Latin America Makes You Lazy?

Before I left for Latin America, I was an email expert.

If someone sent me an email, I would respond to it in the same day with five paragraphs minimum.

Unfortunately, I don’t do such diligence anymore.

It has been one thing I’ve noticed about myself over the last handful of years…

Before, I used to be all about those emails.

Nowadays?

It takes forever to respond to anything that isn’t on my phone.

For example, some chick on a BDSM website called Fetlife messaged me to fuck around.

A website for finding folks to fuck around with as I reviewed here.

Anyhow, I just didn’t care enough to keep my eyes on the damn thing every hour…

Consequently, as the website puts it, she either deleted her account or blocked me from responding.

My ego says she simply deleted it.

And I like to think it was deletion over being blocked since her last message was “so what are you into?” in Spanish.

But, unfortunately, I didn't check my messages on the site until like a week after she sent that one.

Regardless, it’s a lack of opportunity.

If it wasn’t for a lack of discipline, I guess that’d be one more gal in my life.

Still, even another random ass pussy can’t keep me disciplined enough to respond to messages in a timely manner.

Unless the message is from someone with a particularly interesting thing to say…

I usually forget it quick enough until a few weeks later after getting the message to respond.

I need to change that.

I’ve been kicking my own ass over how slow I am to respond to things.

And not just emails…

Even family stuff!

“Forget Youtube, You Boomer Millennial! Join Spotify!

Some odd months ago, my sister did a nice thing and gave me a 3 month subscription to Spotify.

I’ve never used Spotify before.

To be honest, I feel kinda stuck in my “millennial boomer” ways on keeping Youtube because it’s what I’ve always used.

If Myspace was still popular, I’d probably still have that also.

Still, I did eventually make an account on Spotify for the 3 months subscription.

Though, being honest, it took me a long ass time to get around to it.

I’m thinking like 2 months maybe to eventually open it?

Thankfully, the Spotify membership only begins when you actually use it so I still got the whole 3 months to enjoy.

There is some benefit to it anyhow – I was thinking of maybe saving all of my songs from Youtube to Spotify so that I’ll always have the names of them for whenever Youtube deletes anything I like.

For example, as you can see in this article here, I saved 200 reggaeton songs into an article so I always have their names.

Still, it’ll take forever for me to save all of the songs I got.

It’s literally in the thousands I believe.

So, similar to how it took me a few months to open Spotify, I’m sure it’ll probably take a little bit for me to get around to it.

On top of that, they do have radio for music on Spotify also so that’s nice.

I’ll probably use it more often.

On the first night I was, I was listening to this song here.

Still, the idea is the same.

Similar to emails, it took me forever to get around to this.

I remember having a window on my laptop opened all the time to an email reminding me to open Spotify.

Finally got it done.

At any rate, be it emails or Spotify, I think the slowness in how I respond to things is all related to something deeper.

A Culture of Slowness

Some odd months ago, a friend of mine named Angie to visit me by Roma Norte of Mexico City.

We were going to walk around and eventually go back to her place.

Anyhow, she was waiting for me at Metro Insurgentes specifically.

Unfortunately for her, I got caught up in drinking and listening to music.

And ended up losing a sense of time.

By the time that I realized I had to leave, I left my apartment to head outside.

However, before going outside, I noticed some folks in the kitchen making pasta.

There was a Venezuelan chick who was a pretty damn good cook.

Furthermore, she always liked to share her food with everyone without you even asking

I wanted to ask her to teach me a few things that she has made.

Unfortunately, she left the building before I ever got around to it.

Took too long to ask.

At any rate, she was inside the kitchen again making some nice pasta and sharing it with everyone.

Before long, I found myself in a little conversation with her about whatever before realizing again…..

That Angie is waiting.

Fuck.

So I excused myself and ran outside doing a little jog to Metro Insurgentes.

Now, to be fair, it was only a few minutes walking from the apartment building.

Anyhow, as I got closer, I saw Angie walking towards my direction by some car wash place.

She laughed about my tardiness and seeing me jog in a hurry.

And we got going.

It wasn’t offensive to her that I was late.

Nor do most people find it offensive.

The only ones who get annoyed at tardiness are usually gringos who haven’t gotten used to the “mañana time.”

Something I wrote about here in which, in Latin America, there is seemingly a culture of being slow to get anything done.

Slow to showing up on time to anything to so many other things in life.

Now, to be fair, I also think my heavier drinking keeps me slow at getting anything done also.

It’s not just the culture.

Put the two together though and you have to give me a month to get around to doing anything that I was set on doing.

It’s not a good excuse anyhow.

But an observation I’ve had about myself personally.

Adopting to Life in LATAM?

Which is that, over enough time down here, I do think it’s common for us gringos to “adopt to the rhythm of life” in Latin America.

In which, drinking or not, you get used to showing up late to everything or taking your sweet ass time to get anything done.

Be it when I went to a house party in Buenos Aires, Argentina in which everyone to the party (including myself) was late to showing up.

To being invited and showing up late to watch a soccer game in front of a small store with my ex-girlfriend, Marcela, and her friends.

Or knowing that you NEED to see someone at 5 PM but you, knowing the rhythm of life to things down here, you tell the person to meet you at 4:45.

Give them those extra 15 minutes to being late.

Could be a date even – knowing that she’ll probably be late, it also doesn’t bother you to make her wait a few minutes after she texts you that she has shown up to wherever you going to meet a new chick.

And they never mind it either.

It’s expected almost.

And being slow really at getting anything else done down here.

Eventually, you do adopt to the local culture to a degree.

If you don’t, you might likely get pissed off more often at how seemingly incompetent most folks seem to be.

You have to accept it and work with it to your benefit.

And, in working with it to your benefit, you learn to benefit also from moving at a slower pace in life.

Relax.

That email someone sent? Eh, we’ll respond to it a week later.

Spotify subscription?

Well, I did feel like an ass for taking so long to opening it.

Really milking the whole “slow culture” on that one, huh?

And, in day to day life, carrying on with the rhythm of how things are done down here.

At any rate, that’s all I got to say.

Drop any comments below.

Follow my Twitter here.

Thanks for reading.

Best regards,

Matt