Month: September 2025

Untranslatable expressions: sueño atrasado

/ binarybea / 2 Comments

This weekend we´ve taken it easy, the girls and I; I think we all needed to rest. And it did us a lot of good, though I´m not sure it was enough for the level of accumulated tiredness we all had (and it´s only been a month since school started!).

Photo of a dark grey sofa with chaise long, in a well lit living room.

(Photo of our old sofa, which we said goodbye to a couple of months ago. I´ve enjoyed so many naps on that sofa...)

The other day, just by coincidence, or I should say, thanks to Google´s algorithms, I found an article suggesting that nowadays, we live in the burnout society. It explained that many of us live in a situation of chronic tiredness, and the worst part is that we have normalized it. Our society values constant activity, so that´s what we do: we fill up our calendars to the brim in order to take in more, to achieve more, as a way to motivate ourselves and be happier. We don´t need anybody to exploit us; we exploit ourselves. And somehow, we perceive rest as a waste of time, something we cannot afford.

The result? We are exhausted, individually and also collectively.

But in reality, what we cannot afford is not to rest. And if we don´t learn this the easy way, we will learn it the hard way.

Today´s "untranslatable expression" is tener sueño atrasado, which is our way to express in Spanish that we´re sleep deprived, that we got less sleep than we should have, either during the previous night or over a longer period of time (I´ve even heard someone jokingly say they suffered lack of sleep since their first Holy Communion...)

I like this way of expressing it because it conveys the idea that there´s a certain debt, a time debt in this case, that has to be "repaid" in order to catch up and bring things back to normal. And it´s precisely this concept of "catching up" that´s conveyed by the closest expression I found in English: having to catch up on sleep.

Unfortunately, what the experts say is that we can never make up for lost sleep. It´s not as easy as oversleeping one day to compensate for the day you underslept.

But then, what can we do? I can think of a few things:

What do you think of these suggestions? Oh, and I saved the best for last...

One thing that helps me immensely is considering rest and self-care as part of my job; if I don´t take care of myself and I don´t rest well, my physical and mental abilities will not be the same, and I won´t be able to give my all as a mother, an analyst or a coach.

I acknowledge that I'm saying all this as I type this post in the middle of the night, so as you can see, I still have a way to go towards fully following my own advice. But what I can tell you for sure is that, nowadays, I'm dedicating a lot more attention to rest than I did a few years ago, and more importantly, I no longer feel guilty for resting, sleeping and "wasting time" every once in a while.

Gratitude day

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According to some sources, today, September 21st, is world gratitude day. And I say according to some sources because sometimes these "world" and "international" days depend on who you´re talking to... For example, the "International Book Day" we Spaniards celebrate on April 23rd doesn´t coincide with the "World Book Day" that´s celebrated in some of the English-speaking countries, which falls on the first Thursday in March.

And from reading the internet, I gather that Gratitude Day, which is today, should not be confused with Than-You-Day, which is January 11th... I´m not a hundred per cent sure of the difference between the two, but, to me, gratitude is more about appreciating all the good things we have, as well as feeling happy and generally thankful for them, while "thank you" refers to a much more tangible action, something we say to specific people because of the positive impact they´ve had on our lives.

In any case, the way I see it is that any day is a good day for us to take a moment, do a bit of reflection and be thankful (both in general and in particular) for what we have and what happens to us in this life.

Outside view of the Hall of the Ambassadors, in the Alhambra, in Granada, Spain

(Photo from our visit to the Alhambra, in Granada, one of the places we were fortunate enough to go and see this year.)

Gratitude is one of the recurring topics in this blog. I believe it´s a fundamental habit; it allows us to make more progress in our lives while reducing suffering along the way. Here are a few articles that can give you ideas on how to approach it:

So, what are you thankful for today?

Mission accomplished!

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Today is a day of celebration! After three years of practising and growing as a coach, having overcome a variety of delays and roadblocks, I finally took the plunge; I applied for the ACC certification, and I passed!

Photo of a board with two pieces of paper held by magnets - the left image is a drawing to illustrate coaching, and the right image is the ICF credential badge from ICF

(Photo of a small section of the vision board I have on my bedroom wall. The idea is to put up images that help you visualise your goals and get closer to them.)

The Associate Certified Coach (ACC) credential is the first certification level from the International Coaching Federation (ICF). the best known and most widely extended coaching institution in the world. A fundamental part of ICF´s work consists of establishing quality standards and a code of ethics for the coaching profession, which is currently not regulated, and that can easily be confused with other help professions, like consulting, mentoring or psychotherapy.

The certification requirements include a certain number of hours of training, hours of mentoring and practice hours doing coaching sessions, as well as passing an exam. And now I understand why: all of those elements complement each other, combining theory and practice, action and reflection, for a much more comprehensive learning experience.

I know this is just another step along the way, but for me, it´s a tremendously important step, for two reasons:

  • First, because this allows me to prove to the world that I take coaching very seriously, and that I´m aligned with the highest standards and code of ethics of this profession. Now I can guarantee a level of quality in my service, with objective criteria to back it up.
  • And second, because I also get to prove to myself that I´m indeed doing things right, which gives me even more confidence and peace of mind. Please note I´m saying "doing things right", as opposed to "perfect"...

Thanks a million to D´Arte Human & Business School for the training that started it all (my dear 15th), to Stephen Clements for being an extraordinary mentor, to all the coachees I´ve had the privilege of working with, inside and outside of Fidelity, and to ExpertCoach for their exam preparation materials.

So, for the moment, mission accomplished! But the journey continues, there´s no end to this...

Let´s get to work

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Well, this is it, folks: we´re in September now, and it´s time to get to work.

It´s time to get back to the routine (not monotony), or rather, to create a new routine, as every year is different, even if it only changes a little (and in our case, this year, it´s changing a lot, let´s see how it goes).

It´s also a good moment to turn over a new leaf and start a project. Many take advantage of the back-to-school season and sign up for a gym, or begin to learn something new; advertising agencies are very familiar with this process... (By the way, I stopped watching conventional TV a long time ago, but I remember that back in the day, September used to be packed with ads for weekly or monthly fascicle collectables. Are they still in fashion? Or maybe they became a thing of the past? Would people still buy them?)

A few days ago, I was listening to ads on the radio, and this comic strip from Mafalda popped into my head:

Mafalda comic strip, by Quino - Mafalda watching ads on TV

Here´s the translation: there are four frames:

  • Mafalda switches off her TV set (¡click!) while saying: ¡"Use", "Buy", "Drink", "Eat", "Try"!… ¡EEEEEEEH!… What do they think we are?
  • She sits back down and frowns, thinking: And what are we?
  • Silently, she switches the TV on again (¡click!), and sits back down.
  • Watching TV again, she thinks: Damn them, they know that we still don´t know.

What do you think? What I love about Mafalda´s comic strips, and all of Quino´s work in general, is that their themes and messages are still very relevant in today´s world, over forty or fifty years after their publication. Times change, of course, and there are a few details that reveal the passing of time, but generally speaking, they have aged surprisingly well.

Or maybe it´s not that surprising, given that deep down, humans don´t really change that much, and there are so many repeating patterns... In the same way Mafalda and her friends found it difficult to believe their parents grew up without television, our kids now find it hard to imagine how we grew up without the internet or mobile phones, and the next generation will struggle to conceive life without artificial intelligence.

What Quino was able to do brilliantly is to capture human nature in a humorous way, with all its paradoxes and contradictions. With reflections that appear to be simple but turn out to be really powerful. One day, I´ll bring you more of his comic strips so that we can reflect on them together.

But let´s get back to today´s topic: why did I choose this particular strip? Because if we don´t know who we are or what we want, we let ourselves be influenced a lot more easily by other people´s interests. And that, eventually, takes its toll.

If we don´t set and define our own goals, we end up working for the goals of others. It´s that simple.

Seneca explained it this way:

There is no favourable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go

And Gary Lew said it this way (I have this one in a fridge magnet):

This is your world. Shape it, or someone else will.

What about you? How would you like to shape your world, starting now in September? What do you want to achieve this school year?

Blogging forever

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I recently learned that today, August 31st, is World Blog Day (not to be confused with International Blogger´s Day, which apparently happens on August 5th).

And I´m truly happy that there´s a set day to intentionally celebrate blogs, as one of my many identities, for years now, is that of a blogger, and it´s one I´m very proud of.

Coincidentally, earlier this week, I found this book by Pedro Mañas at home, and read it: The secret life of Rebecca Paradise. The protagonist makes up a whole new identity for herself through her blog (or her glob, as she calls it). I really liked this book, and it comes with a message, so I recommend it to all boys and girls.

Cover of a book for kids in Spanish, "The secret life of Rebecca Paradise"

Next month it will be twenty years since I arrived in Ireland (OMG, twenty years!) and started my first blog, which was also called Binarywords and was written entirely in Spanish. Back then, blogging was in fashion: it was something relatively new, and some of my friends also had their own blogs... For me personally, it was great to get to reflect on my day-to-day in a written format; it really helped me through those years of change and growth (and chaos!), and it´s still a massive help today. I consider it invaluable as a tool. But the best part was that, through blogging, I discovered a creative outlet I didn´t even know was available to me: we could say that I found my voice.

Nowadays, the internet has evolved greatly, and content publication formats have changed, but the human need to express oneself and launch one´s ideas into the world is still the same, so new ways of blogging have been invented, as well as new platforms. The mainstream trend nowadays is microblogging, that is, short format, often using videos, reels, etc., to make the information more attractive and easier to digest. I must admit that I´m still old-fashioned when it comes to this: I prefer my blank page every week, to be able to write to my heart´s content, and then let the readers find what I wrote, be it because they were looking for the content or just stumbled upon it.

By the way, speaking about platforms, I´m currently trying to integrate this WordPress blog with my Substack account, so that articles get published automatically, as they already do in LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. I´m afraid the integration is going to have to be manual, but still, I think I´ll be able to publish through that medium as well. I´ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, if you feel like exploring more than two hundred articles already written here in the glob, the easiest way is heading to the archive, you´ll find them all there. Thanks for reading me!