Trick or Treat

The link between sports and quality of life has always been a topic of interest to me, yet I’ve never had the academic profile or any work-related reason to research this topic. Even so, it would be hard to deny the fascination that invades my eyes when I am unexpectedly acquainted with public athletic facilities in the few cities I have had a chance to visit in my life.

During my Master’s program, when we were due to decide on a research project that would grow into an attempted thesis, I tried. I submitted a research proposal centered around the role that Medellin’s Popular Schools of Sport (Escuelas Populares del Deporte) was having in generating social change in the city’s youth. The vagueness surrounding the concept of ‘social change’ was that proposal’s downfall, coupled with the lack of qualification to deal with such a sociological concept when my only academic background at that point had been in international business.

Well, I finished my Master’s degree. And my thesis didn’t have much to do with sports. It turns out that going from the start point of your thesis all the way to the finish line generates a research interest. An instinctual way of looking at life that somehow clicks with a concept you’ve explored. For me, that concept was local development and the notion that progress of any endeavor can only truly and sustainably be made from within.

A week after defending my thesis, I was flying on a one-way plane ticket to the United States to see what other challenges could be taken advantage of to learn and grow. It’s been a year since then and my wife and I are looking forward to seeing what opportunities can be made and had while living in a privileged society where achieving an acceptable quality of life, in a comprehensive way, is not a day-to-day struggle.

With our gratefulness with life for this opportunity, we want to make the most of it and wish to have the freedom to pursue whatever challenges we set our minds to. In 6 months, we have decided to start a new business, travel, live outside of our comfort zone and make huge sacrifices, and it has all been worth it.

This page, this blog, will be my space, where I will explore everything related to the interaction between sports, its infrastructure, and economy. I have never been a writer, and I hope this will put an end to it, so to begin I will try to follow a format that will hopefully guarantee I produce something.

I am aware I might be the only one to ever read this introduction again, but I am also 100% confident that when I do read it, I will be extremely happy and proud that I did it.

Halloween, 2016. Trick or treat.

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