True Love

I believe in true love and I believe life is a journey to find it. But do not misinterpret the message! It's not about finding true love in someone else, it's about finding it within.

A lot of people look around for "the one" that will love them and make their life meaningful, but that person has always been around, within. Everyone else that brings love to our lives is just a bonus, but what truly matters is our love for ourselves. Otherwise you fall into traps of loving others because of how special they make you feel. But it shouldn't be about that, you should feel special independently from others. You should love others because of how beautiful they are as people and how well you fit into each other's lives. Relationships are like books, some are short reads, others long, some more enjoyable than others, but they all tell a unique story. Stop regretting the stories you go through, life is a journey where you learn a little more about yourself with every interaction you have with other people.

So, stop looking around, start looking within. Give yourself the value and love you deserve, and embrace who you are! And then spread that love around you!

Following dreams

Yesterday was a life-changing moment for me. I handed in my letter of resignation and turned down an offer to become CTO and what could have been a great opportunity for me to peak at an early age with enough money to buy a house. Put like that it may seem like a stupid decision, but I had a conflict of values. I decided to follow a different path, back into the games industry which has always been my dream and with equally promising opportunities. For the last year I have felt like I sold my passion for a better salary and that took an emotional toll on me. I have found that being passionate about your job is more important than status and money and I will stick to my dream of being a video game developer. I think this detour was meant to happen, not just because it taught me this lesson, but because it also taught me that I really like being part of a smaller team where I am crucial and valued, rather than just another number in a big company. I have thus accepted an offer to work for a small game studio in Vancouver and my fire burns again! New exciting adventures await on the other side of the Atlantic!

Love cannot be defined. When I first started thinking about love, I knew nothing about it, I know that now. I grew up seeing the same representation of love splattered across every TV and cinema screen, a fairy tale, but love is much more complex than that and while some people are disappointed by it, I grow happier the more I learn about it. Only recently did movies start approaching the subject of love from a point of view that has more shades, more colours than just black and white. Love isn't binary, it isn't simple, it simply isn't. If you listened carefully for the messages in "500 days of summer", "Her" or "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind", you will realise that.

A younger me was already mature enough to understand that life isn't black and white and things aren't permanent. But a younger me, though aware of love's lack of persistency, did not have the experience to understand how love felt, because nobody can ever transfer that knowledge to you, you have to experience it. A younger me definitely felt in love many times, and just as many times got his expectations crushed. I would call that infatuation, not love, but who am I to name these things, this is just the name I give it. I've been infatuated many times over, before I knew what I wanted in life, because at first all you really want is to discover love, to follow your sudden obsession with this other human being and find a correspondence. Mature as I was, I decided a real relationship required more than just infatuation, more than just affection, kisses and sex. It required understanding, communication and a general feeling of peace and happiness when around the other person. This maturity allowed me to enjoy infatuation and connections without falling into the complexity of what people like to call "a serious relationship". Notice how I quote the term, because all relationships are serious and you should always consider the other half's perspective before you make decisions that can change their life, but I digress. Though he had made connections of all sorts, the younger me still longed for that feeling of stable peace, he still longed for "real love".

I found it one night at a wine festival, or was it later, in a silent moment by the river? Or perhaps in between, in one of the many interactions we've had, or later still, when it was apparent this wasn't a simple temporary connection? I don't think it matters, but I had found what I was looking for: that peace, that happiness, that comfort; The incomparable and unconditional attraction for another person. The affection, the kissing, the sex and those three words were mere instruments of conveying a message, or perhaps tools for extracting as much as you can from this unfathomable feeling. It was unexpected and intense, similar to the fairy tales, and it lasted five years, give or take. During those five years it seemed to grow. Alternatively, it could just have been a different kind of love rising, while the initial infatuation gradually faded. This is how I learned about the everlasting love, the same love you feel for your family, and it made sense that at this point people decide to expand their relationship based on this feeling and extend its name to "family", adding a couple of new members usually derived from the instruments used to express that love.

I also got reminded that everything is temporary. What I did not know was that sometimes it isn't love that's lacking, but the compatibility between two beings. We are complex things, with complex feelings and love isn't the only thing needing decoding. That said, relationships may have a shorter life span than love. This usually makes people sad, which is understandable, since most people grow up learning that love is all it takes, and because people create expectations that aren't always met. But people always look at the half empty portion of the cup: It ended. Instead, I people ought to be looking at the other portion of the cup, the half full "it was great" or "I was happy". Sadness coexists with happiness, they are experienced through the contrast between different experiences. Being sad means you were happy before. To conclude, the everlasting love is there and I will always love this person as family as well as the chapters our books shared.

Fast-forwarding through several chapters of different connections and experiences, I found happiness in accepting that things are temporary and the experience of love is far more important than the promise of forever. I love my ex as someone would love a family member they hardly talk to. She's a person that's very dear to me and has a lot of meaning in my life, but I accept that we're not compatible anymore and we've gone separate ways in life, this makes me happy rather than sad. And although I'm yet to find someone with whom I feel a strong connection as long-lasting as I felt with her, I have already felt stronger connections with shorter lifespans. Now my definition of love is different and kind of complex, because I don't believe the attraction you feel for different people can be compared, there's just too many distinct variables and dimensions.

It was in one crazy night - the sort of night you expect anything to happen except love - that I found it again, in a different shape. It wasn't magical like the first, but it was easy, like all loves should be in the beginning. It was a moment of silence, embracing each other for what looked like forever. No, it was the moment afterward, with our gazes fixed upon each other. No, it was the childish giggling during playful times. Or maybe it was a sum of all those moments. Truth is, the aftermath of it was an uncontrollable need to be together every day, a state of comfort that you can't achieve with other people, the ability to get lost in someone's eyes, reading all the messages they silently convey. This time I knew it was temporary, but I didn't mind, I was ready to create happy memories. "Do you love her?" someone asked me, but I couldn't reply, because I did not know what their notion of love is. So I replied as objectively as possible: "She's one of the most important people for me right now".

The unpredictability of life

People come and go, those who leave take a part of you, but you also took a part of them, and there's always new people adding more and more of them to you, or exchanging, so we're never truly empty.

Things don't last forever and the world is in constant movement, that's what's so beautiful about living. The unpredictability. You just have to enjoy the ride.

Besides, sadness and happiness go hand to hand, they are measurable by contrast, sadness is a sign that happiness existed and you can't feel happiness without knowing sadness. You can't lose something without having it first. I'd rather have it even if it means losing it at some point than not having it ever, wouldn't you agree?

The Paper-Thesis Carbon Analogy

I've recently compared the difference between writing a paper and a thesis to the manipulation of carbon. A paper is like a diamond that has gone through many iterations to be as compact and perfectly structured as possible, a shiny thing. Trying to spread that paper out in a thesis is like picking up the diamond you've spent so many hours on and trying to make graphite out of it. An ugly process you don't really want to go through. Sure, you'll try to make a beautiful enamelled pencil out of it, but it's not as shiny as the paper!

Temporary Life

I live most of my days enjoying the small things in life and being proud about how far I have come and happy about what and who I have around me. Today is not one of those days. Today I am too aware that I am twenty five years old, yet I live life from temporary stage to temporary stage. Not to say that I want to have a routine, far from it, I can't handle routine, but it would be nice to have some more permanent things in life. In order to follow my dream I had to move out of my country and that's where my temporary life began.

I moved to England four and a half years ago, to start a degree that would hopefully jump-start my career, the dream career that I wanted for myself. I never thought I'd call that place home, but after four years it grew big in my heart. However, I've always seen my life there as a temporary thing. You might find that normal when you're in university, but not knowing where I would be next made me cautious about how I'd spent my money. Because of that, I feel like I've only lived half of what I could have lived. Maybe it's just my anxiety talking here, but whenever I wanted something for myself, I would always think about the money I should save for the uncertain future. I missed a lot of travelling opportunities because I didn't know enough about my future to know if I could spare a few quid, or because I didn't know if I would need to be somewhere else at that point in the future. Similarly, I never got a car like I wanted because I didn't want it to be a waste of money in case I had to move out of England. I know this comes from a privileged point of view and like I said I am grateful for all I have most days, but the mind just works in irrational ways sometimes and there's no point telling it "don't be sad, look at everything you have". It's all about perspective, and today's perspective gives a sad contrast to my life.

I eventually finished my stay in the north of England and moved to the lovely city of Cambridge, after four years. Things are much better here. The weather is better, the city is more lively, people seem friendlier and everything just seems a lot more pleasant and beautiful, definitely more colourful. It's still not where I want to settle. The weather is still not optimal, it's still not close to the sea, there's still not a lot of activities to be done when compared to other places and the salary is still not enough for everything I want. One of the things I want is to be able to travel a lot more, which requires money and time, and although I can afford to travel to countries in Europe, I still require the time and weekends doesn't feel like enough. In other words, having a nine to five job takes up most of the time in your life, so I can't even imagine people who struggle with more than a job or with crazy shifts and schedules and workload. It seems like we're not allowed to enjoy life and we are forced to try and find a job doing what we love. I count myself as one of the rare lucky people who are doing what they love, which is truly a privilege, but work is still work and even though I have fun at my job and it keeps me motivated, I still feel quite stuck. It's not hard to understand this, just imagine you love playing guitar: You may feel good doing it for four straight hours, but you eventually stop and go do something else, right? Even if you love doing something, it doesn't mean you won't get bored after some hours doing it, or even feel like you don't really want to do it today. Don't get me wrong, this is a hundred times better than having a job you don't particularly like or a job you hate, but wouldn't it be better if you could just do what you want when you wanted? Maybe a lot of people won't feel this way, they like to have the responsibility and purpose that a job gives. I'm not one of those people.

That said, I feel like my time in Cambridge is temporary. Yes, we are back on topic. Even though I found a job in a company that wants me with a manager that likes me, where I can grow quickly and get far, I still feel it's temporary. I don't want to live in Cambridge, as beautiful as it is. It's still not the sunny place by the sea that I want to settle in. And my ambition pairs up with this need to do break out of the routine job and makes me want to create a successful startup. However, I'm a person that always plays safe and I don't like risk when it comes to my career. Even though I keep my options open and future uncertain, I have a big safety net and my career choices are very solid in order to minimise the possibility of failure. This is why creating a startup is so scary for me and I would only do it after researching enough to know that it would most probably lead to success. I'll always have that startup idea in my mind, because it seems to be one of the only ways to achieve a life where you have a lot of free time to do what you like. That said, I plan to stay at most three years here and then move to sunny California, where the weather is great and there are a lot of things to do, including surf. Because of that, I only half live my life here. I wanted to buy a car to keep for myself, one that I like, but because my stay in England is temporary, I am required to buy a more temporary solution. I also want to live closer to the centre and with friends, so I can easily go for walks and enjoy how alive the city is and to be able to have people I love when I get back from work, but this would become more expensive monthly, once again making me consider a cheaper solution temporarily. A piano would certainly be a wonderful thing to have, but once again I know that even if I bought one, I would end up selling it, and once again it hinders my economy. In conclusion, my stay in Cambridge is once again temporary, for the next three years, at least.

But in three years I will be twenty eight and my energy will start to decline towards middle age. If I finally manage to find a place where I want to settle by then, I can finally start investing and saving for the car I want, the house, the piano, and everything else. And those are the prospects for someone as highly privileged as me. Most people will never even get there, or get there later in life, when they've lost all the energy needed to enjoy it. Have you noticed then? We're living a temporary life for most of our youngest years, not fully enjoying everything because we want a secured future. We're always carefully counting our money and time in order to achieve a future where our money and time will allow us to do what we love when we want to. And most of us will never even get there. Most of us will lead a temporary life forever.

At this point there's always those who will say "enjoy what you have" and "take pleasure from the small things in life". But while some people might be able to live happily with nothing, others might not be so free. Others, like myself, will feel trapped in their temporary lives, always expecting a better future. I truly hope you are not one of us, but if you are, I hope this post gave you a little more comfort by knowing there's someone else out there like you.

Carpe Diem

We are mortal so that we can enjoy life. We get sad so that we can understand happiness. We make mistakes so that we can learn from them. There is no better time to be happy than now, don't spend your lives waiting for the perfect moment to be happy. Don't wait until you have that car, or that job, or live in that place, because there will always be some other achievement after that and you will never be happy. Instead, enjoy every bit of today, reminisce every bit of yesterday and get excited about tomorrow!