From Uruguay to Brazil: What no one tells you about returning to your homeland.
This article was originally published in Portuguese in my LinkedIn.
2018 was a very impactful year of many transitions. Today, with almost 2 months of Rock Content, I decided I wanted to write about this experience. So this text is an introduction to contextualizing my route to becoming a Rock Community Analyst.
Well, back to my origins: I’m from Mato Grosso do Sul, I was born in Campo Grande, capital of my state. But I had lived my last 2 years in Montevideo, Uruguay.
My experience living in MVD was very intense and rewarding, for example, was when I received my first major professional challenge: taking over the national board of Business Development of AIESEC in Uruguay. Among other things, it was also when I had my first serious relationship with anyone, my first time living in a college republic (albeit 4 years old), my worst winters and my worst financial needs and psychological crises.
But no experience prepares you to lose someone you love.
And that’s how life brought me back to Brazil. It was a very quick and painful transition, I was coming back from my vacation to MVD on a Sunday, and by Wednesday of the same week, I was moving back to Brazil. From my 2 years living there, many things are left behind — material and sentimental. But everything didn’t fit in the suitcase, not even in the heart.
But the truth is that my flight was not as cruel as the landing in Brazil. Arriving in Campo Grande, still on the plane, I received an email from my boss with the whole team in copy, and in parts, it said:
Gracias a vos por lo que nos has dado. Hemos hecho un montón de cosas gracias a tu trabajo y espero podamos seguir haciéndolo. Sin ir más allá, los perfiles que enviamos cada vez que proponemos a una persona para una empresa son hechos por vos. En un par de horas debes de estar llegando con tu familia. Mucha suerte y que todo salga de la mejor forma posible.
I believe it was at this moment that I began to understand what would come, and yet, what I had “left”. I collapsed and started crying before I even got off the plane. And this painful process lasted a week until I discovered that it was just the beginning of an infinite journey.
For no experience prepares you for mourning, or for the emptiness that remains, or for the feeling of helplessness, of revolt. My grief also brought a responsibility, which I was not yet ready to assume. When you lose part of a family’s mainstay, someone needs to take that role. And yeah, that was me, and that’s when I realized that my decisions were no longer just mine. I tried to go back to Uruguay, it didn’t work out. I tried to move house, it didn’t work. I tried to change cities, it didn’t work out.
I tried to escape my grief, my responsibilities and even myself: it didn’t work out.
That was when I realized that nothing would change unless I understood my current situation and which direction to go. So I decided that what I needed was a job, as much as I kept working — remotely — with 1950Labs, at that time, it was very important for interpersonal interaction and clinging to something that would drive me away from home. I searched, searched, and searched, but there was no job in Campo Grande that piqued my interest.
At the end of May, I had a serious talk with my family. Accustomed to my comings and goings, it was not much mystery that I would surely communicate that I would move from city or country. But this time, it wasn’t like before, and it wasn’t just for me either. I needed to find my essence, what moved me, and I also needed to reconcile it with the financial and psychological support I needed to deliver at home.
And experiences have taught me that life is a journey.
I started looking for vacancies in other cities that were aligned with my purposes and mainly with my reality. At this point, I had been flirting with Belo Horizonte for some time and convinced by the idea of working in São Pedro Valley. The setting was exactly what I was looking for, a lively, enterprising, technological and innovative place, and a pleasant, welcoming and cost-effective city. That’s when I started flirting, too, with Rock Content. The problem is that my flirt was unrequited, as none of the vacancies caught my attention.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, or if I didn’t pay attention earlier, but I know that one day I got on the platform and there was an opportunity that seemed to be designed for me. I just remember my mom saying, before I even applied myself, “They’ll call you.” And well, here I am.
I returned to my journey, which now gives me the experience of working in one of the 25 Top Startups in Brazil! It has not been easy, but definitely, it’s the experience I needed.
