INFLUENCE

picture from http://www.audiencebloom.com/

If you can think of the most influential person you know, who would it be? Would it be your Father or your Mother? Could it be your high school teacher or your college professor? What about a civil rights leader, a politician or a war hero? How about an artist like a writer, performer or painter? And what if it was a speech, a song or a poem? Can a community influence you? The power to influence and control the decisions and behavior of someone is something we all have the ability to achieve, good or bad. Everyday our actions, our words or our life is influencing someone that we have yet to meet. We also have the ability to influence a family member or influence a friend. We naturally possess this incredible gift. We all have the power to impact someone’s life. The problem I see is that we don’t necessarily know how to encourage ourselves. 

It’s hard for me to put into words the amount of influence someone can have on you. I don’t know what influenced me per say, I did not grow up to be a product of it anyways. I was not “really” encouraged by anyone to do the right thing, but what I do know is that I am limited because of it. What you might want to understand is that all of us are here in this world to influence others. Is a chain reaction, that its impact can only be determined by the amount of connection you have with someone. I influence him, you influence her, and she influences’ them and so on. Lately I have been doing some serious thinking about what I want to do with my life. I am beginning to realize that maybe I am convincing myself of not being worthy of wanting something I was not encouraged to have. But, I desperately want to find myself in a place where I am happy and where life has meaning. I want to find my purpose because the circumstances in which I grew up, led me to believe I won’t amount to anything. For example, in my experience, my influence led to acceptance, which led to commitment, which then led to adapting to the environment around me. When the environment is critical more often than none, the chances of escaping from that influence can be critical too, in other words, being destined to fail. But that’s only if you allow it. What you are conditioned to believe during the process that the environment stimulates, such as encouraging negative behaviors and thoughts to take shape, un-conditioning your mind to think otherwise is creating change and that changes is a product of learning. Embellish in the philosophical question of what is right and what is wrong.

What really had me thinking about influence and its impact on people, or things, was when I spoke to my little brothers. My brothers are 19 and 16 years old, I know, not so “little”. I have a very peculiar relationship with them. We tried to understand one another, but I can tell that they respect me a lot. They always try to pretend that nothing is bothering them but the reality is a lot is bothering them. The environment in which we are being raised in is a challenging one. That includes a combination of a single mother, poverty, violence, lack of motivation, negligence and negativity. But I know they are having problems understanding who they are, and understanding what influenced me to go to college and finish school on time to pursue my career. Because I grew up in the same situation, I know how hard this is for them and I know how difficult it can be to make the right decisions, especially when you are limited to the possibilities of success, mainly because the negative inclinations society has on minorities. I told them that what kept me motivated all that time was WILL. The will I had to get up every morning, go to school and do my homework, the will to not allow society to determine my destiny. The will I had to not allow my illness to stop me from getting better. I remember the only advice my mother gave me, “my daughter, please look at my life, don’t end up like me. I don’t care what you study in college, just don’t end up like me.” Of course, she said it in Spanish but it was a powerful advice. My mom was not always the smartest or the strongest but she sure was the wisest. That advice was not just words they were an assignment, a challenge to see how much attention I was putting on the world and the poor influence that surrounded me daily. For the first time I opened my eyes and saw the world for what it truly was, but it wasn't until my illness that I realized the battle is never won. I had then to condition my mind to believe that there is a brighter future for me. I have to find a catalyst in my life that will stimulate positive change and productivity, but I first need to work on my confidence.

Not too long ago, I met with a couple of influential people, and these were hard knocks in the industry, and one of them in particular, The Head Honcho, was a very intellectual person, very well read and extremely inspiring. He has the power and the credentials to affect a lot of people. I met with him briefly. Although, I thought I would have more time to speak with him, engage in a productive conversation in which otherwise can be considered deep, but unfortunately that was not the case. He asked me where I was from, where I grew up, my current employment status and what was some of my responsibilities with the last team that worked here at X company? But something strange occurred, I felt like he seemed uninterested in what I had to say. At the moment I paid no mind and I met with his team soon after our brief, and rather futile, introduction. I was really looking forward to an expressive conversation with him, but instead he said, let me leave you with someone you will be working with, because you will not be working with me. I was a little concern with that, but then I realized, hey… one less person to impress.

You see, that’s the problem, why should I feel better of having someone less to impress. Am I thinking that maybe, I am not someone that has the ability to neither influence nor impress someone of that caliber, in the hopes that they will be inclined to offer me a job, an opportunity to continue my path of empowering others to be great as well? I don’t know if maybe all this time I have been lacking in reciting influential words or ideas during interviews. I spent most of my days thinking about what I could have done better. What I could have said or mentioned about my past to make a connection. I never thought to indicate the influences I've had on people and the impact it has installed in my daily work life and activities. I don’t know, perhaps I am not caught out to succeed as I think I am, but why not?

picture from http://theskinnyonline.blogspot.com/

If I start to think back past chances, I see so many opportunities gone by that were in front of me, but I chose to be inconspicuous in all of them. I wanted to tell them, that what matters to me the most is the influence I have on my two little brothers and my two little sisters. Who just like me are confused about what they deserve and what they don’t deserve in this world, and who just like me are experiencing the harsh reality of the world and its different shades of grey at such a very young age. Who like me also want to believe, that there is opportunity for even the most unfortunate souls. I don’t believe that in life we should look at other people to tell us how to be, but it is nice to take the universal things that makes us all different, look at the person who has courage and find YOUR own courage, influence is important when it builds strong and healthy individuals in all of us. Don’t be afraid to accept change for change is a product of learning and we all experience change differently. Remember that there is no better influence then yourself. 

MY RECOVERY AFTER A HUGE BREAK UP... MOVE ON LIKE YOUR JOB DID

Have you ever tried to get the attention of someone you really like? You noticed them in one of those online dating websites or out at night, mingling around. Whoever that person is, they caught your interest. There was something about his/her “profile” that attracted you to that person or you heard great things about them that really sounded fascinating. My favorite, and often very common is, “we met through mutual friends”. You gain the confidence to approach them and you get a response. All of a sudden you are optimistic, you see yourself in a long term committed relationship. You prepare to impress them in the first few couple of dates, expressing your best attributes and what you look for in your counterpart. You work hard to look the part and even seeking advice!

At the end of each date, you find yourself with so much in common… or not. What happens when all those emotions starts to bottle up inside? I’m getting butterflies in my stomach! You are so happy because you thought you found the one. Well, one day, that person tells you during a phone call or email: “is not working out”, “I need something else”, or “I’m not ready”, sometimes they don’t even answer your call, basically you just got rejected. In many cases, you get rejected before you even go out on a date. You asked your friends (connections) to hook you up: "Hey! Can you put in a good word for me? I'm trying to take her out on a date but she won’t even LOOK AT ME". So many attempts we conjure to induce the other person to notice us.

I wouldn't say we have tried to go as far as stalking, but we do look online to see if that person is dating (hired) someone else. You go through every advice that was giving to you to see if you did them all right. You ask those close to you and who are in very healthy relationships, how do you know when you found the right one? Why can’t I find the right one? What am I doing wrong? Is it the way I look? Did I come off too strong? But we have so much in common during the first date (interview), what happened? This is something I dread, the feeling of rejection, questioning yourself whether you are good enough or not.

Yes, job hunting for me has turned out similar to the idea of looking for a relationship or maintaining a relationship, but unlike my relationship with my current significant other I’m stable, job wise, I am not.

There are many times when we are so sure of what we want in life and usually those things end up being questioned too. Do you REALLY know what you want in life? Is that person (career) right for you? Sometimes I feel like my standards are too high and maybe I should settle for a person (job) that doesn't want me permanently but has me around “temporarily”. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way, but it drives me crazy and I want to give up. Finding love is the same as finding the job we aspire to have, both are hard to established or even find. Notice how that is why most people like to focus on one rather than the other, honestly, not everyone can balance both at first.

Multiple times in the past, I find myself constantly thinking about switching career paths. I sometime say to myself that the job I really desire isn't really what I expected. And we give up on the one we love, instead of fighting. It’s very obvious to see the correlation between both, and we can very much see how similar both life experiences are. The bottom line is that they are both equally frustrating. As needy humans that we are, we seek, ultimately, an acceptable quality of life and what those qualities mean to us as individuals. Overall, we part ways and take more action in one area of our lives than others. And then it comes to a halting point, what else do we need to feel complete in the world we live in today?

Some pre historic time ago, we were Hunters/Gatherers and we asked for only what we needed to survive, as the times kept evolving and the more civilized and modern we became, the more we added to the pyramid, ranging from most important to least. We pile on ideas in which helps us in creating our own pyramid of what’s important to us individually, including but not limited to, career, wealth, status, education, materialism, family, love, happiness, ACCEPTANCE and so on. Therefore, we seek stability in our lives just as much as we seek love from others to feel wanted. I know I am not the only one who seems to notice this but this analogy came to me like a feeling. I had lost the one job I was giving my all to and was very happy to be with.

I couldn't believe that I would ever experience another lay-off with a company that I actually cared and looked forward to working with for a very long time. The “breakup” obviously wasn't mutual, and it dawn on me, when someone told me, “Everyone at some point in their lives have been there, you just can’t give up, you’ll find the right one”, now where have I heard that before? Ah! Yes, in break ups.

It’s so irrelevant but it makes some sort of sense. True story, you can sneak in the same advice you give to someone who is going through a break up/can’t find love, to someone going through a layoff/can’t find work! I have use this analogy on other people before and the majority of the time they 100% agree that they are similar, in more ways than none. I am just simply observing. And, as the visual person that I like to believe I am, I dealt with the reality of being bumped by my job, as if I was going through a break up with the guy who broke up with me (between you and me, I actually found the right guy after the one that dumped me, so there is still hope in my career search). I told myself, life goes on and you have to move on, don’t hate, congratulate those that did find “the one”, know that this isn't personal, it’s actually BUSINESS, whatever that means...

 One of the things I feel fails to be noted during finding the right candidate for a job is passion, drive and enthusiasm for work. Those are very important and hardly ever regarded in an interview or screening. No matter how much I tried, my passion is not enough, and I wonder why. When you go on a date with a girl/guy, do you sometimes go for someone who has personality, passion and ambition? What about his/her potential to be a great partner? Or, do you find yourself trying to find more of a physical attraction than anything else. At this age, I have to figure things out on my own regarding my career. I’ll bring up another example and I will end with that.

I want to compare this example with the idea of Identification (Google it), there are many sides to Identification in psychology, but I’ll stick to the more relevant one for this topic. It’s called Partial Identification, and why maybe my Partial Identification with the adults in my family growing up, is probably the reason I am not advancing in my career like I would like to. Will I be confident enough to go after what I really want, jobs that fit my interest and skills?

In a family where mom and dad are successful and raised you together, you feel more confident with the idea of love and success. You grow up knowing that you will meet someone who will share with you a lifetime of happiness the way you have seen with your parents growing up. You will also be more prepared to face hiring managers during interviews. I grew up with a single mother, poor and with no education. My mother only spoke Spanish ever since she came to this country with my brother and I alone. All of the women in my family, at least 60% of them are all single parents. I was raised by my uncles as well, who in respect, also raised their children alone. The adults in my family, during the time I was growing up, had no formal education, and we struggle to make ends meet. I understand why my family was in the situation that they were in, but they did raise us to be fearless and leaders. They raised us to be strong and to learn to face the toughest challenges no matter what. At the same time, they were discouraging, seeing me or my other siblings and cousins struggling through our studies, they knew in their hearts they had nothing to offer or how to help, so my mom will say to me at times to leave school, get a regular job and to not frustrate myself. I know she didn't know any better, but that was her way of being supportive. I went to college to pursue a career in the Arts, to find out I had no mentoring, coaching or luck after I graduated. I have no confidence, nor did I grow up with any examples around me that would have helped me meet the requirements needed to succeed in the real world. In other words, I identified with the instability my family faced. But I know they did not bring me to this country to fail.

picture by: holykaw.alltop.com

Where do I go know? How do I believe again? It did not work out for my mother, should I believe that it won’t work out for me? I don’t want to get too deep with this. Though, I do hope you can see my point. Our career is our relationship, whether we like to admit it or not. What makes us wake up every morning is not just our intimate relationship or family, it is the job of our dreams. Whether we hate it or love it, every day we run to it like if it’s the only thing in this world that matters. We dress up for it, we buy things for it, we laugh with it, we cry with it and we enjoy life because of it. The truth is that once you don’t have a career that you can identify yourself with, soon enough you’ll realize something is missing, and it’s the same feeling you get when you wake up next to no one.

From: Yesterday to: Tomorrow

I was lying on a hospital bed with a very excruciating headache. I just had transnasal neurosurgery the day before and the head pain from the surgery still was very unbearable, like if someone hit you in the head with a bat twenty times repeatedly. The sound coming from my family around my bed was muffled by the throbbing of my headache. I saw everything a little blurry until I can see again. I remember needing to go to the bathroom, so I got up slowly with the help of my mother and the nurse. Suddenly, I puked something blue out of my body but the nurse told me, it was normal, that was just my anesthesia. I was not well, I felt the weight of my body, I hardly could eat yet I continued to feel dizzy and exhausted. 

At the hospital after the surgery, I had two tampons up my nose to
stop the bleeding. 

My body felt weak, like a diabetics but the doctor told me my sugar level was fine for now, it was just a little low and that I should eat, I hate food I told him. He couldn’t say the same for the young girl who had the same surgery lying next to me on the other side of the room, she kept having problems with her sugar from time to time but eventually she will get well, which was a great sign. She was my board room buddy. We both had the same surgery and the same tumor in the same place. She understood me and I understood her. We felt one another’s pain and we felt one another’s energy, all along we were relief but we were scared. We knew the journey to recovery was going to be a difficult one, but how we were going to erase five years of immense struggle and pain, shame and embarrassment was still unsure.  The truth is, we were over 230lbs. I knew I was 250lbs. Those were the beginning of my second chance here on earth, I never thought that something so small can have such a major effect on my body… but it did. The tumor was the size of a pea and it impacted my life in more ways than one.

I took this picture on my way to the hospital for the surgery

My tumor, thank God, was not malignant meaning potentially cancerous. Luckily my tumor was benign, which means good/non-cancerous. However, it can become malignant if not treated appropriately and fast. The surgery was clearly to remove the tumor I had between my pituitary glands in the frontal lobe of my brain, and since the operation took place so closely to the brain, it caused such a traumatic headache and nasal congestion. Tumors, such as the one I had, can cause serious hormone problems. The defect caused me to gain a lot of weight and it also caused me my overall emotional and mental imbalance. A lot of what I do today and how I feel about myself can be trace back to this experience. Actually, it can be trace even further than that like father issues, sexual harassment and pre-mature transition from girl to woman hood. Nonetheless what the tumor caused was a disease called Cushing. In an early post I mentioned how depress I felt. Every once in a while I get these mood swings and I start to drift away to this very dark place of death and despair. All the things that I been through in the past starts to surface and my depressive mood starts to become so viciously active in my mind. I feel it in my body and I feel it in my heart. I am twenty-six years of age, I am young and I had the surgery at the age of 22 going on 23. I was mad, because I knew my twenties were not going to be as peaches and cream like most people tend to think your twenties are. I knew I couldn’t think, act or perceive life the way many young adults in their 20’s do. It was not a matter of maturity it was more of a battle to survive. I have no money, no parents or family that can help me emotionally and financially. My family view life as it is, nothing more, therefore we shouldn’t want anything more than what it has giving you. In theory we suppose to want more for ourselves and believe that there are better and greater things for once self out there. My family didn’t see it that way. It is clear that they already grew accustom to their way of life, they think very old school and they don’t believe in depression, at least not admitting it existence. All in all they were no help in that department. I know they love me and they care for me but there is only so much they can do for me since they are trying to make sense of it all for themselves, how the hell are they going to figure things out for me? 

Me and my best friend a year after the surgery

Me and my rock at graduation day, receiving my
BFA in Film, he is the love of my life.

Fast forward to the present day, I have a boyfriend we been living together for the past two years and it is incredible. He is the love of my life and no one understands me quite like him. He is supportive, strong and has been through more hell than I can ever bear. Therefore he takes time to be patient with me when those famous mood swings start to kick in. Is not easy for a man to be with a woman that is so down on herself but he makes it work, I love him very much for that, he is my rock. Besides my great boyfriend, I am still fat, but the disease left a huge mark, I haven’t been able to look the same or go back to my regular size. I’m back to zero and I need to try to get my body to the ten that it was. I have a bad foot, caused by all the weight I put on it when I was gaining those treacherous pounds. I still need to fix that bone in my foot. I am still with no stable job, the last time I found a great job I was laid off because the company was doing bad, they let go of over 200 people across different markets. Hmm… That’s it, my clock is ticking and I feel as though I am not putting enough effort to make my second chance here on earth worth wild. I am not doing myself any justice and I keep failing, at least that’s how I feel but I am trying, my love is strong. I hope you all can understand how impatient I am to make things happen in my life, to know the answer to everything. I don’t want to worry anymore about my health, my mental instability and my financial instability. What is it that I want? What is it that I need? Where do I see myself in the next 5, 10 years? I don’t know, I keep going down this narrow path and I am lost. All I can say is never stop trying. You get many chances in life and some come more frequently than others. Be kind to another, be loving and be supportive. At the end of a long day, we are all nothing more than humans.

THE DAY AFTER THE FIRST DAY OF SUMMER

The day after the first day of summer and here I am still finding little nuances to complain about. I find that blogging can be utilized to express all sorts of life entities. I’ve decided that this blog entry will speak to you about my depression and its state in which it repeatedly finds itself in. Let me begin by saying that yes, you guessed right, I suffer from what I like to call severe depression. I hate making anything about myself. I find my life rather amusing, reason for it is because I have accomplished a lot in short amount of time. You can call it will power or you can name it whatever you want. I call it a miracle because I am still alive. I don’t take myself serious however deep down inside I wish someone can hear me. Let’s begin by me telling you how I felt the morning of June 22^nd 2014.   

Yesterday was my friend’s birthday, but I thought I forgot it. I’ve woken up hating it but I kept reminding myself that she will be alright. Yesterday I spent the day dreading the summer. I don't like any time of the year to be honest but if I could choose I would probably choose fall. The summer reminds me of all the things I forgot to do during hibernation season (okay, this is where you would probably guess signs of depression… let me continue). I was supposed to be in shape that was the goal. The summer just reminds me of what I needed to do to accomplish it and I didn't. Now here I am most likely about to spent money on a bathing suit that probably won't even look decent on me. But yesterday particularly was a very hard day for me. It was the day after the first day of summer and I probably spend it figuring out what to do with myself. Every day, every day I ask myself why? Why I feel this way, why? Why this had to happen to me? Why? Why what you say? Why was I faced with a traumatic disease in my life, no, not depression, that became worse as the disease in habited my life and most importantly my body. I am speaking about Cushing’s disease, google it, I would have to write another blog entry to explain what it is. The point is it changed me and it changed my life completely. I don't even have money to pay for the bills I was left with after my neurosurgery, I don't have a life anymore in which I feel will allow me to focus on my body or image. I don't know how to be anything else but the way I was and I don't have a stable job. You see work is becoming such a big problem in my life now. I find a job and then I lose it. Is not because I lack any technical skill, it mostly involves finding a place where I belong. I am not sure I deserve to live this way. I see my friends living a life with total disregard of the future or consequences. And I am here stressing out over something I can't change. My life is a total mess, I feel lost and confuse. I feel alone, like no one understands me. I am such a stranger in my own life that I can't seem to know where to go or what to do. Everything is depressing me. I am scared of my own life. I am afraid of the things I say and the things I might do. I wish I had a place to go that can help me but everything requires fucking money. Seriously, everything requires money... money I don't have. I feel that my life is going to end soon. I just don't know how. I am not afraid of dying, but I don’t want to die just yet. Believe it or not, I do have people who love me despite of all I been through personally and despite of how I feel, they still love me. But they’re just as broken as I am, maybe less but broken nonetheless. How do I ask for help when they themselves can’t help me? I know they wish they could, I wish I could help them too.

My life is a mess, understanding in a car crash, I want to change, that’s the first step. I wish I can explain more but in a nutshell I'm feeling depress. I have no control over what happened to me, I feel depress because I’m too weak to change the outcome of it. I’m sorry if you can’t take this serious. I am sorry if you are tired of hearing or reading about someone’s depressive state lack of motivation, seriously, but my words are natural and flow freely every year, always starting on the day after the first day of summer. I’m Victorious Monsterpiece, please feel free to comment as you please.

 

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