I am deeply humbled and blessed.
The last few weeks have been an amazing experience of selfless support and love from my fellow friends, community, students, and family.
Even from before inception of my Oprah’s OWN video, I received encouraging words of confidence, support and complete belief in my ability to make it happen, even when I was experiencing self-doubt. In response to this vote of confidence, I said “F*&K it,” and we shot the video. Julio was the amazing videographer and editor. Joan was the script supervisor and boom operator. Harmony was our trusty assistant.
My mom had a great idea to have voting parties and she has been, by far, one of the most inspired clickers to this day. ☺ She should go down in clickers’ history. Let me give you two short examples – my mom would put her computer next to the bed, and anytime she woke up in the middle of the night, she would click a few times and fall back asleep. Plus, she made little business card size papers to hand out to random strangers on the street so they would know how to vote for her daughter, Rina.
Regardless of my mom’s clicking mania, we had several others who could be diagnosed with the same symptoms like my dad who would count how many times he voted, Mari who would click faster with every glass of white wine and who would scold others who weren’t clicking, Maria who also clicked faster with every glass of rum and coke, Alexis who discovered the fastest way of clicking (especially if you are on a mac), Stefan who discovered the second fastest way of clicking (especially if you are on a pc), Stefano who would click while walking, Hector who was the first one to arrive to the voting parties and start clicking, Tia Anita and la familia de Argentina who clicked even if their votes didn’t count in Puerto Rico or Argentina ☹ sorry, Vicky who hosted her own voting party at her house, Charlie, Cristie, Amaia who clicked on an “Apple,” Tia Ines, Tita, Tia Nana, Ale Alejandro, Licky Ricky, Tio Andres, Tio Wichi who is still trying to figure out how to click, Brenda, Livia, PJ, Heidy, Maite, Julieta, Leandro, Lauranda, Landis, the English Center, Megatrade Corporation, and all of you out there who voted from your homes and offices!!!!
I have learned and relearned a couple of things during this process and I hope my lessons are interesting enough for you to keep reading;
1. It’s never the destination, but the journey that counts.
I know that’s super cheesy, but it’s the truth. The most amazing part was having everyone gather together and enjoy each other’s company; laughing, making jokes, eating yummy food, playing wii, regardless of the outcome.
2. “One Dream. One Team.” Quote by Mari Novo.
This was proven to me by the selflessness of each person to help and support my cause… because in the end, they understood that if you help others, you are helping yourself. If we all come together and pursue a dream together, anything is possible! You can never do anything completely on your own. I was shown that working hard to cultivate true friends of quality is worthwhile; those that will support you and be there for you, especially when you have shown that you support them and will be there for them, too.
3. Macs are better than PCs. (Sorry, I had to throw that in there.)
Every time someone brought a PC to vote, it took troubleshooting from Alexis for at least 30 minutes to try to fix it. And sometimes, it still didn’t worked. Macs, on the other hand, worked immediately after typing in the Internet access password. This has been a short segment of Macs-YEY, PCs-BOO for today. Any questions?
4. Regardless of what others may think of you –good or bad- you have to be the one that is happiest with yourself.
In the end, although I didn’t win a spot on Oprah’s OWN show, we got over 166,000 votes and over 9,000 views in only 3 weeks!!!! That is amazing!!!! And, it’s all thanks to YOU!!!!!! Every single one of you helped this happen!!! And I am grateful for it. Thank you.
I am truly humbled and blessed that all of you would take the time to vote for me and for yoga! You’ve all rocked my chakras!
Now, we just need to have another excuse to get together and click… any suggestions?
