A different kind of meetup at Pont Up. A Campus Connect. The RuralWO initiative. A do_action hackathon. WordCamp Galicia. My 42. The Penpot Fest. WP Agency Forum. A Freelandev. A UBAC. And hundreds of people, dozens of stories and an exhaustion (happy, but incredibly tired) that made me think it was the best plan in the world to spend a whole week without leaving home. Now recovered and looking forward to tell you in detail in the blog all these chapters.

Oh, and something else too in my new newsletter that will start next Friday, of course: https://postsintitulo.com

"And how did you get into this mess? And what exactly do you do?"

These are two questions that many people have been asking me lately (sometimes I ask them myself too, let's not kid ourselves).

I imagine that the real answer to the first one is: because I'm a gossip. Although, if I want to sound professional, I will say that it was out of infinite curiosity: to know how a worldwide events program works, managed by volunteers and united by the passion for free software. For gossip, let's go.

And what exactly do I do? I'll also tell you tomorrow on the blog. A lot of tasks, many of them invisible. Except for those who are on a day-to-day basis organizing events and stop by LinkedIn to thank me (thanks to you, actually).

But my mother still has no idea what I do for a living. Now that she had understood what I meant by "makes web pages".

On January 10, I posted on the blog of the Make WordPress community team an announcement titled "Statement regarding the events program".

It said something along the lines of, "We want to assure you that the Community team remains fully committed to supporting you."

What I didn't know then was what the next three months would bring: Dozens of meetings. New processes. Lots and lots of learning. New friendships. The occasional sleepless night. Collaborating with volunteers from all over the world. Uncertainties. Joys. And many, many emails and messages.

This Thursday I'll tell it all on the blog: the good, the difficult and what I've learned in these months. Is there anything you'd like to know in particular?

The month of October is coming to an end. In which you have been able to read me on LinkedIn from Monday to Friday non-stop. I will not deny that it has been fun. Some days it has been a challenge. And from now on? November is starting (no, I'm not going to do the NaNoWriMo, I'm not in the mood for novels...) and I have no intention of stopping. I do intend to slow down a bit. There are a lot of novels coming. Ouch.

More events. More recordings. More trips. More reflections. More communities. More projects. More recommendations. More apartment searches. And more music, of course.

🎧 Tell me something to inspire me so that I don't run out of way (...) Even if it's hard to breathe, I swear I 'm immortal.

It may come as a surprise to some, but I have never given a talk entirely in English. Yes, I have been in hundreds of meetings in that language, I have been on stage to speak to hundreds (or thousands?) of people with my santoñés-pontevedrés accent, I have presented a startup in front of a Microsoft jury and I have even done practical workshops or recordings on "how to do X or Y" for people with whom I had this language in common.

But a talk, just as it sounds, no. Until today.

And it had been recorded since last Thursday (and the story of the recording is worth telling over a few beers). But as it was approaching six o'clock today I was even nervous. Not having to get on any stage or anything. Just logging into a Slack in case anyone had any questions.

Soon I will write in the blog a summary of what I told you, because for sure we can learn something about mistakes when localizing online stores in other markets/countries/languages (it is not enough just to translate the texts, no).

Incredible work by Brian Richards of WooSesh from the first moment, I would like to highlight that. You can tell he has a lot of experience organizing these events and for the speaker it is great that they give you everything so well explained and are always there for any questions or problems that arise.

You can still catch the recordings if you are interested in e-commerce because there have been very top talks. And if you go to the Weglot sponsor page you can download a very complete ebook about best practices for translating your website and a good discount.

There are two days left until the end of the daily writing challenge. After that the updates will be less common but more interesting. Or so I hope.

For many years I had an almost-weekly newsletter. I have plans to create something new in November. Nothing topical about WordPress as a permalink (it was exhausting, and the news is getting too chaotic). Something focused on positive news, success stories, beautiful people.

Suggestions are welcome. Or encouragement. Or contacts of people who are doing great things in the web, open source, WordPress or fediverse and need to know.

This is not the living room of my house (because I don't have one at the moment, you know). But it is the living room of the coworking Espacio Arroelo in Pontevedra. That opened its doors to me in 2016 (in the old location) when I came to live in the city and wanted to organize a meetup about WordPress without knowing very well what I was getting into.

And today, eight years and many hours within its walls later, I have officially become a coworker. I don't know for how long, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it.

Ironically, I'm about to finish the challenge of writing for the whole month on LinkedIn of SinOficina... with a brand new "office".

Today new WordPress Pontevedra meetup at the Faculty of Fine Arts. 30 attendees to learn about Headless, NextJS and GraphQL... because sometimes we talk about this kind of stuff too! Lots of questions, new faces and then beers and more networking 🍻

The four-day work week is a reality that can work very well. Here you have an example of what some workers think after a year with it. And in this other link more info on how Weglot adapted during the whole process.

Would you dare to manage yourself like this? Would you be more of a Wednesday off or a Friday off?

In the early days of the Internet, you would go to a fun website or read the latest thing because you chose to do so. Now, all that content is shoved under your nose, designed to create as much addiction as possible, to keep you coming back again and again.

- Cassidy Williams on I miss human curation

I have this article bookmarked and come back from time to time, when I end up getting caught up in social media algorithms or thinking... why do I only enter a few websites? Because you don't write on many more, of course!

At least I still escape from time to time thanks to Feedly, but... one misses actively getting to the content without depending on whether a third party wants to show it to you or not.

Since I've been involved in so few things this year, I said... why not finish it off by giving my first talk entirely in English? So... what can go wrong? Well, hopefully not many things... we'll see next week at WooSesh where I'll be talking about localization in your ecommerce, because it's not enough just to translate your online store and wait for the money to come in...

My house will no longer be my house. My office will no longer be two steps from the bedroom. I don't know what the background will be on my next video call. My neighborhood will cease to be my neighborhood and I will go to supermarkets I won't know like the back of my hand. My neighbors... No, that's okay.

And I won't say I'm a minimalist again until I get rid of half the boxes from the first move (yes, there will be a second one, hopefully soon).

I would say "little things are coming" but I don't even know what's coming. Time of (quite a few) changes, here we go!

It was quite surprising to me to discover that most people have an ongoing conversation inside their head with themselves.

Almost as much as when I discovered why cilantro tasted like soap to me.

I usually only have music inside my head. That's also why I sleep like a log every night even if I have worries.

Sometimes I do talk to myself. Or I read what I write. Or even comment things out loud to myself. It's not that it's always empty. Sometimes I even have dozens of things piling up at the same time looking for my attention: unanswered messages, undelivered projects, calls to make, emails to send, bills to do, problems here or there, the apartment, what I'm going to eat, the Racing match, nervous people nearby, third parties making a mess out of my control?

When this happens I have to stop for 30 seconds.

And return to a state of tense calm. To manage uncertainty. And chaos. Of "one thing at a time".

Just like when I go to the supermarket and feel like ravaging the shelves of chocolate and cookies. Stop for 30 seconds. Control. Even if it is momentary.

This Saturday, October 19 at 11:00 a.m. starts the Remote Working event for which you should get your ticket.

I have been lucky enough to have Luis Miguel Climent and his team select a talk in which I tell you some of the lessons I have learned in this in recent years. I went from always chatting only with a friend (hello, Vicen!) to trying to get my messages to a team of more than 80 volunteers from all over the world, each with their own language, level of English, culture and personal and professional situations.

They arrived and, moreover, they listened.

I'm not going to discover the holy grail either, but if you want to see me in my pajamas, my explanation of how I managed to piss off a guy with a little joke, listen again to the recommendation that our mothers give us since we were little or see how my subconscious betrays me in some occasions... see you this Saturday!

A man who is over forty is about to ask a serious question to a lot of people of his generation and his work environment. In reference to: stickers.

Making the move I have been saving the multitude of stickers of events in which I have been the last years. When I started in this world I was collecting them to fill my laptop with them. Some of them became posterity thanks to this photo by Pablo Moratinos in WordPress Photos.

But that laptop died.

And I also stopped using the next one, which took with it another Wapuu from Pontevedra, from Brno and the Bisontuco from Cantabria.

So on the current one I haven't pasted a single sticker even though I have dozens. I have seen that people like Remkus has a picture in his house with a kind of collage, which looks like an interesting idea.

What about you? If you are one of those who keep looking for the stickers at events... do you care if they get "lost" when you change computers? do you stick them somewhere else? The truth is that I am becoming more and more a fan of magnets... but we make too few of them!

Today's prompt says, "Here are three habits that helped me do something, and why you should develop them too." And you know the last thing I'm going to do is give you advice about anything. But I did want to share three mini-habits that help me every day to get going even when I don't feel like getting going:

• Inbox 0. I started to apply this when we were working in Valencia and I went from having a few emails a week to it being unsustainable. Right now I use ProtonMail as my email app and I couldn't be happier. It requires perseverance and a good system of folders and/or labels, but it's worth it.
• Firefox 0. Closing all browser tabs should be easy, but... Articles to read later, interesting news, inspiring websites, documents you have to review later... An app like Raindrop to read later and organize all this instead of having fifty tabs at once is very useful.
• Downloads 0. The folder where documents, images, invoices, screenshots... I try to keep it empty, and the Desktop the same. What works, to its corresponding Dropbox folder. What is not useful, to the trash.

If I start with these three "elements" at zero, I am less likely to get lost along the way.

Today was one of those days that made no sense at all.

That you stop to think for a moment at half past ten at night after loading another four moving boxes and wonder how many hours you've been awake. How many more you're going to be. If it was today when you were on that call you remember from first thing or if you really haven't been able to answer hardly anyone's messages. What day was the dentist? The talk when are you going to finish it? And there's still the kitchen to pack. How many notifications from Idealista will arrive tomorrow?

It was Monday. But not just another Monday.

"This routine transformed {my ability to write every day} -this is what I do." I've had a very emoji day today, so I could fill this with laughter, but I'll be true to the prompts that are sticking with me through this month of October.

I admit that the No Office challenge is the only one to blame for the fact that I haven't gone to sleep a day without posting something on LinkedIn (previously on my website, more info on this next week).

So my routine is to look at the clock, see that it's after 22:00 and think ... "oh gosh, I'm going to fail today" and then I get on, write, and don't fail. And so every day from Monday to Friday.

Quality content. My book will soon be available for presale (not). Jokes aside and regardless of how little I like to depend on an algorithm for you to read me or not, it has been an interesting experience that at least has helped me to reconnect with many of you.

Do you know that besides writing I also like to read? You should post more things without thinking about the algorithm: without a perfectly sized image, without a carousel to say in ten steps what four sentences are, without a video with stock images. Yes, you, you. I'll read you, promise.

Today's prompt is "Tell us about a time when it didn't work for you to get out of your comfort zone and what you learned from it." Take it.

I could say that the biggest effort I've made over the last few years to get out of that so-called zone is the public speaking thing. But once I've gone from wanting to die from having to speak in front of four strangers to clowning around speaking English in front of two thousand, it doesn't count as having gone wrong (although a lot of things have gone wrong along the way... it makes for talk!).

Something I did do and I try not to repeat: teaching. Face-to-face or online (worse the second one).

And you will say, but Juan, deep down it is very similar to giving talks and sharing knowledge. No way, I don't like it at all. And it shows. Just like those people who have it as a vocation and enjoy it.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I have never come across a teacher who fascinated me and said "I want to explain like him". Just as I have met people who gave wonderful talks and said "I want to try to do the same". I'm not saying that I haven't had good teachers (which I have), but if I think about them I remember much more (but much more) those who left a negative mark: because of how badly they explained themselves, how badly they motivated you, because they didn't show up at all and left an almost irreparable gap in your knowledge?

So all the times I have taken the step and taught, I don't think I have done too badly, but what is said to enjoy... I have not enjoyed it. I'm going back to my comfort zone -which I hope is my bed at this hour-.

One of this week's prompts is "Share something that makes you optimistic about life, your career or your industry."

When you are deep inside a sector it is very difficult to get enough distance to get away from the day-to-day problems, from the dramas, from being dragged by the uncertainty that everything seems to move at a pace impossible to manage... And, at the same time, it is totally necessary. Especially when you can only act and influence what is closest to you.

So, although these have been very busy weeks in the WordPress community, I try to look a little further and I still see an incredible community of people willing to give talks at meetups, organize online events, WordCamps in cities around the world... People who do courses and trainings so that we all have a better web. People who write in their blogs and not only in social networks. Friends always available for a joke, a meme, a beer, a solution.

At the end of the day, that's all that matters. And for those people, we have to keep going.

"A professional goal before the end of the year."

I could share with you the never-ending list of pending tasks. Of mails in the 'Tasks' tray, of mails in the 'Future' tray, of items in the Obsidian list called 'Folio of worries', of the 'Folio of solutions', or of the 'List of tranquility'. Some sheet from my notebook in which I write with my pen (from Weglot, of course).

They say that sharing your goals in public helps you achieve them. No way, but well... To each his own with his tactics, if they work for you...

I think that to get it, the first thing is that it makes sense. And the second thing is that you are going to do it without excuses. This from someone who has broken thousands of resolutions and wonderful plans (but who has also achieved some things).

My goal between now and the end of the year is that the last days of December arrive and I can be with the laptop lid down. Something that has not happened in many years. I remember more than one December 31 afternoon sending emails. Maybe some of you receiving them.

It's going to be a challenge, but that's the fun of it, right?

First days of October, review of invoices, closing of the quarter, what went well, what went wrong, what are the plans for the end of the year? October is a curious month.

And not just because yesterday was my birthday, of course.

"Share three things you've accomplished in Q3 and three things you haven't made much progress on" says today's #CreatorCamp.

What I do: Finish a successful fifth edition of WordCamp Pontevedra. Start a new adventure as a WordPress Community Engagement Specialist for Weglot. Be even more active as Program Manager of the WordPress Community team and embrace new challenges.

What I don't: Finish the pending client projects that I have to close before turning the web development page (I will only have maintenance left once I finish). Achieve a work-leisure balance that doesn't end up dragging me into stressful situations. Find the apartment where I will spend the next years of my life.

And for the fourth quarter? We'll talk about that tomorrow...