Nata Writes | Visual Storyteller

First of, Happy New Year!!! I wish everybody a prosperous, and healthy new year with lots of love, and learning.

This is a great topic for the first day of the year–when we are finishing writing our goals, and making lists of things we want to accomplish.

Out of all the chaos that came out of the presidential election, I can say that it taught me something, something very important, and I learned it directly from Trump.

I covered Donald J. Trump when he came to Orlando, FL., to rally in the summer. I was part of the media he likes to talk so demeaning about.

The whole experience was draining in every level possible. The day was long, and since I was the photographer, I had to turn in photos shortly after the event had finished, and write captions, which can be time consuming.

There was a rush, which is hard to explain, and maybe that is one of the many reasons why there are reporters who do this all the time. By the end of the night I was exhausted, but there was also a satisfaction, and a feeling of complicity with myself for pushing out of my comfort zone and putting myself out there. But going back to my fascination: I have an attraction, which is hard to control, to weird, twisted, and disturbing personalities. I like to get close to them, analyze them thoroughly. I can write about that in an entirely different post, but that’s one of the reasons I was so desperate to be part of this coverage. I wanted to see for myself what was all the hype really about. I wanted to get close to people to ask them why were they there, why were they supporting him. I had been working on a story, and I needed sources that would speak as to why they support it Mr. Trump, what was the policies he was talking about that they supporting, but no one came forward; the article was never written. That was something I noticed earlier on: there was shame among his supporters to come forward, and I had the chance to see that in person the day of the rally—where college students said, shyly they were supporting him, but didn’t want to identify themselves publicly in an article. I didn’t ask everybody in that auditorium, and I’m sure there were people that would’ve agreed to participate in my article. But in general, I got a basic idea that people were attracted to Trump, but many of them couldn’t explain why, which is part of the lesson I learned.

He rallied in front of 10,000 people, and said pretty much the same thing we listened throughout the presidency campaign on 2016. There was nothing new, but the same rhetoric of changing America, and making it great again. Of how irresponsible and disgusting the media was, and turning the audience against us in that space we were in, not allowed to go outside—not even for photographs, or video. It was very exhausting, and sad to be in such a big space, but full of negativity, and aggression. There were a couple of people who were kicked out of the arena, and the reaction of Trump, and the people supporting him, wasn’t generous, or uplifting for anybody, but despite all that people still elected him president—yes I know the whole issue with the electoral college, but besides that a lot of people voted for him. And all through all of that I asked myself why? I asked people what was going on? I saw the disbelieve of so many people as the results were coming in, and how crushing it was to learn that he was going to be our next president, not only for part of the United States, but for the world. How someone so unprepared, and ignorant on so many levels could be running the United States? How was it possible that in 2016 so many people went out to vote for him, and I know there are many factors, which I’m not going to name, because they remain irrelevant to the core thing that I analyzed throughout all of this phenomenon, which was the lesson I learned from Trump, and people should take note of.

What Trump did was very simple, but very difficult to execute, he faked it till he made it. That’s what he did for most of the part of this election. He didn’t even know what was he talking about more than half the time he was debating, but he believed he was the biggest deal in that stage, and the only one deserving, and qualified person to be the next president of the United States, and he did it. He did it, squirrels, and that is the lesson we should all learn from him, because in life, sometimes that’s the only possible attitude to succeed, and now we have the example of our upcoming president.

Have a wonderful start of the year, and remember that every day, every hour, and every minute is a chance to become better, and re-new ourselves!

Xo,

Nata