You’re from the Puerto Rican Appalachia!

This morning, I got out of my delicious hibernation chamber, did my 20-minute TM, put the Bialetti on the stove, sat at my desk and decided to write for five hours.

Immediately, I felt a rush of excitement, a pinch of terror, and complete bewilderment. The generational trauma of hunger, the inability to reach one’s potential, and neglect is in my DNA but so is the grit, determination, fortitude, and persistence of el campesino borincano.

The goal is to become a millionaire but only doing what is fun, ethical, kind, good, and enlightening. I can do all this through writing because there’s an audience for whatever the fuck you do.

Neil Gaiman, not to be confused with Garmin — that’s the watch telling me how to live my life, says you have to be honest as a writer. Well, here’s my honesty: being from what I call the Puerto Rican Appalachia made me believe my role was to be in the trenches, working for low wages in unsafe neighborhoods, to teach the power of education as a means of liberation.

A formal education could liberate one’s authentic self — the one hidden under the debris of societal expectations, deprivation and emotional pain.

Helping others develop expansive thinking was a great goal, but I thought it had to be a lifetime job from which I was not allowed to budge…