This title sounds so narcissistic that I kinda like it. Like I would be Jake Sully turning into a fucking Avatar, leaving my old body behind.
The journey around my head continues and you are welcome to join.
This blogpost will be another Youtube episode in some time so I need to recollect my memories who I actually was and what I’ve actually left behind.
Well, for a start I was a tall, white, male, Central European. A Hungarian. Which I think I still am. The sun didn’t catch me that hard.
I realized over time, that this might actually be the hardest part, having not just a recollection of my memories, but really trying to think back hard of my motives and drivers what might actually be important from a character-build perspective, so let’s start with a few simple questions.
Who was I before I became this traveler?
The hard thing with these kinda questions is, that I want to answer like a good student. And it will end up endless. I’ll try not to, to pick the relevant parts, but to give full context, it’s important to highlight some leading patterns to better understand who the fuck I really am.
Who was I? Like it had been so long ago, that I had to explain. But in case you don’t know me, it’s a legit question.
School and high school years
The reason why I think this is important, because you could paint a much better picture of my drivers if you would see how I operated in the school years.
I was never the brightest student in the room, there were always smarter ones around me.
Not many, but just enough to bother me. That I wasn’t the brightest. So I always had to study double-hard than the brightest ones to achieve the same results that they reached seemingly without effort. My attention span was limited, I was mostly sleeping or doing naughty stuff on the classes. My biorhythm in my highschool years were kinda flipped over, because I was going to the gym, basketball, kung fu after school and then I had to sleep. So I slept late afternoons pretty much from 6-8pm. But then I had to study. So I was studying until 1-2am at nights, to then fall into the first class late, completely exhausted – mostly to sleep.
There were some classes though where I was an ace student. I think I wrote the best final exam in the subject of ‘history’ in town in my final year. I remember this particularly, because this was the first time I’ve experienced the power of manifestation. I want to come back on manifestation in the next episode. Before the final exam I wrote down the percentage I was aiming to achieve on the exam on my desk and I would look at it every single day (90%) and that’s exactly what I received as a result. That lesson was so powerful, that I’ve been using manifestation as a technique ever since having a major life decisions.
But this tells a lot about my inner-drive. That I always had ambition. I just liked to outshine in some aspects from the general student society. Which wasn’t easy, because I was a kid with a lot of complexities, coming from a freshly broken family, having the parents separated – and part of the misery of that divorce landed on me.
At school I was trying to prove with the tools I had in my hand and it didn’t come easy. My elder brother on the other hand never really learned anything in school – yet he had a brain of a sponge. I wasn’t blessed with that. My brain was mostly daydreaming. About things, situations – and well, mostly girls. But sadly, I couldn’t talk to girls, I was way too shy. At least not while I was sober. When I’ve got drunk, I could speak and had a general charisma. But while sober, I simply didn’t have the skill to open up. My first relationship, when I was 18, lasted 3 months. Been a virgin till 21. Lost my virginity the most ridiculous way – that I won’t detail here. I was a late-bloomer in all the aspects. I was just weird around girls. I thought at the time it was awkward and miserable, but now I actually think it was quite okay.
About competition
So one thing I would highlight, that – while I was not an ace in anything, I always had a deep inner-drive to be better than the others. I came from a close friend circle of 6-7 local boys from the same town. We were competitive. In different things. Some in sports, some in computer games, some in studies. And I kinda had a tendency to compete in all things. With more or less success in everything.
Also need to say, that my father was a football player and until I was 12ish, a lot of our family programs were about to go watch him playing. He never became a professional, but on the county level (in Hungary there are counties like states but with less autonomy) – probably to this day, he is holding some scoring records as the best striker in the region. My brother inherited his veins for football and became national champion with his school team. And I wanted to step into his footsteps but I wasn’t that talented. While he was the captain as a midfielder, I was a clumsy left back due to my height. His coach later tried to play me on the midfield, but I don’t think I had the game intelligence, neither the pace. On the pitch, my brother always had a strategist mind, I was more of an executor.
I tried competing on every field. Football (soccer), basketball, kung fu, chess. In chess I was usually the second best in the county after my friend at the time, who was European champion. I wasn’t even close to him. He sacrificed all for chess at an early age. I was a super mediocre kid on the other hand. Homework always done, and steam was off with sports and computer games and house parties or heading into pubs with the local alcoholics. Started drinking early at age 14, it just comes with the Hungarian puberty.
Apart from my parents’ divorce, I cannot say I’ve had anything to complain about my childhood. In fact, I was a spoilt kid having all the attention. Maybe too much. Most likely. Never had to prepare even a sandwich, because my mom came from a household, where everything was put on the table by the women. Carrying over these generational patterns from the village life from their parents to the modern city life, had its’ own dire consequences on my parents marriage. So I was super spoilt. I think I touched the stove for the first time when I was 16. I burned a pen, because I didn’t know how to heat up the stove.
Yes, now thinking about it, I was a super spoilt kid. Especially seeing now how the kids live in the 3rd world. Sometimes without childhood. At age 12 they have already worked more than some adults in Europe. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m just stating it as a fact.
I think it was more of a transaction with my mom. For all her care, all I had to do was to study. So I doubled down on studying. And I’ve got into college. I’ve got admission pretty much everywhere I wanted to go. Law, international business, biology. I chose the international studies, mostly for my curiosity to learn about other cultures and to have the opportunity to go abroad. This decision had a huge impact on my life later on – something I didn’t quite foresee when I chose the direction.
Small town boy making it to bigboy Budapest.
At age 19 I made a pact with my cousin, Pista (he is a bit further relative but we just called each other cousins) that I would move to him instead of making it to the college dorm.
Moving to him was yet another, one of the most impactful decisions of my life. I didn’t have the money to live the fancy student life in Budapest. My parents were divorcing, they couldn’t really support me and I didn’t have an income. My grandparents supported me and my brother as well throughout those years heavily. I didn’t have money to rent an apartment so I went to live with Pista. Pista was building his career at one of the multinationals and it was the first time to see someone working for an actual company. I could have a first row, VIP view every single day. Pista’s presence was inspiring. Instead of hanging out with other college students, I saw how Pista was building his career profile every single day. We were building each other. He went through a lot in his teenage years coming from a troubled household and well – I’ve been still healing from the shit my parents went through.
At one point we said – why don’t we speak English in between in each other? You need to understand, that between 2 Hungarians such an idea is unheard of. Probably one in a million. But starting from year 20 my default speaking language became English so we could get better at it together. My love for Hungarian language and culture only became stronger though when I entered my first office at age 21. Pista gave me a referral to go to work for IBM.
The first work experience
Starting with IBM was a real cultural shock. For the summer months, while I was supposed to chill from the college hustle, I decided to go start working for them. That was the first time, when I had to sit in front of a laptop full time. My whole being was protesting. At the time I thought – I can’t do this. I needed the money and the work experience so I didn’t quit. I liked the atmosphere and the colleagues too, but something was profoundly missing for my soul that I had to fill in with something.
So I went to acting.
I experienced my first existential crisis at 21. These things were always hard on me. Because I really, deeply cared for the things I’ve been doing.
I was walking the streets at night of Budapest thinking, no I cannot have this life for the next 50 years. I need something that keeps my soul alive – otherwise I’ll perish.
Somehow I felt acting was a field I never really had the chance to show myself. I was always a sport guy and thought that acting and theatre was for gays. The family values were too masculine for the idea. These were the small town Hungary vibes at the time. But getting into the office, my whole perception started to transform, thinking, no this is what I actually need for my soul. That was the first realization that for me, simply the office life would NEVER be satisfying.
I went for my first audition. I was shouting there. Telling a monologue of a Hungarian who lost his mountains after the first world war. I gave all my energy. I was really bad, but somehow the director liked the energy. So he offered me a role in his play. It was a small theatre, but it meant the world to me.
I remember my first role as an actor in the theatre. I was playing, well, let’s call it the judge in the purgatory. I had to say a sentence over a soul of a criminal. I loved it. I felt this role was impactful and I felt so responsible to deliver it.
Then I won a scholarship in Germany for a semester.
So it was time to leave Hungary for the first time in my life. That experience has opened up my world in ways – now I see, I could never expect. It was hard being away from the family. I missed my parents, missed my grandparents. Missed my nephew. I couldn’t deal with loneliness. At times I’ve got really depressed. I couldn’t manage well my energies. I had dark periods. From the distance, a childhood friend passed away. It took hard on me. I was dealing with severe pollen allergy.
Learning from that experience, now I can manage this awkward mental state of being away from home much better.
After that though, when I’ve got back to Hungary, I was planning to go to Denmark to do my masters.
At least my mind wanted. But my heart wanted to stay.
Pista referred me to another multinational. Then, finally I’ve got into my first relationship with a Russian girl. I don’t know, for some reason I only had Russian partners starting from my early 20s.
I also continued acting in the theatre. I’ve got on new roles. I’ve got introduced to new communities. I’ve learned new techniques. My love for the theatre was growing.
I thought – if I love it so much, why don’t I apply to the acting academy? At least I could try. So I went to drama school on weekends. I broke up with my ex-partner for that, so I could pursue theatre in my free time more thoroughly.
At the company I became a senior member of the team, but parallel doing theatre was extremely exhausting. So I quit the job to pursue the dream.
I failed applying to the acting academy 2 times.
It was one of the most depressing periods of my life. I didn’t have a job anymore because I gave up everything for the theatre. Or at least I thought I did at the time. And I desperately failed. At one of the universities they just dropped me out at the other they told straight to my face that I was to ‘civil’ for the job. It was very hurtful.
For the second application, when the jury sent me out from the application, I burst into tears. I was desperately crying, because I knew all my dream was over for becoming an actor. Now seeing it from perspective, I know that I didn’t want it hard enough. I felt the acting community was way too vibrant for my personality. I was an introvert guy and each rehearsal, each performance I had to give so much of my energies and emotions. Then I felt empty inside. I didn’t have a support system to sustain the level. I also had bad habits, didn’t sleep well, drank a lot, was smoking on the side to keep my nerves in check. It wasn’t healthy.
After the failure at the application, during the summer period I was just a ghost of myself. I lost the job, lost the dream and I didn’t realize, that I actually needed to rest doubling down on everything. Theatre roles, corporate work. That was my second existential crisis. I was 25 at the time.
7 months without a job, I decided to quit acting and focus on my corporate career.
I realized, while I was an accountant for years, I was actually quite a stupid one. Or at least uneducated. So I went back to the company I left for acting and applied for masters in accounting.
I said – if I cannot be an actor (at least I made this decision to not to), I will refocus all my energy into building a corporate career profile. It was like cutting out a piece of my soul and dropping it into the fire. I said, I will go all-in. And I will bring all my energies there.
This was another epiphany moment.
Becoming the corporate guy
I went back to my old company with having the acting weights off. I wasn’t the actor guy anymore, I was the guy who you could give impactful projects to. He is still young and stupid, but he is definitely enthusiastic to deliver. And so I did.
I traveled to France to help out a branch of the company for year-end back in 2017 and then shortly after with my manager – later my lifepartner, to Nairobi, Kenya to deliver tasks back to the Budapest office in March 2018. Since we’ve got together in Kenya, things got complicated really quick. While in Nairobi it was like our honeymoon in a 5 star hotel on corporate budget, while working sometimes 14 hours covering quarter-end tasks, coming back to Budapest shortly, had to face the complexities of working together for the same company, especially in the same team. So I applied to another role in another company. I basically quit. Then the leader of the site made me stay and gave me a promotion with a raise.
I will save you from all the details but it was a very complicated period. I learned a lot from it. Soon after I landed on an impactful role coordinating tasks of about 1.500 co-workers all around the world. That was the first time I had to publicly present myself. I wasn’t good at it at first for sure. I went to bring tasks from Florence, Italy where I spent with breaks over a month. I loved Florence, it’s culture, gastronomy, history.
Landing on a global project
Soon after, I landed on a global project as a 27 year old, working together with experts with decades of experience back in 2019. My first ever trip to the US. Houston, Texas. Covering all the sport events in 2 weeks, the NASA center, sometimes working till 4am in the morning. God, I even flew down for the weekend to Mexicocity to see my friend.
Then Covid hit
Working on the global project with great experts on their fields made me realize, that I can deliver, I am ready to deliver and mostly – that I’m underpaid compared to my co-workers in the US. They had more experience, but I had the drive and I was ready to work hard for it. That was the first time I thought, I could actually work abroad. Not because I wanted to, but because I thought it was unfair how much effort I’ve actually put into my work and the return I’ve got. Then Covid hit hard. Close downs. Couldn’t see my family. My grandparents. My parents.
While I enjoyed living and working in Hungary, I was kinda covering 2 shifts for my manager in Malaysia and for the project manager who I worked with in the US. So I started early morning and sometimes I worked till 1-2am. And next to that I was finishing my masters in accounting. So I was reaching my limits.
Moving to Germany
So at one point I said I was ready. Ready to move. My ex-partner also agreed. She wanted to see other parts of Europe. I applied for the first big-tech role I found, went through the countless interviews and I’ve got in. It was a project of her and I. We prepared for the interviews together at nights in the parks. She would strike countless questions so I could answer with confidence. We did that for a month. I’ve built a whole 40 pages playbook around how to get into big-tech. And so I’ve got in. We were so happy. It really meant a new chapter in our lives.
So I became an accountant working for Amazon in Germany. Moving to Germany wasn’t smooth because of Covid, but with my ex, we could think constructively in every single situation and come up with a solution. We were both solution-oriented and she was a real problem-solver. So we went through all the challenges and obstacles of the move together.
A caveat on Covid about elders
As I’m here I want to say that Covid has created undignified circumstances for the elders. The joy that most of the elders have in Central Europe comes from seeing their loved ones. They don’t have savings to keep up great life conditions for their pension years. I feel bad for my grandad that he didn’t have the opportunity to go for a simple medical check, that could have saved his life, because the local hospital was packed with Covid patients.
So we built our lives in Germany. And I reached my peak as an accountant working for a European Amazon HQ.
Went through hardships in the first year. I thought I knew a lot of things about accounting by then, but it turned out the opposite. I was stupid. Amazon was a big company and the scales were completely different. I could add up 2 digits to everything that we were dealing with in terms of customer deals, supplies, revenues, capital expenditures, operative expenditures, etc. It took me a long time to catchup and my partner at the time was holding my back. While she was at the front row in Budapest, I had to take over the wheel in Germany and shine. So the first 2 years was only about getting used to the pace and scale of the company. The 3rd year was about taking a breath and finally catching up, getting the first promotion.
Then in the 4th year everything broke down.
That’s when my 3rd existential crisis hit that I already detailed in the earlier blogpost. But by then, I had a very comfortable life back in Germany – the only problem was, I was burning out. I didn’t eat sugar, didn’t drink alcohol, Whoop was measuring my daily calory burn, how many hours I slept and another app my daily calory intake. I revoked everything from my life, that gave me some pleasure. Hardly met my family and friends and couldn’t have my mind rested because – well, because that simply would not have been productive.
I sacrificed my life on the altar of productivity.
I realized, I gave up everything for performance. And the more educated communities I’ve got into – well, the more competitive I became, that has never really changed. The drive was always there. Then I also wanted to shine out from there. But you can only do that, if you double down on hard work. And in a super competitive environment that actually means tripling or quadrupling down on efforts.
So who was I actually before I left ?
A competitive, hard-working dude, who took life seriously, who was always present for the family, always present for his colleagues, always present as a partner.
And by present I don’t mean I was physically present all the time, but at least for occasions I tried to show up. Had a routine going back home from Germany for every single event like easter, summer break, all saint’s day, christmas. Sitting in the car, driving 10 hours to get back home. Had a routine built around this, to spend home at least 20-30 days every year. Until company policies allowed at least.
Who I was. I was watching Szoboszlai games at least once a week. And I say Szoboszlai, because it didn’t matter if he was playing for Leipzig or Liverpool, the team didn’t matter. Szoboszlai moved to Germany, to Leipzig at the time I moved to Munich, so I considered him as an inspiration. He was recovering from a long-lasting injury and at the time it wasn’t even sure, if he could come back with the same intensity and play in Leipzig’s first team. Then seeing him stepping up, I was like, if he can do it, I can do it. Watching Szoboszlai’s games was sacred to me. No matter what my weekly schedule was, Szoboszlai always came first. I had all his jerseys from Leipzig and then from Liverpool. I think I never really missed a match, unless I had something really important to do. I still watch him when I can while on the move.
I had a bike and I used it in Munich to the fullest. I would ride at least 12kms a day to work and back. I became sort of a hardcore biker, it didn’t matter if it was raining or snowing. I would bike all the time.
We had this beautiful SUV and we would visit the Alpes on the weekends. Hiking became a ritual for us. That’s where we would get the weekly steam off. Then once, during the summer, while we were watching the radar app, we saw that there is a huge storm coming at us. At first we didn’t take it seriously, but then we started to walk back from the hike as we already reached the peak of the mountain. Then as it became closer, we sensed that something is off and we started to run. And in the last 30 meters we were sprinting to make it back to the car. The first ice drops fell next to me and they were as big as my fist. We only had enough time to jump inside the car and then ice started to fall from the sky like grenades. BAMM BAMM BAMM BAMM BAMM BAMM BAMM. For 2 minutes (it was possibly the longest 2 minutes of my life), we didn’t see a thing and the ice fall on the car was so loud, that it was like sitting in the middle of the battlefield waiting for the final moment to reach. Then I realized we have trees in front of us in the parking lot and I have to move the car, because the trees could fall on us at any given moment. My ex was screaming. I was fucking terrified as well. I could slowly reverse with the car but still didn’t see a thing and we couldn’t even hear each other from the ice hitting the whole body of the car like hammers. Then after about 10 minutes the hail settled and we had the chance to step out and look at the damage. The car had about 300 dents on it. And we’ve got lucky. As we were driving through the German alpine villages, most of the cars’ windows were broken, the house roofs and windows had holes on them. The collective damage was insane. The insurance took our car and with that we didn’t have a car anymore.
We wanted to buy a new one, my ex wanted a BMW SUV, for me the same VW had been enough. That was the first time I seriously thought, that our life problems became first world problems. A BMW had been really nice for my ego, surely. But at the same time I felt, all these purchases tried to fill in something that was deeply, fundamentally missing from my life.
I wanted fire, I wanted adventure, I wanted action.
I didn’t want cold metal. My life became sterile. And I thought I had reached it all.
What else could you reach as a young dude coming from Hungary working for a big-tech HQ in Munich?
You could become a people manager. You could drive more impactful projects. You could move to other HQs, maybe to Seattle to level your game. I never really thought I had the potential for that. At one point I felt I hit the glass ceiling due to my language barriers but even more so because I never really dug deep into accounting. My international education was missing.
And the questions kept coming to me.
Is that something you deeply, actually want? Who am I building? Who am I trying to prove? What am I trying to prove? Why is this fuel keeps burning inside me trying to move me forward in directions I’m not even sure I want to go? What am I sure of?
One of the most powerful anecdotes I came across was coming from Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people. I don’t clearly remember, but I think there was a section related to Begin with the end in mind. The anecdote was about a chimney-sweeper who puts his ladder at the bottom of the house to climb up on the ladder fast, just to realize that the ladder was put at the wrong place, because the chimney was far away. When I was reading this anecdote, I was taking a bath after a basketball game and as I had questions about my relationship and my life direction it made me think. I’m working extremely hard. I’m trying to be the most efficient person in the world building my life around productivity. But is that really effective at all for my life? Am I heading in the right direction?
My special relationship with money developed from a very early age.
When I would get money from my grandparents, say during easter or birthdays, I would collect that very carefully. And sometimes I would take my little purse where I was holding it and I would count it just for fun. So from an early age I always had money, that I would never really spend. This relationship grew stronger and over time as I had more savings, I would hit monthly targets to save.
Never ran the numbers, but I think with my ex together in the household we were top 20% earners West Europe-wise.
Not talking about Hungary, but more like Germany or the UK. We weren’t extremely rich, but we could build significant savings on a monthly basis. We never had unreasonable spendings so we were saving up.
In Germany, to hit these targets, this relationship sort of became toxic.
Each month I would collect all the expenses from excel sheets from the bank accounts from me and my ex and I would consolidate and go through each transaction to categorize them and put them in pivot tables to see where we spent the most. It was the most heated moment of our relationship each month, because each time I went through the spendings, my blood pressure would start to rise. Why we had to go to so many restaurants? What is this cost here? This transaction is an outlier I cannot categorize it, can you look up in google maps where this place was at? Is this a gas station? And it went on and on. And then we would start to fight. Writing this down it’s hilarious to think about it, but at the time sometimes we couldn’t resolve a heated situation for days.
That’s part of the reason why I’m very careful entering in the next relationship because I know I can create hell for the other person. And honestly I wouldn’t do it otherwise, because if you want to hit certain targets in your life, control is pretty much the only way.
First world problems
So at one point I started to feel, my life became a threadmill, where I was pleasing everyone around me but I didn’t really have the chance to fill my own cup. I wasn’t happy in the relationship, I didn’t see we had a common future and I also felt I reached my own personal goals at the company and in Germany. So it was time to move on.
At the same time I felt, I was living outside in. And what I mean by that is, I lived a life where I was moved like a puppet on strings by my environment and it wasn’t important anymore what I really wanted. I wanted to live inside out. I wanted to do things, simple things that I really wanted. I haven’t played on a computer for about 7 years. Haven’t smoked a cigarette in 7 years. Haven’t done anything – that the wide public would say is destructive for you, but in reality, somewhere deeply, it’s actually serving your inner-child and it’s also part of you.
I wanted to serve that kid again who I was and have the same level of curiousity for life.
I kinda failed writing this blogpost. It turns out I’m still a good student as I gave a very long, detailed list of who I actually was from the start.
But maybe you have a better picture now.
It’s far from perfect, it’s far from giving a full detail, but I hope it helps to understand my motives. Let’s try to summarize:
- Competition and an urge to outshine the average despite my average talents was always a leading motive in my life and at one point it started to strike back on me.
2. Education, workplace, relationship gave me tools to expand my toolkit and discover the world more.
3. Reaching my limits and goals in Germany and at corporate made me realize that it’s not important how I’m being perceived by others, the only important thing is how you perceive yourself. I definitely gave up on all the comfort, prestige, title, money, material things but I gained perspective. I gained the option to decide for myself of what I actually want in life.
4. Since I’ve always been working hard, I thought I deserved at least having the opportunity to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I think that’s a privilege of those doing the extra work. And you don’t need to go to work big companies for that. You can do it the humble way too with the most ordinary things, having a control over your life.
This will be the material more or less for the 3rd Youtube episode. Let’s goooo.
