Usually a post like this should start saying thank you to the people who is promoting and/or sponsoring the challenge or contest. This is a nice protocol step and it’s good. But it’s much better when you find out that you have much more to say thanks, when you realize that there are many reasons to be grateful, when you discover (due to this challenge) that your year has been much better than you might think. In such a case “thank you” means: you have helped me to change my point of view about #my2018. It means I’m happy to participate in this challenge, because I realized my life is better than it seemed to be… That’s why I’ll start my writing saying:

Thank you Hive account@anomadsoul, thank you Hive account@blocktrades!

^{If you want to join this contest, check the original announcement here!}

Before starting to write I had the feeling that this year I had almost no successes but many failures. I think that sadness made me see things this way. I had not finished recovering from my dad's death in October, when my mother died in April. The work has not been very abundant and the economic situation in the country has been so complex that it made me see everything black...

But looking at things objectively, I realize that a lot of what was affecting me was in my head. Of course is my loss very painful, there is no doubt. And dealing with all the economic needs in a so hard situation looks sometimes hopeless. Yes, but…

Without opening my mind I’d say that my only and unique success this year is Steemit. Yes, because it’s one very important find that helped me a lot, keeping me occupied and generating some important incomes. I feel I achieved a space, I gained a place.

I loved all my life to write, for that reason at age 18 I started writing for a newspaper, opinion articles and interviews. But earlier we made in our Barrio our own magazine, our handmade newspaper and I was the main writer, I was almost the editor. After them I never stopped writing. Also, finding a platform where I can do one of my favorite things in my life and get rewarded for doing this is really a big success.

But Steemit is much more than writing and it has been a permanent learning about many things, it’s about meeting people, about creating community, about helping each other. And I love all that and I enjoy everything I’m doing here.

My failure in Steemit is that I couldn't be in Krakow for the Steemfest 3, something I really wanted, but the idea was really uphill, although there were some friends helping me to achieve it and I’m grateful to them.

For this writing I decided to make a list with the most important achievements in my daily life. Although I was thinking that my musical career had been poor this year I realized I had three very important successes in it.

With my group, Los Cañoneros, we have played in almost all the main theaters and concert halls in Venezuela. But for about 15 years there is a place that became one of the most important cultural spaces, this is the Auditorium of the national telephone company CANTV. All this time I was trying to get a gig there, but nothing happened… Until this year. Finally we were invited to make the opening for the most important cultural program they have “Conexión Cultural CANTV”. And so we did and finally the group performed there with big success on February 25th.

_{Los Cañoneros in Conexión Cultural CANTV [Source]}

One of my failures this year is that I didn't finish my project “Russia with Latin feeling”, this is one in which I sing trend songs from Russia in Salsa version. It’s the most important project I actually have, but for many reasons I didn’t finish the repertoire and have not recorded the album. Even so I managed for the second year in a row to be invited to perform on the National Day of Russia, the most important event organized by the embassy of that country. All an honor!

Another related success was an important first step, the video I made of one of the songs included in this project: “Komanda”, that I published in Steemit. It was a challenge for me and I completed my goal. Watch the post, it's in four languages... 🤩

Anyway I share the video with you once again. ;-)

There is another concert hall where I never had played and for the last years became the most important showroom for musicians, a cultural center of a bank, Centro Cultural BOD.

On June 8 there was the show of Carlos Poletto, a young singer for whom I wrote many arrangements. Everytime he sings with the accompaniment of the Big Band he invites me to lead it. For this show he was with the full band and I had the honor to be the conductor one more time, but for the first time in this hall.

By the way, his album “A color”, with my arrangements, was awarded as the best jazz album in the Pepsimusic Awards. Another success related to me.

_{That’s me on the left and Carlos Poletto on the right, at Centro Cultural BOD [Source]}

Once you start to have a positive view about life you realize that there are many successes daily. Some bad news come together with big steps. So, I understood that not being my parents anymore with us, I have to become the head of our family. We have to go on and we need to focus on future. Simply goals like my sons studying in the university became a big success to me.

Understanding this makes me be aware that I can not give up any more, that I have to be there until the last moment just like my parents did.

In that sense I can comment that all year I had the worry of whether I was going to be able to feed my family. And I did it. Something that did not seem easy. But we are already in December, with my family well fed, and we have already prepared a party that we always do on the first of January for all our friends and family.

I had another failure. For the last months I played a few times only, but this happened because I thought that there would be no opportunities to work and I got carried away by that pessimism. Almost all my musician friends are working a lot, just not me… This taught me that we must focus on optimism and the assurance that everything will go well.

And that’s exactly the reason why I keep active on Steemit, because I believe. Do it too! Believe and change your life!