My 2021 for the important people in my life
Hi there!
How are you?
How is it possible that another year has gone by and we haven’t seen or written to each other? Do you remember when we used to write letters by hand, with all those crossings out, arrows and little drawings? I was so excited to receive a letter from you… When Christmas came, what a great moment was going to the stationery shop, selecting the most beautiful cards, and spending a whole evening writing them and licking envelopes and stamps!. There were people who you only heard from at Christmas and you looked forward to hearing from them. That’s not so long ago, is it?
I want you to know that, even though we haven’t seen each other or communicated this year, I have felt you close. You were here. Inside me. I have remembered so many times the thousand and one anecdotes we have lived together. Your contagious laughter. Or that story we have told each other so many times and in so many different ways, that reality and fiction have merged into a deep fake so authentic that verisimilitude no longer matters.
I have missed you. My world has remained tiny. Working at home. Miguel, the dogs. My children from time to time. But you were still part of it. Like everyone else, I also feel anxiety and fatigue. The “issue” is taking forever. I’m sure you feel as I do, that 2021 has not lived up to expectations. 2022 is going to open as yet another pandemic year. What a bore. And we are still not taking the bull by the horns. As the great Greta Thunberg said, so much blah, blah, blah and so little courageous and necessary action.
Do you remember the Newdreamers project I told you about last year? Well, this year, Alberto and I gave it another push and at the first event of the year we explored what it means to “dream without brakes” with the story “Una utopía urgente”. Esther Blázquez, Pauline Roussel, Furby, Irene Rubiera and Isa Ludita followed. Five more events. Five great questions with five great inspirers. Then we took a break in the summer, thinking of returning in September, but our work for clients, which makes us grow as professionals and feeds us, and this day-to-day life that drains us, left us no time to make room for it. But we are reluctant to let it die so we have asked all the newdreamers for ways to reinvent it together. I hope to see you there in 2022. You know it’s going to be special and I’m sure you’ll be hooked – who doesn’t want to dream big?
I also wanted to tell you about a nice little experiment. I dared with Plázida’s first advertising campaign: “Discover your sexy thing” as a way to launch our Brand Personality Workshop landing page and introduce it together with Alberto García in our first hybrid event in Triple with Sustainable Startup & Co. Or the eco-theatre retreat with Jaime Moreno, “Unplug & Play” which was very intense, fun and special according to the testimonies of all those who came. I’m looking forward to making beautiful experiences again and enjoying them with you.
And I got the first (of many to come in the future) in-depth interview with Plázida, which was a pleasure to answer.
In the meantime, I haven’t stopped reading. I keep discovering wonderful authors and ultra-young women who take the world by storm. Like Carissa Véliz, Esther Panigua, Layla Martínez or Susana Monsó, my own daughter. And I keep on learning. On digital minimalism, on green swans, on degrowth, on utopia, on ethics… A constant in these dystopian years is that, before showing you where the light is, the authors devote many pages to describing the problem in all its complexity. How curious that believing we live in a transparent world, there is so much ugliness that slips under our radar. Which, as Stef Silva says, is either invisible or we do everything we can to make it so.
You may ask yourself if I still play theatre. Well, the answer is yes. With Jaime we’ve done three online shows, the latest of the theatre of the absurd, with great authors such as Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco. What a luxury! And this year I’ve rediscovered the great Aldo Benito and a new group with whom we’re preparing to produce a whole comedy. I’ll tell you about it! Theatre continues to be part of my life or directly life is a constant improv of your little characters because we already know there are no rehearsals or lines to memorise. So enjoy it and dare to give it the unexpected twists that make it more interesting.
So far this is my last news. I sincerely hope you have a beautiful Christmas and 2022 will finally bring the good news we are all waiting for.
Love, Irene