I'm Miguel Vargas, and this is my story

Many had said it, it is difficult to be so open. Showing your personal reality to a stranger is one of the most complicated things to do, yet it’s pretty mind-freeing.

The STEEM blockchain has being an economic salvation beyond a terrible humanitarian crisis that my country (Venezuela) is suffering ; added to that, its been a school. Day by day I see myself growing, learning how to speak to people trough my redactions or my music,and to always give a piece in every work.


My name is Miguel Vargas, and this is my history:

I was born in Barquisimeto, which is a city located by the west of Venezuela. Since a very young age I get interested for music and it turned out what I’ve decided to make for a living.

I study how to make nicely sounds to others since I was 7. When I turned 8 I started to play the Flute and now I’m 23. Throughout all this time I’ve learned so much, i have played with many orchestras nationally and internationally, I have played as a soloist and have had the honor to receive classes with the bests Venezuelans and international teachers.

Since three years ago I moved to the capital, Caracas, to get a bachelors degree. Now I’m at the middle of the career and wish with all my heart, being able to finish my studies and graduate.

This degree is what keeps me tied to my country. All my friends are gone, -they all emigrated, they all ask me and don’t understand why I’m still here, leading to difficulties, if they could easily receive me at its houses and help me find a job to get a better quality of life. What moves me to stay; it’s not the wish of social approval of someone calling me “graduate” or treat me with respect. What I wish is to close a cycle, to feel I could finish many years of studies and I could then start a new phase looking for a master or a specialization.

However, my goal seems less approachable, semester after semester. The public transport is getting worse day by day. The teachers of the university, tired of being poorly paid, quit their jobs and force me to remove the orphan of teacher’s signatures. The food and the money for the dorm rent are a constant concern that increase at the same speed as the inflation does.

Just over a year ago I was making a living of playing folkloric music inside of the wagons of the underground transport system of Caracas. In December 2016, pushed by final tests, an audition to the Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and my wish to bring home something (money) for Christmas, made me exceed my body limit, by playing for about 10 hours a day. as a result, I suffered a muscular injury in the muscles of the mouth, that left me completely unable to play, until a few months ago.

I went through a lot… I suffered a misdiagnosis that caused me to fail into depression for 3 months, and after that was when I found a doctor and her team of work, who have supported me unconditionally to be able to be the Flutist I was before. They receive me at their rehab Center week by week, give me all their support and don't charge me absolutely any money. They trusted in me and the gratitude I feel, overwhelms me every day when I see how much I have advanced in recovering my injury.

To try graduating as a Symphonic Soloist (which is the mention I select to study before all this happened) it’s the most difficult things I’ve set to achieve and honestly I feel very proud of the way I’m assuming this challenge. Music is the way I express who I am and what I feel to the world. Music has transform my life and is that unexplainable feeling that I aspire to give to others when I play.

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Working at the STEEM Blockchain

As I mention before, I lived of what the underground users given to me, but after an incident with some cops who tried to robed my instrument (that’s quite a story to talk about in another post) and suffering my injury, I decided to stop playing there. I dedicated to start looking ways to earn money online, and soon I start working on some crowdsoursing pages. I was making like a dollar per hour, but I was feeling bad of working THAT much to reach a dollar and not even working on something I like to.

Eventually I found about this platform and could find a way to monetize my writings and music creations. My gratitude to the Steem Blockchain is huge, that is why I decided to help the project to grow, and support in the way I can.

One day I settled to personally talk to @nnnarvaez, a man who show me through his writings, his dreams of transforming our beloved country Venezuela, with the help of the steem blockchain . He convinced me in its utopia and I decided to dream along with a group of wonderful persons, to have a country full of model citizens formed from this platform. I wanted to take part in the construction of such wonderful proposals and that's why I wrote to him.

It has been a couple of months and I have learned so much from him and the rest of dreamers. I learned about economy, politics, teamwork, criptocurrency and a myriad of other things. Currently I work for the witness @castellano who also have its own curation project (@bebeth), an education project (@reveur), a system of crowdfunding for Venezuelans and a few bots that helps to automate some of the work we do.

I’m not going to lie to you, I spend more time creating ideas to help the Spanish-speaking community users than working on my blog. That impacts my profit completely and translates into lack of sleep, but I really don’t care. I am doing what I love, I am creating content, making my music, helping new users and returning to the chain all the support that it has given me. So I don't feel bad at all, even though my girlfriend doesn't understand that decision at all lol.

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My Love

In 2010 I was selected to be on the National Childrens Orchestra of Venezuela, of about 2000 children Flutists, they chose me and 19 more.

Thanks to that experience I get to work with remarkable conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel and Rafael Payare. We made a historic concert in the Aula Magna of Venezuelans most popular university called UCV (Universidad central de Venezuela), with the Berlin’s Philharmonic Conductor Sir Simon Rattle.

However, what changed the course of my life was meeting Luisana.

In that multitude of violins there was a girl I loved, I told my friends about her but they could not easily find her. One day, after a rehearsal with maestro Rattle, that girl intercepted me coming down from the stage and said: "Hi, my name is Luisana, you seem very nice and I want to meet you."
That day began a wonderful love story and, today after 8 years getting to know each other, we continue together and accompanied by a little man called Damian.

It is hard to sum up 8 years of learning how to make real the fairy tale of “the happy family”. We made mistakes, we hurt each other, forgive one another and went forward, but always, always together.

Damian is a beautiful two year old boy, he does not run my blood, but I love him with all my being. His smile is my motivation; he is the light that illuminates my way every time things get very ugly.

Luisana was forced to separate from her baby by the lack of money and a space for her to have him in Caracas. His grandma was taking care of him until a month ago or so that we could finally reunited us three as the family we dream to.

My biggest pain was having to hug Luisana every night while she was crying the absence of his child. That heartbreaking, inconsolable and cold pain was my motivation to make myself a place in the platform and use it to build the family we always wish of having.

Now the three of us live together on provisional conditions in Caracas, we were able to bring Damian with the excuse of making him medical examinations but the person whom rent the room where we live, didn’t gave us permission to keep it with us permanently. However, we are not considering to returning him to his grandma’s house, who lives in a small town, which is full of criminals and is really risky to live there (for you to understand the level of risk.. a couple of months ago, a person was murdered in front of Luisana’s mom house at 7pm) and added to that, the food is practically non-existent, because is such a remote place... We will do whatever is possible to get at least Luisana and Damian being together in some better place.

We don’t know how are we going to do it, we now think that a friend of hers, who moved to Scotland will rent her its apartment that is a couple of hours far from Caracas, and I will continue in Caracas while I will be continue fighting to graduate.

That would be the provisional option, because our main goal is to get to rent an apartment where to live the three of us, within the city, with particular transportation to be able to mobilize with relative ease.

I'm moving for that. I am working on my website, soon I will be launching my Patreon profile to get more support and I started to study a lot about music production to improve the quality of my recordings to win some #openmic prize.

I know I'm going to make it, I want to believe in me, I want to have faith in me as well as Luisana and the team of physiotherapists who help me to return to 100% of my musical abilities has. However, the bearish market that has attacked us in recent weeks has made it increasingly difficult to get money, I get to the point that at this time I'm only generating money to buy food. The rent of the room ($15) and all other expenses that appears (medicines, personal hygiene items, household cleaning and other commodities) I'm covering them with my savings. If things don't change, I'll have to start doing power down starting next month. Not to say that It will be impossible to dream of keeping my family together.

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What your support will mean to us

If I'm honest with you, I don't take part on this kind of contests. I have a hard time asking for something, nor did my dad get to ask for anything without feeling terribly uncomfortable.
However, there was something in your post that made me feel confident.

“You have probably noticed I like to be a pioneer of undone things here on Steemit.”

That first sentence made me feel that I knew you, made me feel the certainty that you know what it means to finish something very special, I had the assurance that you would understand me (unlike my family and friends) in my decision to stay in this country for two more years to Graduate.

For this reason, and because you value kindness (because you received it on the part of some users in the platform) is that I dared to write to you these words.

To receive your support would be translated in many wonderful things for my life, as of Luisana, Damian and my closest relatives.

In reference to my studies and our stay in Caracas, I will be able to not stress about the payment of the rent, will be able to buy a lot of food, especially non-perishable food and in particular milk powder (for the formula of Dami). That does not directly influence my studies, but having better living conditions and better nutrition allows me to have more mental space to concentrate on learning new things and working on my muscular injury.

Besides that, I would take some of that money and buy diapers for Damian. Here in Venezuela are extremely expensive and difficult to get, we bought him 40 diapers some weeks ago in size M (or 3) because it was least expensive although they don’t fit him properly. Yes 40 for a month. We couldn’t afford more.

Additionally I would save a part of the money for when something unexpected happens, and would use another bit to buy food for my mom and my brother.

the truth is that money would not reach to realize our dream of renting an entire apartment, buy a car and have a sense of calm in the middle of this storm, all us three. But it would be very helpful. It would be the initial push I need to start diversifying my income and finally get out of the poverty that strikes me and consumes more than 80% of the population of this country.

That support would fall at the right time, at the moment when my only source of income is being reduced day by day because of a market that does not end up coming down.

In advance I thank you for reading me indifferently that you choose me or not. Thank you for your time, thank you for being so kind and helping people who really need it. Someday I'll have a better economic position, and I'll steal the idea, copy your post. I hope that we continue in Steemit for then and I will tag you to remember your nice gesture.

P.S: My girlfriend also has an Steemit account, you can find her as @luisanahernandez. Maybe she’ll make a post like this in her own perspective (If she finds the time. Being a mom of a toddler is quite demanding), but before that... she will have to translate my post, because she is the one who knows English a bit. so I will stop writing to give her time to do this hahaha.

Ps s: I will leave here some videos of us making some music as a small sound gift. I hope you enjoy it.

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Making Music toguether:

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She:

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Me: