I’m listening to one of C. Tangana’s songs.
Pa’ llamar tu atención.
To get your attention.
In the song, he jumps out of a plane. Appears on television. Escapes from prison. Everything.
Pa’ llamar tu atención.
In real life, no.
He is a strategist, as well as a musician, and he knows how to control the trigger.
He doesn’t apologise for wanting the place. He doesn’t hide the hunger. He mixes trap with flamenco, with rumba and bolero, and doesn’t ask.
Fashion. Cinema. Art.
He is hungry.
Clear. Exact.
That is what has taken him where he is.
Hunger. Not anxiety.
I think about this distinction.
About myself.
I don’t think I have anxiety either. I don’t know if I’m wrong. But I sleep well. I smoke for pure pleasure. I control my visits to the fridge.
That’s why I don’t think I have anxiety.
But I do have hunger.
A lot.
I want to work. I want to sell. I want to be relevant. I want some of the things I think to travel further than I do. And I’m not going to put a little purpose bow on them to make them look prettier.
We all come and go for something.
We’re not nuns of charity.
Hunger is legitimate.
Anxiety is a fucker.
If you don’t recognise it, decode it and block it, it ends up shooting you in the foot.
Of your self-esteem: you need validation instead of recognition. Of your balance sheet. Of your results.
Hunger has one objective.
Anxiety has too many.
And it always needs an audience.
That’s why hunger wants to do the work.
And anxiety is what pushes you to let the world know that you’re doing it, that you’re working, that you’re giving it everything.
Like those profile pictures holding a phone.
Hunger and anxiety can live in the same mouth. In the same brand. Stepping on each other’s heels.
One says: it’s not ready yet.
The other asks if we couldn’t start showing something.
—Please, let me show something. A process, a reflection, a screenshot with the cursor still inside. Anything that makes me look as busy as that profile picture, phone in hand.
Slow show.
It makes me laugh and wrinkle my nose. Like that friend who only appears when they want something. The patterns are clear.
In business terms, plans are made three to five years ahead and, still, your inbox keeps filling with messages that don’t need a reply, but an anti-anxiety pill.
Or two.
We no longer write to have a conversation. We write to check that we are still there. Like by like. Prompt by prompt.
Anxiety confuses hunger with urgency. Desire with short-termism. Moving forward with the panic of being left behind.
Don’t let me be the last one.
It makes you act.
React.
Act again, just in case.
That kills more work than a bad balance sheet.
Hunger can leave something to cook. Anxiety opens the oven every thirty seconds.
—Hey, are you ready?
Come on.
Thirty seconds later.
—And now?
Then blames the oven when the cake doesn’t rise. Or the recipe. Or Saturn in retrograde.
—Are you ready?
Crickets chirping.
The things that actually shift the axis are waiting in lost property.
—Oh, look. A conversation with no extraction at first glance. No prospecting at all. No hidden intentions. Some kind of curiosity. That kind that might not invoice before the end of the month. Trust no touchpoint can claim. Work that doesn’t know what to call itself yet. Enough time for an idea to stop looking like every other one.
—Yeah, but I want to ride the carousel. And sell. And be relevant.
—Of course. You and everybody else. That’s the fun of the game.
I want to ride too.
Very much.
But while I wait for my turn, I’m not considering setting fire to the fairground to get your attention.
I light a cigarette instead.
Leave the lighter on the table.
Think.
Exhale.
And I keep doing, even if from the outside I look still.
Everything else is just pa’ llamar tu atención.
Lines Aja
Brand Strategist & Verbal Identity Consultant — Las Musas®
cultooruido.com