October 17, 2024/
Meet Ana Rivas
Hi, welcome to my blog, I currently live in Alexandria, Virginia, but came to the United States, specifically Washington, D. C. in 1984. What started out as a trip to learn computers because I had graduated from high school with the vocation of Executive Bilingual Secretary, turned out to be a life-changing decision. I had the opportunity to stay in the United States. I wanted to work for the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. At the time, although bilingual, my English wasn’t as smooth and it would take several years to develop an acceptable English. I went on to work for several international organizations, providing office support for many years. My personal and professional experiences include childcare, driving for Uber, and cosmetology, but above all, I have always loved technology and how it shapes our lives. In 2011 I started an online marketing business, rooted in creating mobile apps, barely three years after the launching of the first iPhone, a device that markedly transformed our lives.
Fast forward to today, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Information System Management and I’m proud to say, with a 3.5 grade point average. I have always loved learning and the only reason my GPA went down was because in 2011 I had too much on my plate and I was confused about my major, so my grades declined and unfortunately, stayed in my record.
I later changed my point of view about the importance of grade point average. As I got older I also changed my belief about school, probably leaning to strongly supporting a change in the methods of learning in schools. Today, what is important to me is to continue to always learn by reading books, asking questions, and never quieting down that natural curiosity for life and things.
I have lived through a lot of situations and experiences and I too have an opinion on things, and somewhat of an expertise on others. I want to write to address the important things in life such as well-being and self-care. I want to focus on wellness, and like a good education, it has to include various topics to make it whole. As we will explore in this blog, I intend to write about emotional, physical, social, intellectual, and occupational (career) wellness, and I might dabble a little in spirituality. Within each category, there are innumerable topics such as cooking, nutrition, fitness, finance, travel, entertainment, plants, and everything else that makes our life what it is. This is the reason why I call my blog Living Up and I hope you join me to enjoy the discussion.
Why this blog?
Everyone has something to say about something, and I am no different in that aspect, but I don’t like to force my ideals on people, what a better way to do it than to write a blog.
I am not expecting followers, but it is a form of free expression that I am in love with, something that can keep on giving. I also have an inclination for the written word, I don’t have a very heavy accent, but can’t find the way to start either a YouTube or Podcast, maybe in the future I will (this is 2024 for the record).
But the real reason for this blog is that recently, I have been learning a lot about the psychology of the human brain and how the people who raised us impact our behavior today. I never thought I would find so many missing pieces of how I viewed the world around me in my life decisions. And like me, everyone has the same foundations of how we behave; sadly, I am realizing that much of the foundations of our society are slowly crumbling down, and not necessarily in a bad way. I think that people are not very religious, and this might be biased because I am not.
I believe we are more accepting of unexplained facts such as magic, and we strongly believe love is the answer to many problems. I am enthralled with the ideas of multiverses and distant galaxies with people like us (maybe not with the same looks). We are entertaining the idea that some foundations in human design are transcendental, such as love, life, fight, fear, and survival. I would like to explore a few more things in my life and write about them. And why not, everyone’s doing it!
One of my passions is travel, being from Guatemala I have travelled there often, although perhaps not as often as some family members would like. I intend to travel to other locations. I have at least been to a few countries, Mexico, England, Switzerland, Israel, Hawaii, and Jamaica. In my bucket list of places to visit in the future is: Puerto Rico, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, Argentina, Colombia, back to England and Mexico and so many more places, but to start, these would be first on my list and I hope I can fill the travel section of this blog with that experience.
I love learning and strongly support continuous self-development and education. I fully believe you always have to challenge yourself in learning new things by reading books, blogs, and articles, asking questions and listening to podcasts, learning new skills such as new languages, and developing hobbies, or whatever it is that keeps us wondering, just, keep on learning!
I am a strong believer in always being curious about everything new. I am also a follower of positivity, strategy, and respect, working hard to get rid of negative vocabulary such as “I can’t…” or “I’m too old for…” (fill in the blanks… or rather not).
You are the commander of your ship, make the best of your personal journey.
You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.
– Napoleon Hill
