Hi! Welcome!

13 years, two international moves, and a pandemic have passed since I started this blog...

Wait the last one is not over, is it?

And one day after the storm, when you least expect it, the sun comes out.

My zip code is not the only thing that has changed since 2009. Sometimes it feels like the whole world has changed.

Blogs arrived, multiplied, and evolved. Youtube and Vloggers, grew exponentially, and platforms like Polyvore or LookBook were the inspiration of every fashion blogger, to slowly fall into disuse, and make way for Snapchat, filters, TikTok, Instagram stories, and now reels.

With the pandemic, reality began to look more like Birdbox, climate change more like Don't Look up, while social life was less and less like Friends and way more like Grace and Frankie in depression.

Count your Blessings

There were those who sought opportunities to help out in their community and socialized with their neighbors even if it was from balcony to balcony. Others, like me, turned their energies to spending time with family, talking more, playing board games, painting, doing all kinds of crafts, and in a way "taking advantage" of the confinement.

The pandemic as an opportunity for reinventing yourself is a simplification or even romanticization of its effects. Confinement brought out the best and worst in humanity.

The novelty for most was the advent of #HomeOffice and #OnlineClasses. There were those who sought opportunities to help out in their community and socialized with their neighbors even if it was from balcony to balcony. Others, like me, turned their energies to spending time with family, talking more, playing board games, painting, doing all kinds of crafts, and in a way "taking advantage" of the confinement. Some sought to maintain connections with their loved ones through Skype, Zoom, Whatsapp, or other social media. And then there were those who complained about the very possibility of being at home, and not being able to have a social life, while consuming hours and hours of news about the virus.

Unfortunately for many others, the pandemic brought them into involuntary confinement with that person who claims to be family but whose only relationship is violence or abuse. Millions more, as was the case for many in Mexico, did not have the opportunity to stay safe at home, and had to continue going out to work as before... but now only with more fear than before.

While Mexico was celebrating the arrival of the vaccines, in the first world countries there was no shortage of people demonstrating against them. It was strange to see both sides of the coin, and even to hear in opinions racist justifications about why in Latin America people do die of Covid and in countries like Germany they do not.

Disinformation was more viral than SARS2 itself, and the lack of empathy or collective conscience was just as lethal.

Reinventing Luce

Nothing like a pandemic and its new realities to put personal life into perspective, right?

As shocking, stressful, uncertain, and annoying as I have found the pandemic to be, it still has been an excellent opportunity for introspection. Nothing like a pandemic and its new realities to put personal life into perspective, right? Let's play a little game in which we exchange the words a pandemic and its new realities for other words, like a divorce, it still works, doesn't it? Someone said that getting divorced implies a strange form of mourning in which another person does not die, but is still felt like it.... and how right he or she was!

The same has been the case of the second international move, which has served well to reaffirm my priorities, all that I love about Mexico, all that I do not tolerate and refuse to accept as everyday life (read as violence, corruption, injustice and more), and to exercise the ability to adapt to change.

The art of packing and leaving

The excitement and effervescence of starting over! That in days everything is exciting and... new (with a positive connotation). But there are also the days when it feels like rock-stepping.

My dear ex-boss Carmen told me that the first thing to learn from the migrant life is to travel light, which obviously did not refer to the 23 Kilos limit of the European airlines, but to those weights that we accept to carry in our minds.

Indeed, every move implies making an inventory of what we have, deciding what is coming with us and what no longer is. The same should be done with emotions, with good and bad memories, and why not even with traumas. The logic in my dear Carmen's advice, along with her clarification that as a migrant you never know for sure when you will return to your homeland (or when you might have to return to your homeland) resonates in my mind. Migrant or not, there is definitely no need to carry around what no longer serves us, be it an old casserole or the insecurities derivated from heartbreak, or an obsolete belief even.

Volver, volver, volveeerrr*

Lvi 10 Aniversario

In these 13 years, Lvi changed its image several times, it varied in its content, and I also have to accept that it was paused and reopened a lot of times. You know... adult life!

With each substantial change in my work life and even sentimental life, there were times when the desire to express myself and to share every witticism that crossed my mind, did not reach the top of my priorities.

Ironically, each and every time I put a pause to this project, once I was calmer and more established in my routine, there was always some little detail or coincidence that reminded me of the importance of making time for what I like.

And so it happened now. Already with a couple of years in my new place, intermediate knowledge of the language, and established work and family routines, what do you think happened? I started to receive notifications from everyone who visited the #Lvi website and our Facebook Fanpage, even when there were no new publications or any form of publicity or distributio... And I, who am a very prodding person, and who already missed these virtual paths, took it as a challenge.

* As the Chorus in the song by Mexican singer Vicente Fernández.

So is it the same song with a different tune?

This blog has as antecedent the long ago extinct MSN spaces (yes, it's been raining since then!). Where there was basically everything and nothing. And in 2009, thanks to the suggestion of my then-boyfriend, I took the leap to #Blogger and I decided to focus the blog on fashion, some existential ramblings, and everything that could be categorized as jokes, funny facts, or "curiosities".

Along with my trial and error editing process, and very primitive social media management, I was organizing the blog into categories that included the almost inevitable outfit of the day, heroes and heroines of the creative world including fashion designers, and style suggestions.

Starting from the fact that fashion is a way of expressing oneself, that creativity goes from a well-contextualized meme to a recognized work of art, and that life is beautiful even with all sorts of ills lurking, such as depression... certainly, if it's the same cat! Just as I am the same LuceBuona from 2009 and not, because of how many unlocked achievements I have accumulated!

Divorced unlocked

Scholarship unlocked

Overcoming depression unlocked

Those kinds of achievements that are not "bragged about", or that are not celebrated, in many cases that are not even said out loud, darn it! Those achievements that involve an immense effort (at the level of buying a house, starting a business, or achieving a promotion), and whose main reward is mental health.

Thus, emotional well-being finds its place in this space as well, as part of the joy of life.

Without further ado... Welcome!