Hola- I’m Marivel! I am a SoCal native, working fulltime in higher education. I am a yogi, an outdoor and foodie enthusiast, and on a financial independence journey. I am first-generation in my family and, in each stage of my life, find myself continuously learning about ways to establish a better life for myself, family, and community.

­ This blog seeks to create a space where commitment to excellence is centered around our values, authentic living, and honoring ourselves. Creating Marivel stemmed from a place where I wanted to intentionally create a life that more consistently aligned with my values and mission.

As an educator, in love with the work that I do, I found myself giving the best parts of myself and energy mostly to my work and students. Don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about my work and aspire to deliver excellence, however, in my efforts to consistently help others, I would give very little energy, time and attention to my own personal goals and development outside of work. After working fulltime for 7 years as an educator, I began to see signs of burnout and stagnation in my personal life and reaching my goals.

After earning my Master’s degree, I saw so much growth in my career and I reaped those rewards- promotions, staff awards, monetary raises, joy and a good reputation in the work place. It was great to finally see the fruits of all my labor and tempting to keep pouring energy into that area only.

Realizing that this cycle and desire to achieve more would never stop, I took a step back to observe my depleting health, lackluster bucket list, relationships, and spiritual life. I was experiencing burnout in my career and to top it all off seeing very little growth in my personal life. This reverse order of priorities only hurt me at the end and couldn’t be far from what I truly valued in my life. It became increasingly important to love my life outside my 9-5 job.

Restructuring my priorities and developing healthy boundaries has taken a lot of work and (re)learning. In all honesty, it’s still a work in progress. At times, I get self-conscious for not pouring more into work and it becomes increasingly difficult when I see others working at all hours of the day and weekends. I know for myself, however, I aspire to be more present in my life, my family’s life, travel more, and explore each new decade with a higher level of intention that is welcomed by new lessons and experiences. I learned that by overworking myself in only one area of my life, I was experiencing burnout, stagnation, and wasn’t reaching any of my lifelong goals.

Creating Marivel blog hopes to carve out a space on the internet for an uplifting, intentional community who values investing, challenging and honoring ourselves. This shift away from reaching only one measure of success, hopefully allows for us to create a life that brings us joy and create an impact that extends outside of ourselves. It goes without saying that my experiences and perspectives are heavily informed by some of my more salient identities: I am a daughter of immigrants, a wife, dog mom, first generation Latina, and a woman of faith.