On TessDrive’s 5th year, the man behind the ‘unprofitable’ website remains optimistic

It’s Year 5 of a little online project called TessDrive.com. Website founder and manager Aries B. Espinosa shares his thoughts on a future that could be brighter, and kinder, for all creatures on the planet.

Time sure flies when you’re having fun, and I realized just lately that we’ve been at this quiet little website of ours for 5 years now.

I left the corporate world—in my industry it’s called “mainstream media”—late in 2010 to pursue my own career as a writer and editor outside the comforting and rather high-paying confines of a leading newspaper.

For five years I took on different jobs. The pay as a freelance writer and editor was nowhere near what I was earning as a regular office manager. But it was enough.

Then, in 2015, I and Tessa R. Salazar, a journalist in my former newspaper, had a lightbulb moment. We saw that the communication landscape was rapidly changing, migrating from tri-media (TV, radio, and print) to the different online platforms, fueled no doubt by the rise of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, and the web that wove them all together, the internet. We realized that the future was in cyberspace, and it was in there that the future of the planet also lay.

I had been in the business of mass communication since 1993, and I have witnessed how industries, sectors, and fields have evolved—from pre-internet days to the age of social media. I have seen up close how facets such as technology, culture, population, and even global and local geopolitics, have influenced how these fields have developed and grown.

I have also noticed how human activities have influenced the natural conditions necessary for sustaining life in our one and only (so far) home planet.

Sadly, many of these these influences have gone in the wrong direction. It has been all over the news, and climate scientists have done the math, that the Earth’s atmospheric system is undergoing an accelerated pace of change, and fingers have pointed to humans –the aggregated activities of over 7 billion individuals–playing a significant role in this change.

The evidence is all around: Modern industries have been spewing greenhouse gases, the primary  ingredients for global warming; the human population has been exerting enormous stresses on the planet’s finite resources, especially on food sources; demand has outstripped supply, an unhealthy, unstable balance in any ecological setting; multi-drug resistant diseases are on the rise, putting us on the brink of the next pandemic; unsustainable construction practices are threatening natural habitats, endangering once-thriving animal and marine species.

Earth is becoming increasingly crowded and toxic. Yet, we also present its greatest hope, as the only life form on the planet intelligent enough to change the fortunes of all other animal species for better or for worse.

So, in 2015, the two of us decided to use what we have learned as mass communicators, to help bring back the natural balance to Earth’s living ecosystems.

Seeing how the world wide web and its resultant offspring the online social media could help magnify our efforts toward this end, I set up in 2015 our own website TessDrive.com, and its Facebook page TessDrive.

TessDrive.com represents the entirety of our knowledge in the fields and industries we had been covering since the 1990s. But much more than just sharing knowledge to a worldwide online audience, we are earnestly imparting motivational insights, actionable patterns, and doable new ways of thinking. Our end goal is to make human existence work towards the optimum conditions for our planet to sustain ALL life, not just human life. Because, in the end, we must realize, without other living things, our own existence here would not be possible.

TessDrive.com is so named not just because it is easy to recall and pays tribute to my partner, it’s actually an acronym that describes everything it stands for: 

T — Technology, Transport and Travel

E — Eco-Mobility and Empowered Sustenance

S — Sustainable Structures

S — Safe Sporting

Then, “Drive” refers ultimately to our motivations and our desires, our drive towards sustainability and balance.

I believe that our goals and visions will not be achieved by intelligence, logic and wisdom alone. Our efforts must also be done with heart, spirit, and a leap of faith, faith in the highest power in the Universe. In order to achieve success in our endeavors, we must also believe in the innate good of others, and depend upon their own fields of expertise.

The team behind the screen: Alden Joshua Cedo, web design director; Lionel Go Macahilig, digital and social media director; (inset) John Kevin Butalon, web design supervisor; Aries B. Espinosa, website founder and owner; Tessa R. Salazar, former consultant and former content provider.

Technology, Transport and Travel shares stories, pictures, and videos of innovative or practical technologies that aim not only to improve human lives, but also carry the potential to help improve our interaction with Earth’s ecosystem and in conserving precious resources.

Eco-Mobility features vehicles that run on renewable, environment-friendly fuels, and made with sustainable, recyclable materials.

Empowered Sustenance revolves around a primarily plant-based and vegan lifestyle that is faithful to the philosophy of compassion towards all living, sentient beings, and which does not place an unbearable strain on the planet’s resources, as well as espouses healthy practices and natural treatments towards an individual’s overall well-being.

Sustainable Structures features policies, practices, and materials used in the real estate industry that support and espouse sustainability, and highlight firms that best exemplify environment-friendly structures through their projects and developments.

Safe Sporting features individual human endeavors in their chosen fields of adventure or recreation; how they get their adrenaline fix without compromising their own safety, and the environment.

TessDrive.com is not your usual website that’s chock-full of pop-up ads. I believe those things hinder the full-on readership (or viewership) experience. True, I may have said goodbye to a lot of advertising revenues, but I am truly delighted when friends and colleagues lend their time and talent to contribute meaningful content. This also explains why, after 5 years in existence, we haven’t had as much content to show as I would have liked. We’re still a ragtag group (of around 6 people) with a shared mindset. Heck, we don’t even have a sales and marketing team (and who needs them, if we don’t ask for ads anyway?).

‘My wish now is that TessDrive.com would someday reunite with its inspiration, Tessa R. Salazar, who has had to let go of being one of its consultants and content providers in order to focus on her day job—the work that pays the bills and medical expenses, and puts food on her family’s plates.’

What TessDrive.com has, in spades, are friends who believe in the cause and pool their precious time, talent, and resources to provide content. I understand if you wish to remain anonymous, because real heroes wish to remain so. You know that my eternal gratitude is directed to you.

My wish now is that TessDrive.com would someday reunite with its inspiration, Tessa R. Salazar, who has had to let go of being one of its consultants and content providers in order to focus on her day job—the work that pays the bills and medical expenses, and puts food on her family’s plates.

Despite everything bad that’s happening right now, there is still more good in this world.

Humanity will ultimately find a way to extricate itself from this present world of madness, then evolve into a better version of itself. This cycle of evolution will go on and on, until Mother Nature herself determines that our time in this planet is up. Hopefully, by then, our collective wisdom and intelligence would have enabled us to find other suitable worlds to live in, and then actually go and live there.

But I’m getting way too ahead of myself. Our baby is 5 years old, and this kid is hungry to learn more. I am a proud parent, no doubt. I’m more excited than fearful about our future. For now, at least, we’ll do all that we can to make Earth the best habitable planet it can be. Not just for humans, but for all of its creatures.

See you around, fellow Earthlings!