Me

you are making a record,” they’d say, “you’re supposed to do only that.”
    “Ha!” I would answer. “Who says?” I had done it several times and I was doing it again.
    As soon as the concert tour was over, we began the promotional tour for Sound Loaded . A typical day began by waking up when my plane from Australia, for example, landed in L.A., where I had to record greetings for radio stations in Orlando, Detroit, Miami, and other major cities. Then I had to give a series of interviews for the press before doing a photo shoot for the magazines. It was a furious schedule that never stopped. Every day began at dawn and ended late at night. I almost never had a free afternoon or morning to simply take it easy. I could barely breathe.
    In some ways I felt like the king of the world, and that feeling, although it came with a certain level of exhaustion, was also intoxicating. I liked to feel the power I held in my hands, and above all else, I loved being able to harvest the fruits of our labor of the last fifteen years. But there were also moments when I was afraid of what my new lifestyle could bring. Sometimes I felt I wanted to escape back to my little island and live in a little house on the beach with a hammock facing the ocean, and other times the only thing I wanted was to go out and party, rent out a whole nightclub, invite my friends to dance and flirt with the paparazzi. Every day I would shift between those two extremes: between wanting to escape everything that was going on around me and wanting to give in to it entirely. On the one hand, I felt wonderful and greatly fulfilled; but on the other hand, I was in pain, and the feeling of constant change was driving me crazy.
    I believe that very few people around me noticed it, though, because I would do everything I could to hide what was really going on inside me. When people asked me, “Ricky, how are you?” I didn’t even take the time to think about it. I would automatically respond: “I am great, thank you very much.” But the reality was very different. I had a terrible stomachache, my head was spinning, and I felt a tightness in my heart. I didn’t know what I was feeling because I did not take the time to explore it, but what I did know was that I was carrying around a lot, a lot of pain. But I kept saying that everything was okay.
    Around that time, I recorded a song with Madonna called “Be Careful ( Cuidado Con Mi Corazón ),” and upon seeing the intensity with which the press followed me, and how willing I was to always promote, she said to me, “Ricky, stop doing interviews. Everyone knows who you are.” And that truth struck me like a lightning bolt. It took me some time to process this—and more than that, to apply it to my life—but one day I finally understood exactly what she meant. I had spent so much time focused on doing publicity, being available, and always giving, giving, and giving to reach my goal that I didn’t realize that, to a certain degree, I had already reached it, and surpassed it without even noticing. That is when I understood that the rules of the game had changed and that I had to find a way to reclaim control of my time and my life. But that would not happen for a long time, because, like everything else in life, it wasn’t my moment yet. Before I found my peace I would have to get to that particular moment when I really just couldn’t take it anymore.
    Back then, my cardinal rule was to always give as much as possible and then some, because with every little bit I gave, I got so much back, and that would make me want to give even more. Sometimes I say that it wasn’t that I was working too hard. I was just giving too much. It’s just that the validation from fans is intense. I believed I was ready for that kind of success—after all, I had been in the spotlight since I was twelve years old—but I soon realized I wasn’t. I wanted to scream: “Wait! I can’t deal with so much. Let me just stop for a moment!”
    For a long time, I believed that the success we reached with “María” and Vuelve would be the grand culmination of my career. But after the success of “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” that all seemed like child’s play. I always say that things come to my life at the exact moment when they need to, not before and not after, and I receive them with a loving heart. But this time, it was completely overwhelming. I did everything I could do to keep myself moving at a thousand miles