Let me in!
How I try to enter the cryptoworld by writing about it
It’s been a week since I started working in the ICO project with absolutely no idea what it really was. No, I mean I could formulate it as crowdfunding process for a project based on cryptocurrency but it was nothing more than words. Why would you join something you have not a slight understanding of? That’s a good question.
What drew me
About a year ago I went to listen to Alex Amyotov, the co-founder of Look at me Media and Setka, on the future of media. There was some valuable information new to me in this lecture but what struck me the most was that there are people who live 5–10 years forward. The way Alex was thinking and talking was as if the future was already here.
I had this immediate desire to be like these people of the future as I thought I’d call them but the next day swept it away with the normal flow of life.
It was not until my winter trip to Israel that I got back to this thought. You know how travels open the new you and the most important thing is not to bury it in the routine when you get back home. By that time I was a bit tired and bored by my 7 year-old career as a culture journalist so I started looking for job opportunities to use my love for storytelling in the tech sphere. And like it always happens if you look for something anxiously there’s no result but it finds you when you let go.
This summer I got a job in fashion journalism — something I used to do a lot in the past but now had no genuine interest for, just the habit of doing. On my first day on the new job I tripped and fell on the floor in the most epic way and broke my leg. Lying in bed I realized I should do something my soul longs for. I quit. And all of a sudden I got an offer to join the team creating a massive future-oriented project based on the idea of Coliving.
Dazzled I jumped on board.
How I felt
Of course everyone has been new to things at different moments in their lives and I’ve had this feeling for so many times but this particular one was special. As if I were a 5th grader and had to join a University class on quantum mechanics and not just listen but complete homework alongside the rest of the students. A straight A girl as I’ve been through all my life started going crazy.
The thing is the whole process in this company is meticulously planned. Me? Plans are something I occasionally write down on paper before I go to sleep and never get back to the list in the morning either because I forget or because I’m scared to look at all the tasks.
And we have these calls each morning at 7 am for tasks and questions on current issues in which I would just listen to the team discussing things in the unknown language of terms. It really could’ve been Chinese.
I didn’t see how these super-talented people of the future could use my help so I was happy to edit different stuff especially when I understood the meaning of it. Rarely.
Most of the time I would learn to plan and collaborate with the rest while sorting out the sources I should read. I got so involved in this self-training that I almost forgot why the project needed me initially and it was stories.
I feel like my approach of a person who wants to learn first and then do what’s been learned is not relevant in the fast moving surrounding. So I chose to learn by doing.
What I learned
Honesty is the key. So before I’m going to run away in fear I’ll try to do things my way which is just being honest. Instead of pretending to understand and give you rewrites on things you may read elsewhere I’m going to share my personal experience.
We’ll all be there sooner or later so I’m just leaving this tiny path to the future for people just like me, who are years away from something that is partially here already.
Of course, most of the time I’ll have no idea what I’m doing but I’m eager to learn. And in this series of personal diaries I invite you to join me on a journey from complete ignorance of the shy newcomer to of the proud position of the person of the future.
Are you in all of this already? Comment on what it’s like below!
Yuliya Malikova — journalist in culture with a particular passion for interviews; writer and sub-editor at Digital Nomad Magazine.
