In July this year, my blogging career will turn 10 years. I still remember how excited I was when I wrote my first post and when I decided to “turn pro” by purchasing this domain 😂.
Looking back you can see things in perspective people say, and I can clearly see now how life changing that decision was.
I didn’t know back then but this blog fundamentally changed the course of my life for the better and I want to share with you what those things were.
Organizing ideas
Communicating ideas is hard. Communicating ideas in writing is even harder.
Writing regularly helped me structure my thoughts in a way that was easier for people to digest and when people can follow what you are trying to say, you unlock a new level in living life.
English
I don’t suck at English as much as I used to.
I was never good at learning languages and I think that remains unchanged, but forcing myself to write in English and making a plethora of mistakes in the process, made me decent enough to be able to communicate with a wider audience and thus increasing the amount of opportunities I had access to.
Contributing to open-source
After getting used to writing in English I was finally comfortable with writing publicly accessible emails, reading documentation in this language and speaking it without being so afraid.
This step led me to contribute to the Kamailio open-source project with a module called CNXCC.
Contributing to open-source is the best form of curriculum-vitae a programmer can have which takes me to the next part …
My first remote job
I met Carsten in 2012 after his company was hired by the company I was working for back then in Asunción, Paraguay. He is a cool and a very smart guy and after a while working side by side with him, he offered me a position at his company working remotely.
I resigned to the “safe” job I had and went to work for him and his company in Germany from the comfort of my home in Asunción. I did this against the advice of my parents and this is also another big learning for me: friends and family always want the best for you and they usually advise you against taking big risks but at the end of the day, rewards that are worthwhile only come from taking those risks.
Anyway, the module I wrote served as a proof I’m technically capable of doing the things I said I could and that landed me the best job I ever had (after Toky 😜).
He took a chance with me and I’ll forever be grateful to him for that.
Moving countries
Months after starting working remotely my then girlfriend (today wife) got promoted to a position that required her to move to Mexico.
I didn’t take it easily but I ended up moving with her and I’ve been living in Mexico since 2014.
In retrospective, I know my decision to follow her was easier to make because I would not be resigning to a career in Paraguay and because I could take my job with me by continuing working remotely. This wouldn’t have been possible at all if I wouldn’t have taken the risk of working for Carsten in 2013. Win-win.
By this time in my life I was already very comfortable with taking risks. I was young and naive but somehow, the decisions I was making were surprisingly right and I was getting along with uncertainty.
Founding Toky
We are now in September 2014 and about to make the single biggest decision in my professional life.
Being the risk taker I was (am?) I was looking for the next big challenge and against all reason, Oscar (my cofounder) and I decided to start a company, Toky.
He moved to Mexico and I resigned to that lovely job I had and it took all of me to be able to do it. I really loved it and I doubted doing it until the last minute.
Neither of us had any idea about how to run a business but we did it anyway. The only thing we were sure of was that we were very good at the things we specialized at: me at telephony and him at product design.
This part requires a lot of elaboration and I’ll do it in future posts but what I can tell you right now is that so many things happened between then and today that the overused saying of “roller coaster of emotions” falls short compared to what we went through.
The next chapter of this blog
If you look at my previous entries you will notice this blog was about technical topics regarding telephony.
I still am an engineer and a programmer at heart but I feel like this time around I should blog about my six years of experience running a company that had very few chances of succeeding but did it anyway.
I’ll be telling anyone willing to read me how I did it in the hope of helping other people do the same.