Get yourself out there!

Things happen. Sometimes (usually for me) a lot of things at the same time happens. That’s what me and my friends call my packages…

There’s two ways to approaching this “unexpected” events: You either take it as a punishment, a result of something you have been doing wrong or you stand up, keep walking and take it as an opportunity for a change.

Last time a lot of things happened to me I decided I had enough of a lot of things too. So it was time for me to pursue a big change, a career change, a life change. I had been working as a journalist in newspapers, TV, press agencies, etc. for about 10 years. I thought this was what I wanted to be when I grow up the more I had been doing that the less meaning it had for me. On the contrary, nonprofits and social development/ social work was really attractive to me. I had been to India to shoot a short documentary and ended up helping with english classes, I was involved with a program for children from the Sahara camps, I went to Bolivia to assist in shelter homes for street children and also working in interviews and audiovisual materials and, more recently, I spent two wonderful and busy weeks in Uganda learning about a small organisation’ projects there and gathering media materials for communication purposes.

For the last four years I worked to be able to travel and join this kind of activities but I couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to live doing what I was doing on my free time and not spending most of my time and energy in something else to be able to do what was really rewarding for me. Do what you want to do but that makes you happy. So, when everything else seemed to be nonsense I took off and decided to drive my life towards something meaningful and hopefully helpful.

It may sound like a great adventurous plan. Just pack your things and go see the world, right?

Well, the truth is that you also leave a lot of things — not things, mostly people- behind. Family, friends, people you love, people you miss, people who has been there at all times, people who was there at some point… important people. But still, you can keep waiting for an opportunity to come or create one and find your place.

I took a work leave for a year, I left my apartment, got my english certificates and new skills to increase my possibilities in the nonprofit sector and started sending hundreds of resumés, applications, personal proposals and all kind of documents to find a place where they needed someone with my personal and professional skills. It can be exasperating when you know what you want to do and you work your butt off but no feedbacks come.

Finally, after a month or two, I ended up having 3 options and finding myself to decide where to go and what was the best possibility for me.

Now, I live in Sri Lanka and I’m sharing my knowledge and expertise with a group of people whose main goal is to provide equal opportunities to all the children, regardless their economical, social, cultural… background. Finding sponsors to fund scholarships to guarantee education to those who can’t afford it and show will and potential to succeed and accompanying them through the bridge from school to the grown up people and employment. We’re all still learning but so far it feels right and it makes sense to use my knowledge for this cause. (For the record, they tend to appreciate it more than what people usually do in what we can call a “regular” job).

In the end, it’s all about trying. If you never try, you never know. But what I know is that you’ll probably won’t succeed if you don’t try. You can fail, but the biggest failure is not having tried, because you’ll never know what could had happen.

Get out there! dream and chase your dreams. Impossible is nothing, you haven’t tried hard enough just yet.