Honestly? I’m often wondering the same. How does anyone know who they are? Who are you? Are you what you do, what you live, what you think? The voice in your head, or the one that listens to it and sometimes ignores it?
I know you didn’t come here for a philosophy lecture on the self, least of all to start poking at your own. Maybe I don’t really know who I am. Maybe I just won’t tell you.
Here’s what I can say: my name is Danitza. Born in México – lindo y querido, as we say. I hold a degree in Business Innovation, whatever that means. Writer, photographer, and filmmaker at heart; traveler and observer of the world. For four years and counting, I’ve lived slowly on the road – camera around my neck, laptop in my bag, heart wide open.
None of this blog makes much sense without the backstory, so let me tell you how I got here.
I was the kind of kid who stole her dad’s cameras all the time. He called me something that in English would translate to, like, butterfingers, and fair enough, because I didn’t just lose them, I broke them quite often. He didn’t stop me once. I’d slip into his room, tuck a camera into my backpack, and disappear to the park to photograph whatever crossed my way: the rocks, the neighbor’s dog, the trees…
That same stubbornness eventually talked my way into a job at a photography studio, and somewhere in there, without noticing, I found my craft. I learned to compose, to frame, to read a scene before I shot it, to hold a camera until it stopped being just a tool and it turned into my way of interpreting the world. Photography was my first language. It’s still the one I speak most fluently.
From there it was a short jump to film. One night I sat through the credits of a movie instead of leaving right away, and a question landed in me that wouldn’t let go: how does a person even make a movie? I got obsessed. By eighteen I was already on sets doing whatever needed doing: art, wardrobe, sound, camera, directing, coiling cable, running coffee. I’ll be honest, I consider myself more a work-woman of this trade than a romantic about it.
I went from shoestring indie shoots where nothing’s funded and everything’s borrowed, called in as a favor, or done purely for love; to big productions too – with the heavy gear and the cranes and the real cinema lenses plus the occasional famous musician or athlete wandering through frame.
I learned it the way I’ve learned just about everything: the hard way. And the hard way, on a film set, always leaves you with a story worth telling.
I didn’t grow up with a family that could hand me travel, or life, or much of anything, on a silver platter.
From where I stood, the same place so many of us in México stand, travel was a far-off, impossible thing. The kind of dream you fold up and put in a drawer because it seems to belong to other people. The ones who can. I say this because I know that particular ache: looking at the world from the wrong side of the fence, certain some lives just weren’t built for you.
And still, the itch got under my skin. That restless need to cross borders I couldn’t pronounce and sit inside languages I couldn’t follow. Flat broke, living paycheck to paycheck, juggling university and an office job and the math of making it to the end of the month, I decided to try anyway.
Then I found Couchsurfing, this app where you trade a free place to sleep for the company and the stories of other travelers. I didn’t sign up to be hosted. I signed up to host. Strangers from all over started landing on my couch (sorry, mom).
Story after story, accent after accent, life after life moving through my living room, until the obvious question finally surfaced: so how do I get to live like that? The day I asked it out loud was the day something shifted. I would find a way.
Then COVID arrived and took my work with it. In México’s film world there’s no such thing as job security, so overnight I was left with nothing lined up. No productions, nowhere to go, the savings shrinking by the week. I spent those locked-in months turning the same question over: now what?
Then, mid-pandemic, I landed my first remote job, and started saving all over again.
The rest was the slow work of dismantling a life until what remained fit in one suitcase. I gave my books to a Mayan community, bought a Kindle, let go of the rest, and walked out the door into the world. One tidy paragraph here, but in real life it took years.
I started this blog in 2020 writing about film and photography, because that’s what I had. It slowly became the thing I actually am: a mix. You’ll find photography here, and film, and writing – reflections on this nomadic life, and practical guides for moving through the world slowly.
I move slowly because I’d rather understand a place than collect it.
What I love is the way the world feels when you slow down enough to actually see it. So alongside the guides and the tips, I’m writing a novel in my most Mexican Spanish, something autobiographical I’ve kept on a low simmer as I go.
I write with sand still in my shoes, edit photos while balancing a camera on my lap in a rickety bus, and chase stories that sometimes make me question my life choices. If you like the way I write, stick around. I’ve got a lot left to say.
I write for your present self and my future one. I pass along whatever I pick up from time, from the road, from the hard knocks, there’s a story in all of it. And I’d love for you to teach me what you know, to set me straight, to hand me your stories too. This was always meant to go both ways.
If you made it this far, I have a feeling we’ll get along. Two doors, both open: find me on Instagram, where I post photos, reels, and pieces of this life on the move, or join my list in the blue section just below, and I’ll send the new stuff straight to you.