappointed and that resulted in a deep complacency that lasted from February to April. I allowed myself to feel very bad for myself and I couldn’t motivate myself to work towards any goals and just did a whole lot of nothing. I knew what was happening but there wasn’t a lot I felt like I had power to change.

It was the weather, I blamed. I was in between projects, I blamed. I had envisioned a different future for myself and with rejection it disapparated, I blamed. I made very early mistakes in management/leadership/structure org with working with the team based in SF that resulted in poor communication and the cutting of ties which I took very personally, I blamed.

It wasn’t my healthiest and happiest time and definitely not the way I had envisioned the start of 2019 for myself.

Is there a bright side?

Well, I was able to devote myself to physical therapy and recover quickly (and I was even able to participate in a duathlon, 5 boro bike tour, and the C-SIG). I was able to normalize my sleep schedule again. I decided that I was going to apply to graduate school for my masters in cybersecurity–and I’m starting in the fall! I’m starting a new client in a new industry working on things that I have not encountered yet and I’m incredibly excited for the change and opportunity. I read more. Also, I decided that because I didn’t have a creative outlet in my life, I needed to find one and cultivate it. So, I purchased a Venezuelan cuatro and I am slowly teaching myself how to play.

Now looking back I recognize, you know, I need to constantly remind myself that growth is growth, whether it is fun or not. It is necessary and sometimes uncomfortable and I am grateful for the opportunity and time to grow and learn.

It was my first time since graduating college that I encountered some “hardship”. And, in all honestly, on the spectrum, it really wasn’t that hard because I was able to recognize, diagnose, and overcome it in a fairly pointed fashion.

Sometimes being “unproductive”, is productive and I am excited to see how it’ll manifest after some meaningful complacent time. (I stumbled upon this and it was a helpful/healthy/fresh perspective that I needed).

Looking forward

I learned a lot and felt as if I set myself up for a stronger end of year that will consist of some more trips, learning on the job, meditation, cuatro playing, grad school, therapy, tris, NYMarathon, and putting some more work in with some results.

I want to tape my guiding words up on my wall to remind me of them on a daily basis.

HackForVenezuela

May 29, 2019

Hack for Venezuela is a movement that I’ve been attempting to steer for the past year. The movement recognized the need to connect the diaspora to problems caused by the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela by creating technical solutions. The first hackathon was organized by Will Falcon in November 2017. When I met him at his event we decided to collaborate with Denis Cobos on a second hackathon in July 2018 at Fordham University. At that hackathon I connected with undergrad student Mikel Matticoli and he spearheaded the third hackathon at WPI in December 2018.

HackForVenezuela has acted as a catalyst and inspiration for the organization of multiple hackathons (including CodeForVenezuela), networking events, and collaboration. Following three organized hackathons in New York region we are looking to build out our team, mission, further scale, and potentially pivot as we scale into InnovateVenezuela.

2018 Year in Review

Jan 31, 2019

I wrote my first official year for 2017 and a fairly brief one for 2016. I hope to keep these years and maybe be more timely with posting. However, this time I have the excuse of having the busiest past two weeks..

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What has been critical this past year

Sep 12, 2018

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Water Bottle Review

Sep 5, 2018

I’ve always had a lot of opinions about water bottles. At all times in my life, I’ve usually been carrying one and happily guzzling plenty of water throughout the day. I’ve tried out, lost, replaced, and used many interesting and cheap and expensive water bottles and I figured I could publish my thoughts on various bottles that I’ve been using. Additionally, this could be another non-guilty way to encourage more people to carry around water bottles and to further demonstrate their functionality, design, and style.

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What needs to be given up

Aug 20, 2018

I recently read that going forward, since nothing is being dramatically done to curtail climate change, that intensely hot summers like this past summer is not only going to be “the new normal” but it is just a sneak peak of what is to come. ah

…the trend line is clear: 17 of the 18 warmest years since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001.

“It’s not a wake-up call anymore,” Cynthia Rosenzweig, who runs the climate impacts group at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said of global warming and its human toll. “It’s now absolutely happening to millions of people around the world.”

Be careful before you call it the new normal, though. Temperatures are still rising, and, so far, efforts to tame the heat have failed. Heat waves are bound to get more intense and more frequent as emissions rise, scientists have concluded. On the horizon is a future of cascading system failures threatening basic necessities like food supply and electricity (Sengupta).

ah Despite these alarming facts, nothing dramatic or global or far-reaching is getting accomplished. The journalist, David Wallace-Wells who wrote the biggest story on climate change last summer for NYMag is now asserting that, ah

climate change is not a matter of “yes” or “no,”…[but is] a binary process where we end up either “fucked” or “not fucked.”

It is a system that gets worse over time as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases. We are just beginning to see the horrors that climate change has in store for us —but that does not mean that the story is settled. Things will get worse, almost certainly much, much worse.

Indeed, the news about what more to expect, coming out of new research, only darkens our picture of what to expect: Just over the past few weeks, new studies have suggested heat in many major Indian cities would be literally lethal by century’s end, if current warming trends continue, and that, by that time, global economic output could fall, thanks to climate effects, by 30 percent or more. That is an impact twice as deep as the global Great Depression, and it would not be temporary (Wallace-Wells).

ah The facts are only becoming more and more dire and as reported by Wallace-Wells, journalists are trying to honestly report but are also still hesitant to attribute summer fires and more commonly occurring heat waves to the effects of climate change.

All of these facts were incredibly heavy on my mind as I left for a week holiday with my family. My family had planned to go to Cusco, Peru for one week to explore Peru, visit our cousins, and to spend time together. I was excited to go back to the natural splendor of Latin America, the ease of la vida cotidiana, and to taste winter weather in August. Additionally, starting with this past trip, I planned to pause my news consumption to temporarily freeze anxiety and to use that extra mental energy to focus on a theme that I hope to learn and grow from. The theme manifested at an intersection between the environment, indigenous peoples, climate change, the harms of tourism, and the cost of plane travel. As of the past two years of my life, I have quickly redefined myself as a (somewhat) seasoned traveler by doubling the amount of countries I’ve been too, living abroad, and taking every opportunity I can to leave the country, explore, and push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve grown immeasurably and everything I’ve seen and done has so positively affected my outlook and my life. And I’ve benefited from this privilege by having more social clout, shamelessly and boastfully posting online, and experiencing things that I’ve never thought possible. But there and many unavoidable and truths and pressures about travel that a traveler needs to reconcile with and they include the damage you manage to contribute to voluntourism, the influx of tourism in vulnerable locations, the mere carbon emissions from a single flight alone, the negative affects of climate change on those who contribute the least to it, and the “need to present a life free from the tyranny of a nine-to-five office job in the tight frame of Instagram” (Guardian Opinion).

I continuously struggle with the question of how to be an intentional and sustainable traveler and to emit as little emissions as possible. Previously, I would argue in favor of traveling intentionally and like a local, carrying around reusables, offsetting your emissions from your flight, doing research, being nothing short of courteous and willing to learn as much as possible, to purchase from local merchants, and suggestions like that. Since finishing the genuinely insightful and delightful book Being the Change by Peter Kalmus I’ve concluded that those attempts are not enough. The emissions produced by being a passenger of a flight is comparable to all of the emissions produced by someone living in a rural area in a single year. Bottom line, you cannot claim to be concerned about climate change and reducing your impact if you are a flyer or a frequent flyer. I struggle with this non-negotiable considering that I am a consultant, I have family who live internationally, and the internal cost of my desire to travel. But it is something to consider especially because Kalmus continues to argue that attempting to offset your emissions doesn’t do enough.

Back to Peru, I want to highlight vulnerable tourist locations and indigenous people by looking through the lenses of my trip. Peru is a country that was brutally colonized by the Spanish back in the sixteenth century and that has continue to shape its’ history. However, Peru is also a country with a 45% indigenous population that still has Quecha being prevalently spoken. In 2017 it was reported that, “tourism in Peru’s protected natural areas generated $720 million” (Zuazo). Due to the natural beauty and history of Peru there really is an abundance of (photographic) sites to visit including Machu Picchu, la montaña de siete colores, valle sagrado, la amazonía, and more. These sites are nothing short of a testament “of a longstanding harmonious and aesthetically stunning relationship between human culture and nature” (UNESCO). The pictures I took and instagrams I posted come incredibly short of actually portraying the real beauty of Peru and I cannot say enough good things about the people, the city, the country, and everything. Again, going back to the impact of climate change I want to focus on la montaña de siete colores. Interestingly, la montaña de siete colores was only added as a tourist attraction 5 years ago. Strange, right? Especially considering that you’ve probably seen plenty of saturated pictures of this colorful mountain….but it was because up until 5 years ago the mountains were covered by snow year-round and hid the mineral rich colors underneath a bed of snow. Due to the warming of climate change, the mountains are now visible and susceptible to an influx of tourists (like myself). ah

The varicolored mountain, with sediment created from mineral deposits over millions of years, was discovered only about five years ago, locals say. But it has become a must-see attraction for hikers, bringing much-needed cash to the area but also prompting concern about possible damage to the previously unspoiled landscape…But there may be a high price to pay for the tourism boom….John Widmer….lamented the environmental destruction occurring from the large number of tourists, adding that “the beautiful and fragile alpine environment is getting completely demolished” by the hordes of eager hikers who journey to the mountain. “I’m ashamed at the fact that we, too, personally destroyed a bit of the Andes during our trek to Rainbow Mountain (Magra y Zarate).

ah The struggle truly is, how do you balance the need to protect vulnerable sites but also benefit from “the flood of tourists [that] also brings with them a flood of cash to the small community of indigenous Pampachiri people living near the mountain” (Fessenden).

In order to protect unique sites like these conversations need to centrally focus on preservation and the indigenous people who are most affected by tourism and climate change. Throughout the trip, I could not get over the irony that the wealthy and tourists, who contribute to exploitation and climate change and who harm vulnerable sites, negatively impact climate change the most. ah

Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, owing to their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources. Climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by vulnerable indigenous communities, including political and economic marginalization, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination and unemployment (UN).

ah The irony is not lost on me and it is something that was incredibly heavy on my mind during my travels. How can I even pretend to claim that I care about the environment, empowering global majority groups, and learning from others when I contribute negatively to sources that will ultimately hurt the world and the people and places in it? The earlier article cited about la montaña also very hopefully suggested that “just as photos on the internet helped establish Vinicunca’s popularity, perhaps reporting about the dangers of over-tourism at the colorful mountain can mobilize preservation efforts for its future” (Fessenden). I definitely agree that reporting and raising awareness can be helpful but I am still unclear on where I stand and what I should do about air travel. Kalmus suggested that quitting air travel would help enormously and that alternate modes of transportation like “slow travel” would be sufficient replacements–suggestions I don’t disagree with. The disconnect and the denial is something I know that I and plenty of others struggle to grapple with…it’s easy to be busy with the rest of your life and dismiss your impact. But, I would argue that individual impact is huge and that anything you can do to ~reduce, reuse, recycle~ would help but I would encourage you to really think about what else can you do and to empower your decisions. Can you cut out air travel or car travel or change your diet or not use an AC? Can you recognize that using fossil fuels might not even be making you happier? Think about all the misery (and emissions!) caused by sitting in traffic and getting stuck with a flight delay. Doing something is better than nothing…because we can’t look back to 2018 and realize that all we did was debate about the harm of straws. You can’t rely on politicians, celebrities, and scientists to fix this problem because I believe that individual decisions and choices have an empowering impact that act as a ripple effect. As Kalmus advises, you need to try to make these changes out of a sense of joy and love because we love this planet, the beautiful places we visit, and people we meet and you can’t forget that they’re nothing but our neighbors and our community that we need to work towards protecting and preserving. Now consider what really needs to be given up–because the answer is plainly apathy.

Radar & Update

May 10, 2018

Again, been slow on the updates but it’s not surprising. I’ve been struggling with being on top of my other activities and maintaining a routine with all the recent travel (Guatemala, North Carolina, Mexico, Chicago) and work becoming busier. At times, it has been frustrating but at others, it’s been easy to just get caught up in it and completely forget prioritizing other important activities. The following is a a brief list of things I’ve been reading, seeing, thinking about, and listening to. It probably dates back to March when I originally intended on publishing this post but I did get around to it!

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Feliz Día Internacional de la Mujer

Mar 8, 2018

A little mad at myself that I only seem to remember this site during holidays that align with my values. Again, I need to spend some time evaluating how I want to use this site…but in the meanwhile Feliz Día Internacional de la Mujer / international day of the women.

It is a time to pause and reflect to be grateful and to be critical of what has passed and how we will drive towards a better and more inclusive future. It’s an exciting time to be a woman and a Latina and I want to stress how much in awe I am of the shoulders of other women that I have stood on.

A lot has been done and even more needs to be accomplished. Last night, my roommate told me about a truly despicable case that have resulted in a Yale student being found not guilty in a blatant case of sexual assault. This is just one example of millions of how much more we truly need to do.

From gun control, to inclusion in tech and infosec, to equal pay between men and women and between men and WOC, to change rape culture at school and in workplaces, for safe spaces, for respecting indigenous people, to saving the environment, and more femme led businesses and countries and more. Today is a reminder of what needs to be done and you cannot forget the imperative need to positively contribute to whatever this movement will end up being called in the future.

self love & valentines

Feb 14, 2018

On this corporate scam day, I’ve been reflecting on the all of love in my life, the power of femme friendships, what I am truly passionate about, and self love. To put it briefly, I am so often in gratitude from the magnitude of love I have in my life and it is something I never want to take for granted. Last night, I hungout with some of my friends in the spirit of galentines and that mostly consisted of wine, cheese, cupcakes, pizza, and lots of catching up. It truly is remarkable how cathartic being listened to and understood and heard and recognized is. Femme friendships are truly important above most other things. Due to a minor scare which has left me spending more time relaxing and recovering, I’ve been indulging in more reading, elearning, and skill building. Scares can somehow manifest into joyful things that require you to adjust your time and energy into things that you are equally passionate about. It can be an exciting thing (depending on how you choose to look at it) or excuse to fully pursue more things that interest you. Additionally, Adrian Grenier is an advocate for skipping straws and excess plastic usage which I find to be inspiring. I’d like to take the opportunity to remind you that bringing metal straws around, using a reusable water bottle, and saying no to plastic bags is much easier than you would think. Fighting for a future with a cleaner ocean that is not negatively impacted by plastic usage is something you can do through advocacy and life style changes. I’d like to encourage you to consider your impact and realize that you physically want to have as little negative impact as possible.

Lastly, since so much of valentines day is focused on love and dates and spending and candy I also would like to draw attention to the importance of mindful self love. Admittedly hard to spend time on when there is so much life going on but I just wanted to include really simple things that you can do to start practicing self love. None of these are particularly radical or revolutionary but as long as they make you happy and remind you to practice things that you enjoy, that is all that really matters. (more…)

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