Dear readers:
Turning 21 can mean many things.
For me, it was almost like getting a star in the Hall of Fame. Year after year, it’s been a long way. But it has been lots of fun as well as lots of sacrifices, lots of hard work and dedication.
Those who don’t know me, I tell you, it’s been fun, but a different kind of fun.
I hardly had a social life for the last 21 years, which prevented me in part from achieving a fundamental human act that most people engage into: marriage.
Behind were left my dreams of having a lovely family, a wife, children. My reality was sitting in front of a computer day and night most of the time, writing, copyediting, doing layout, calling advertisers to place ads in the paper, and after a long week of exhausting work, distributing the product into business outlets through out the San Francisco Bay Area.
My home has been El Reportero – for the last 21 years. I’m usually asked: “Aren’t you tired of all that? Are you making money? You’re always working! Go out and have fun!”
The truth is, I hardly noticed all those things that people were telling I was missing. Through out all of these years I didn’t get tired, or maybe I didn’t notice that I was, and never knew if I made money or not, because, after all, after looking around, who really makes money nowadays? I see people with three or four houses, including two or more businesses that supposedly they own, and guess what, they are deeply in debt up to their neck. And the minute a crisis arrives they lose most of it. So, I thought, money is not what brings happiness, is what you do, and along the way you make the money you need to fulfill all the necessities to help you be happy.
For these people, my motto has been: “When you find the thing you like to making a living in life – let’s say, that magic job – you have just stopped working and have instead, found your lifetime hobby!
Your goal is not just to make money anymore, as long as you have a roof over your head, food and all the other amenities in life. Your passion is your hobby, and your hobby is your passion. And that hobby of mine that has kept me busy for 21 years, and made me forget that I was no longer the young man from 21 years ago. And I am still doing it.
My hobby – or my dream job – gives me what no other job would give me. When I finish the edition of the week, 10 of thousands of people will read what I give them to read. Isn’t that a most exciting and satisfying feeling on earth, especially when you learn your product is making an impact on people every time you print a new edition?
Whether it is criticism or praise to your work, it always teaches you and helps you grow intellectually and spiritually. It brings me closer to God, to my Creator, the Great Spirit.
El Reportero was born in March 1991, during a work-study class in the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University, while I was beginning my junior year for my Journalism Degree. And I thank all those merchants who have supported this endeavor by leasing space to advertise their businesses, because without them El Reportero wouldn’t exist today.
