Juan Sinag Cano

I was always the type who liked to double-check stuff, like a troublesome dog who always checks on the tires he pisses on in the parking lot. This made me a cautious person, always mindful of mistakes. Not knowing that this playing-it-safe attitude created a huge dent in my personality. People always say, “Better safe than sorry,” which, in another way, implanted a doubtful seed inside my head.

Before, I was not confident in the way I wrote. I always sought validation from others to see if what I had written was “okay” from their perspective. Long story short, I was that fucker who was always insecure about my craft. But when I stumbled upon Hunter S. Thompson during my college years, everything changed—and it happened drastically.

Needing money to cover expenses, I always did odd jobs and stints that most college students wouldn’t do. I drove taxis at night. I even mixed cement and helped in construction just to have some extra cash to eat decently. All of those experiences became my case study for the first article I wrote for a defunct website that featured stories common media wouldn’t publish. That began my fascination with writing about my escapades, whether drunk or sober. I started to write unapologetically.

This is why I ended up in copywriting. Wits without the backing of a twisted language won’t catch the common man’s attention. They want something raw, something absurd, something that tickles their desires. And this dead gonzo journalist is my copywriting hero. He might not be considered one, but he is my influence. His writing showed me how to view the world from a different perspective, a lens tainted with all the shit we could imagine but with an automatic wiper to ease the focus a little bit.

As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” Embracing the edge in my writing, I found my voice—not by playing it safe, but by diving headfirst into the chaos and coming out the other side unapologetically myself.

Juan Cano
June 19, 2024