A few years ago I found myself very unhappy with life. I felt I’d just hit a dead end when I wanted to quit my 8 -5 job while companies were closing their doors, others were migrating their headquarters abroad and the job opportunities were scarce. Regardless of the fact that I didn’t really know what was coming next, I quit my job anyway. That’s when I learned the biggest lesson of my new ‘about to start’ journey: we plan our careers but we forget to plan our lives. We prioritize our job and then adapt our lives to it. While it should be the other way around.
Chasing your dreams seems beautiful on Instagram photos, but in fact it’s not easy at all. I had to rethink my life and my professional career. And just when I decided I needed a gap year, I found Partnerhero’s job opening. You know, we often come across unique opportunities for a dream job, but we don’t always feel prepared to go for it! This time I was. When I read the job description I felt as if it was written for me.
With the unfair reputation of being “the most dangerous country in the world,” a few months later I was boarding a plane to Honduras. Fasten your seatbelts, and get ready for takeoff … today you’re traveling with me.
As soon as I arrived in Honduras I was taken by a feeling of being home, even though I knew I was 3103 miles away from it. The streets, houses and establishments rather resemble some parts of Brazil. The cuisine is much like the Brazilian, usually with rice, beans, salad and some kind of meat. All dishes usually come accompanied with some tortillas and mantequilla. But THE star of Honduran street food are baleadas (thick flour tortillas, folded in half and filled with mashed fried red beans and other ingredients). I fell in love with the people, the food and a country that I never thought I could love so passionately.
When working remotely, you don’t have a chance to make small talk with your neighbor in the next cubicle or discuss weekend plans by the coffeemaker. It’s that kind of personal chit-chat, however, that helps us relate to our colleagues. TOUCH BUILDS TRUST they say, and getting to see the faces behind the screen, getting comfortable with the team, socialising and learning from them was the best part of my trip. Not only did I learn a lot from this experience, I also had the opportunity to share some of the most valuable feedback we’d gathered from our users in Brazil with our clients POC.
I always wanted to work from home but at the end of the day, there is no greater inspiration and motivation than logging in to work every morning and having a group of people who are willing to work as hard as they can to achieve what we all came to do, despite of being remote or at the office. It’s all thanks to personal sacrifices and dedication that creates success, and I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else, with anyone else.
