28 Aug 2025 #misc
This was supposed to be a 300-day post celebration. But it turned out to be the toughest post I ever had to write.
After five years fighting with chronic kidney disease and two weeks in the hospital, one of the most important people in my life, my mom, passed away a few hours ago.
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes and a deep hole in my soul. We all know these moments will come at some point, but nothing and no one prepares us for them.
Today I want to remember mi mamá with a whole lot of gratitude.
Thanks mom:
- For teaching me faith
- For fighting so strong for so long
- For showing me love and kindness
- For being the best mom you could ever be
- For sacrificing your career to raising me and my sister
- For worrying about me even when you were sick in a bed too
- For staying up with me to study through the night
- For being there for me when I was sick
- For all that you sacrificed for me
- For the 62 years you were with us
I will always remember you, mamá. All that I am and what I have is because of you.
In the loving memory of Rocío Romero, the best mom God, Life, and the Universe could have given me.
We’ll see you again soon.
PS: If heaven is real, there must be a welcoming party there today.
27 Aug 2025 #writing
These days a loved one needed a blood transfusion.
My first instinct to look for donors was to write a WhatsApp status for my friends and contacts to see. I wrote something like,
“Urgent! Blood donors needed. O+. DM for more info.”
But then I realized I made the #1 mistake of writing and copywriting. I made the message about me, not about the readers. Anyone reading would ask, “What’s in there for me?” There was nothing for the reader.
After realizing my mistake, I wore my copywriting hat and changed my message,
“Has you done your good action of the day? Donate blood. It only takes a few minutes, you get a souvenir and have the chance of saving a life. DM me and I’d tell you how to help.”
That’s a copy written in favor of the reader, not of the writer. Because good copy and good writing is always about the reader.
26 Aug 2025 #writing
For so long, I was afraid of putting “writer” on my bio online.
I was full of self-doubt. “I don’t have thousands of followers.” “I don’t have a novel.” “I’m not even an English native speaker.”
Even after years of blogging, calling myself a writer was an impossible goal. Maybe because I pictured writers as Hemingways retreating to an island to return with a Nobel-winning novel.
I wish I had read Mark Thompson’s post challenging the distinction between “real” writing and everything else sooner. It would have saved me so many moments of self-doubt. He wrote,
If your words help someone, teach someone, inspire someone, or even just get them to click “follow,” then they’ve done their job.
If just one person has started writing and managed to change their situation after reading my articles, that is a win.
Stop chasing the “real writer” myth.
If you have helped, inspired, or made someone take any form of action with your words, that’s real writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Tweet, a blog post, or a 70,000-word work of fiction. Because all writing that moves someone is real. Period.
25 Aug 2025 #misc
Since last year, I’ve made a habit to write 10 ideas a day.
That’s a concept I learned from James Altucher. I even followed some of the exercises from “How to Become an Idea Machine,” a book with dozens of prompts to exercise your idea muscles.
Writing those 10 ideas has taught me we need plenty of bad ideas to find a good one. And once we find a good idea, we need ideas to execute it.
Did you come up with a book idea? Great. The next step is writing another 10 to (possibly) make that book a reality. Do you need research? Do you need to compile scattered blog posts? Do you need to test subjects first on social media?
This applies beyond writing books. These days, a neighbor decided to change our main door lock. It was rusty and in poor shape. That was a good idea. But he didn’t let everybody else know and didn’t have enough key copies for everyone. That was bad execution. Good ideas need good execution ideas too.
24 Aug 2025 #misc
I’ve been in a hospital with a loved one more times than I wanted.
Waiting in hospital rooms, I’ve written 10-idea lists, imagined the future of hospitals with AI, and learned some lessons about our bodies.
Before a recent exam, my loved one was so nervous that I had to enter the examination room too. The doctor could have dismissed her as just another nervous patient. But he calmed her down by explaining the possible diagnosis in simple words. That really worked.
When my loved one apologized to him, his answer inspired me. “Don’t worry. This is my job and I do it because I really like it,” he said. You could tell by the way he spoke to his patients. Then he said, “I’m passionate about this. And here, between you and me, the hospital owes me money, but I still keep doing it.”
Unlike my loved one’s doctor, I’m reluctant to use the word “passion.” That’s one of the subjects I’ve changed my mind about as a coder. The corporate world drained it out of me.
But, whether the word passion or not, find something worth showing up for every day, even without pay. That’s what he taught me, even though I wasn’t the one he was treating.