It’s crazy. I started my little freelance company a year ago, only now have I gotten to the point of making a website and building a brand. Knowing nothing about the concept of being an entrepreneur. In fact, most of my life I simply did what was expected of me. By society, by parents, by educational systems, etc. The reason this company began is quite simple: Life is short. Too short to doubt yourself until the day you die, at least. I have always been afraid to stand behind my own dreams and share them with the world, that changed last year.
I was in a horrible accident which left me with several broken bones a lot of injuries, jobless and almost homeless. I was lucky enough to have my brother take me in for the two months I needed before I could get out of a wheelchair again. They told me it would take up to three years to get back on my feet again. I decide they were wrong, that they just gave me what they were told by some book. Some average that applied to the average person in a hospital who would be stuck to a wheelchair and crutches, who would put in the minimum effort to get back on their feet.
So I worked my ass off. Physiotherapy, diet, sports, meditation, visits to the psychologist, a career coach, up to the point that I could stand on my own two feet again, literally and figuratively speaking. It took me less than one year of discipline and hard work to get back on my feet and start a new career. Something I’m very proud of, but can never really share or explain to anyone, since it was a lonely path to walk.
The few things that did pass my mind as I was laying in the hospital, hearing that I was lucky to survive, was the fact that I never had the balls to start my own company and publishing the stories I have been working on since high school (read: for decades.) Troubles in life that I thought only bothered me, experiences that I should not share for the fear of people thinking I’m crazy, stories that make me what I am: Human.
These stories were on one side auto-biographic, tales about things I experienced as a child of an expat family. Confronted with emotionally unreceptive parents and a surrounding that often confronted me with racism or other cultural frictions. This experience left me thinking my opinions, emotions and thoughts were never relevant enough to share. In reality, these are the most critical of things to share in life.
As a child I often wondered what I would change if I had a time machine. Mistakes I would erase, problems I would solve. Of course, that would mean that I could not learn from them, not develop or grow. I indulged in thinking about the future, since the past and my present were so horrible. From that spawned the other half of my writing: Science-fiction. All I wanted to do is escape reality, the `now’. Video games, and later alcohol, were a big help in that direction too.
A lot of my stories revolve around emotional turmoil and escapism into good memories or imagining different positive futures. I identify as someone who could be described as a cultrally liminal, never fitting in anywhere with his own cultural identity. A mixed set of beliefs and values that fits with none of the cultures I have ever visited and will forever make me a Cultural Errorist. Please join me on this journey of expression and sharing of my experience of life!