Immigration has been the constant thread running through my life. Not just one move, but several. Not just one status, but many.
I was born in Colombia and moved to the United States when I was two years old. What began as a temporary stay became something else when our tourist visa expired and we remained. For most of my childhood and teenage years, I lived in the U.S. without legal status. It shaped how you move through the world. You learn early what it means to stay quiet, to avoid certain conversations, to understand that something as simple as paperwork can define the limits of your life.
When I was eighteen, I left the United States and moved to Colombia. In many ways, it was a return. But it was also the first time I truly lived in the country where I had been born. I had to learn it almost like a newcomer.
From there, immigration continued to shape my path. I later moved to Qatar for work, this time through a legal immigration process. Eventually, that journey brought me to the Netherlands, again through legal channels.
Because of that path, I have lived immigration from both sides. I know what it feels like to exist in a country where you are present but not fully recognized by the system. And I know what it feels like to go through formal processes where every step is documented, approved, and recorded.
Both experiences leave their mark. One teaches you how fragile belonging can feel. The other reminds you how much a piece of paper can change the way the world sees you.
Middle generation struggle
I made it. At least that’s what it looks like on paper.
Good job. Stable life. Opportunities my parents never had. The kind of story that people point to when they talk about the “immigrant success story.”
And in many ways, that story is real. Children of immigrants often move up socially and professionally. We grow up hearing that hard work, education, and sacrifice will open doors that were closed to the generation before us. Many of us do end up walking through those doors.
But living that reality from the inside feels different than reading it in a statistic.
Being part of the middle generation means growing up between worlds. You carry the dreams your parents brought with them, sometimes across borders, languages, and entire lives left behind. At the same time, you are trying to build a life that feels like your own.
There is pride in making it. Real pride. Gratitude too.
But there is also pressure. The quiet feeling that you are the bridge between where your family started and where they hope everything is going. That you cannot fall too far, because too much was sacrificed to get you here.
Success becomes more than personal. It becomes collective.
Retirement Obsession
Retirement has always felt different to me.
Growing up, it was never really part of the conversation. Not because it was unimportant, but because survival came first. Many of the adults around me, especially other immigrants, were focused on getting through the present. Working long hours. Sending money back home. Figuring out the next step. Planning thirty years ahead was a luxury most people did not have.
For some, retirement was not even possible in the traditional sense. Years of work did not always translate into pensions, social security, or the kind of stability that people assume will be there later in life. Immigration status, interrupted careers, moving between countries, and informal work meant that a lot of people reached older age still working simply because they had to.
Watching that shaped the way I think about the future.
It is probably the reason I am a little obsessive about saving for retirement now. I think about it more than most people my age. Pensions, investments, emergency funds, long timelines. The irony is that sometimes it feels slightly ridiculous to worry about money decades from now while also trying to survive the present. Hence the constant internal joke: planning for retirement while quietly crying in broke.
But underneath the humor there is something real.
When you grow up seeing how fragile financial security can be, you start trying to build the safety net that previous generations were never given the chance to create. Retirement, for me, is not just about stopping work one day. It is about having the freedom and stability that many of the people who came before me never had.
Turning 30
This year I turn 30.
For some people it is just another birthday. For me it feels like one of those invisible milestones where you suddenly pause and look around your life asking a very simple but very loaded question: who the fuck am I?
Your twenties are supposed to be the time when you figure things out. Careers, identity, relationships, where you belong, what matters. But the truth is that most of that decade feels more like improvising than figuring anything out.
At some point along the way you realize you have built a life. A job, routines, responsibilities, a version of yourself that exists in the world. From the outside it may look stable, maybe even successful. But inside there is still a lot of questioning. Am I on the right path? Did I choose this life, or did I slowly grow into it?
Turning thirty has this strange effect of making those questions louder.
It is not a crisis exactly. It is more like a moment of reflection. A point where you start taking stock of the person you have become and the person you still feel like inside.
The weird part is realizing that both of those versions are real at the same time.