What happened and why I retired at 27.
Two hundred pounds on merely five feet. Eighteen places to call home by the age of twenty. Nights in cigarette smoke, woken up by yelling and shouting. Separations. Again and again. Police and Ambulance. People on balcony railings. A suicide, a gun. Darkness, disparity, loneliness, cruelty and obesity. Years of living in a basement with scarce sunlight.
06:00 am. It´s cold. Snow. Shelves in supermarkets, land on farms. Morning shifts in nursing homes. Death. 190.000$ in debt. Unconsciousness, a crash, an almost broken spine. Numb hands. Tinnitus. Separation, helplessness.
And most of all:
Abide. Waiting for something better.
Nine years later. Hundred and fifty pounds on 6,3 feet. I owned a house, studied education and psychology, founded several companies, worked and lived in the United States, China, India, England and many months of my life in other places. Istanbul, Barcelona, Paris, the Himalayas.
I ran half marathons, biked six hundred and twenty miles in ten days. Except a few packs of cigarettes, I never did any other drugs nor wasn´t I a big fan of coffee or alcohol.
I illustrated key visuals for a thirteen-digit marketing campaign and the world´s most used software. I helped build a mobile phone, managed worldwide design groups with over 300 members, millions of daily website visits. Over 160.000 people followed my work on the leading design network. I held a keynote on China´s tallest building and worked with world renowned leading companies.
I was 27 years old. And I retired.
Generally that would be the moment where one stops working. Stop employment completely. I never signed an employment contract.
My job was done.
You may wonder what happened. You may wonder what might come. You may just wonder what this is all about.
This won´t be a success story where I would tap myself on the shoulder and tell you things you must do to be successful. Trust me. It will be a story full of failure, darkness and well, story.
Because that is basically what I did to get myself out of fear, obesity and meaninglessness: Imagine myself a story I wanted to believe in. One that was so far away that I would very likely never reach it in this life. One in which I would create the world´s most viewed piece of design illustration, be successful and recognized. Maybe even loved.
I want to share this story with you. I want to share it with you because I know I am not the only one who was or is in this or a similar situation. I want to share it with you because every part of it defined my understanding of creativity, relationships, success and dreaming up a life that I wished to live.
One that would not end in that basement.
This story will have eight chapters. I am looking forward to sharing them with you over the next weeks:
I. The Basics of Trust and Rain
II. How I met God Several Times
III. Your Life is a Guitar Hero Song
IV. Fame is an Engineering Process
V. The Aura of a Product
VI. Our Bodies Are Notification Systems
VII. Deconstruct Time Travel
VIII. In the long Run
See you next week.
