New Year's Resolution: Read more!

I made a single new year's resolution: to read more during 2023, at least one book per month. So far, I have started and kept it going on(I know we are just in January). However, the book I am reading made me think about what has been going on lately with our society and I wanted to discuss it somehow.

The book I am reading now, Allegiant, was released in 2014 if I am not mistaken, and it is part of a trilogy. It can be classified as a teen/science fiction kind of book. I know this does not sound reassuring as I wanted to talk about our society. However, the more I read into the trilogy the more I felt compelled to compare the situations the main characters of the books live with everything that went down with us, specifically talking about pandemic, mandates, experimental drugs and so on. It will be hard not to give some spoilers while I am discussing it here, so, if you haven't read the books I would advise you not to continue from this point on.

To give some context, in the first two parts of the trilogy you are deceived to believe that what they are living is a post-apocalyptic world where the survivors are living in a city within fences, under strict rules and divided in some sort of factions. Each faction, in that sense, is responsible for something in the society in order for it to function. From justice to government, going through safety and security, each citizen and its faction have their own tasks. The most important aspect is: they are not allowed to leave those fences to see what lies beyond. After a while everything starts to fall apart, revolutions, war and killing erupts within the faction system in the city. That's when our "heroes"  are able to evade the fence to discover some horrific news: they've been part of a genetic experiment from the US government this whole time.

I will stop here in order to avoid unnecessary spoilers. I will bring the subject to our reality now: don't we all agree that this reality in the books is way too similar to what we all faced with the pandemic, lockdowns, mandates, vaccines, etc? Everything about this pandemic is so obscure, information being hidden and surfacing only after more than two years, the use of experimental drugs that are possibly causing harm, division by speeches from governments and their representatives, lockdowns where some people were not even allowed to leave their homes that also created more harm than good for the society and many other actions that do not find any ground in science or any other relevant field. It looked like some governments were testing boundaries in which they would be able to control people and the means used to achieve it. 

Please, I am not saying that it didn't happen (the virus/disease). I am only questioning the way it was handled, the decisions made for " the greater good"  and so on. In addition, the way people that tried to disagree and bring opposite arguments to the table were labeled and criminalized. Most of those opposing ideas became a reality and now are being treated as being the truth.

If you agree, disagree, wanna talk about it, just leave a comment below. 

See you!

A new beginning!

The blog you are about to read was conceived as a gateway so that I would be able to express myself without being afraid of judgment, with time to think about the words I wanted to use and so on and so forth. It shifted more than once from geek stuff (comics, tv series, movies, etc) to something related to travel, food and wine, at that time, my real and only lasting passion. It's been working like that for the past couple of years.

The efforts I was making to create good content kind of made it worth it as I started to get some attention to my texts, creating some good bonds with people and companies with the same interest as mine. At that time I was really happy I was able to use a hobby as something that gave me some perspective. No matter how much I enjoyed writing and interacting with those new bonds, due to some changes in my professional life at that time, I started to have some trouble keeping it up. I struggled with writing and posting with the frequency I wanted.

Finally, time passed by and it became a sort of burden that I didn't want to carry anymore. Moreover, I felt overwhelmed by the thought that if I didn't post anything I would be disappointing someone somehow (if I had that many readers anyway). I started to slow down and leave in the background then. And it was only the beginning.

I can add to the mix that shortly after that all happened, a big change to my life became a reality: I was moving to a different country with so much uncertainty, going back to a school room and basically starting my life from zero. Moreover, soon after I started to adjust to this new life, I saw myself and the world involved in the pandemic, which shifted everyone's plans for good in the coming 3 years. The isolation of the lockdowns, the fear imposed by so much propaganda, being far away from people I cared about made me kind of forget about this blog for a long period of time.

In the end, those were only excuses I was hiding behind because the truth was that I wasn't that good at what I was doing, I wasn't attracting the people I wanted to (at least I thought I wasn't). I have always been insecure of myself and with very high standards I usually think I won't be able to cope with.

I am about to change that. At least I will try. My intention is to reactivate this blog and bring not only texts about wines and restaurants but reflections from my daily experiences here and there, bringing back also what I like to talk about (movies, books, music, etc.). One of the first steps I've taken, though, is to translate it to an English version. From now on, expect to see more postings in English and more changes to come. I hope to have you onboard while I try to make it work.

Welcome back!