If at age 9 someone had told me "Ramon at 23 you are going to be interested in intellectual things and you are going to have a drive for reading and learning but you are also going to be broke" I would have laughed and said "yea right I'm going to be playing video games all day because I hate reading" and I would have shrugged off the being broke comment, but now that I think about it, maybe I didn't hate reading maybe I was just never introduced to a topic of my interest and that just captured my mind.
Now at 23 I think back as far as I can remember, and now I realize that I had always been that quiet conservative kid spending my time trading and collecting Yu-gi-oh cards and playing Pokémon on my Gameboy Color, you know all the things the popular kids thought were lame. There are so many people in the world, that I’m sure some of you if not most, can relate to that feeling of not fitting in at one time or another or what’s worst when you get older and you get that feeling that no matter how hard you try you just can’t get your shit together, but believe me if you sit down and expand your knowledge and you put that knowledge to use you will become unstoppable.
I was born in Tijuana and came to the United States with my parents at the age 3 .While growing up in the states I had no idea what an illegal alien was or what a green card was ,but even though I didn't know exactly what it was or that I needed it, when I heard kids in 3rd grade talking and joking about it, it made me feel weird because it still sounded like an anomaly this was back around 2003.It was when I got to high school that everything hit me. I soon realized that I was at a disadvantage and that when I left high school, I would not be able to get a job, go to college or even get driver’s license. My world was shot, here I was at 18, and I already had barriers keeping me from progressing.
Then in 2012 Obama came into the picture. Love him or hate him I don't care but with the DACA program that he set up I finally had small path to hang on to, but even with DACA I’m not out of the water, you see to even qualify for DACA you need to have a completely clean record with the law and when I say completely clean I mean it. One DUI one mess up and you are out. On top of that, this is something that must be renewed every 2 years and you must pay around $500 to the department of homeland security to even get considered, so what happens if you don't renew your DACA permit? You guessed it, your out.
When you reapply, there is also the fear of being denied which is just as bad. With DACA you don't qualify for ANY government assistance and it does not offer the path to citizenship. Not that I like handouts but just thought I would make that clear. With DACA I was able to get a SSN and finally get a driver license and I was able to slowly start treading forward.
My parents of course would have preferred that I go to school and the fact that I have not gone back disappoints my father, but you must follow your passion its almost 2018 there are now new platforms on which we can build on without going to school. Don’t get me wrong if you have the passion and the drive and you know what you want and the only way to get there is school then by all means go kill it but for a lot of us it’s just not that simple. I’ve always felt bad for letting my dad down, but I know I will make It up to him tenfold.
At the age of 18 I found my first job at a call center that focused on verifying information with utility companies, at the time I felt lost mentally I had no drive and no thought of the future, my focus was to help my parents as much as I could, I thought the best and only way to do that was with hard work alone and man was I wrong.
I left that job about 6 months in, leaving with little knowledge on customer service. A few weeks later I managed to pick up a better job working for a Google Call center which paid better but after about 2 years, I had had enough of management and the call center environment, so I decided to venture onto other opportunities.
One thing that I am thankful for is that from that job, I picked up an amazing customer service skill set I learned the importance of empathy, tone and just skills that you can also use to your advantage in your everyday life if applied strategically. After doing some searching I had found what I thought would be the perfect job at the age 22.
I had landed a Job at a Bank of America contact center making $19 an hour I thought I had it made. What I did not expect was that I was going to end up passionately hating the job. I found out the hard way that when it comes to banking, people will almost always be upset and being able to see people’s financial situations was just depressing. I would see accounts with as little as 35 cents in them and it made me realize the struggle that people go through daily.
Around this time, I also started looking heavily into YouTube. I noticed that there were people making money on that platform and I wanted in. I launched a channel with my girlfriend, but the channel did not have a direct path and we were not as passionate as we would have wanted to be. During this time however, I did as much research as I possibly trying to expand my knowledge on photo and video editing, coding, self-awareness, software development, marketing and many other skills of my personal interest I also started discovering some very positive influential people among the few were Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeff Bezos and lots of Ted Talks they all provided me with valuable knowledge and they're overall intention is just to see people succeed.
All this new information I was picking up was rewiring my thought process and I didn’t even know it. Finally, I had a direction, I did not know what that direction was, but somehow, I did not feel as lost as before.
These people all provide value to me by dropping what they like to call gold nuggets of knowledge.
I'm still learning how to put together and how to use these gold nuggets but trust me it will all come full circle for me. I found out that there is a formula to making great content and one of the ingredients is emotion.
3 months later I left the bank, management was great, and it was a great company, but I was just not passionate about what I did there. Customers negativity started impacting me outside of work it seemed like I was always in a bed mood and it was just eating at me and I just couldn't do it anymore.
I quit the bank and then came the downward spiral. The following 4 months after leaving the job sucked. I had told myself that I was done with call centers, but I had the hardest time finding a job after the bank. I eventually fell back on a pizza delivery job and although the job was not the best I felt free and I was happy, but I soon realized the pay was just not enough.
Due to low pay, bills started piling up and I dug myself deeper and deeper in the financial hole. After that my love life started suffering and I was becoming a burden I knew I had to come up with something soon.
Fast Forward to today here I am in the Steemit community with more drive and vision then I have ever felt before.
The key in my case was self-awareness and really sitting down and engraving in my head that everyone has great ideas but it’s those who action them who succeed. It sounds like common sense, but common sense is not that common anymore.
Today I work for the one and only Tesla Motors where I can officially say I have a passion for what I do. Seeing what the company is doing amazes me, they are really transforming the planet one step at a time and here in the Tesla environment is where I found my passion. Thanks to this environment I was able to pinpoint that I do care about people and how we live, and I want to also help improve lives. I also became aware that there is nothing worst then ignorance especially with a super computer at your fingertips.
So, to wrap it all up I’m here, and I’m here to stay and to succeed. I will try to make sure that any content that is put out is always good quality and I will always try to add a little value to your life, my goal is to leave you with something to think about something that is going to resonate so hard in the back of your brain that you will want to take action not matter what your goal is. The content I will be focusing on will gravitate around innovative technology ranging from AI to Cryptocurrency all the way to talking about Space X putting people on Mars. I have also launched a new channel on YouTube called INNOTECH where I will also be making videos regarding that content so look out for what’s coming!
