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From my heart I can say that I lost my culture.

And furthermore I would like to say that I lost faith in any culture.

When I was nineteen I escaped our small town in Slovakia and started traveling. Somehow I realised that I can do some software development, so I never really needed to work any low level job. This is in contrast to so many unemployed young people in Europe.

When I arrived in Bratislava I realised that you can be a stinky ugly bald guy, but once you drive a Maserati the prettiest girls would  drop their panties.

This was the image of this city some years ago and it still is.

I started thinking of my life then in a structured way.

I wanted to buy an apartment, I was dating young and successful girls and I thought that I would progress in my career.

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BUT

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But there was something creeping in the back of my head. After attending every party and after sitting on every sofa of my friends, talking about senseless things, movies, the happenings and money I felt more empty than satisfied.

I was hearing words of my friends and my girlfriend, but however hard I tried to analyse them I couldn’t find a meaning in it. I couldn’t find a meaning in their struggles to buy a better car, to buy a better apartment and to advance in their jobs.

In a country where half of the people make five hundred dollars we were making ten times as much, but once I arrived at that point I lost track of why at all I was there.

I started asking why?

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Whenever I went to a party I felt like I just need to escape the world by listening to the music and it all felt like noise rather than something with a meaning. I didn’t continue dating nice girls and trying to play nice in my job.

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A stopped thinking of the nice little life with a nice little career, having children similar to me and every night doing nice little sex. 

I began questioning this life and I started asking myself why my life should look like this and if this isn’t just something put into my head by constant, constant bombardment of the expectations of my surrounding.

My mom like every other wanted to have grandkids, she wanted me to have a nice stable job and be a nice fucking citizen.

But I was depressed by these outlooks and I couldn’t find a meaning in such a life.

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I quit my job and I started traveling. 

I started traveling and dressing up like I wanted. Whenever I come back to Bratislava I meet people who tell me that they despise me for what I did and they make fun of my dyed hair and how I dress. They make fun of me constantly. In no city did I experience people being so rude to me. 

All I wanted is to find myself and what I really wanted in life.

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I chose differently and I didn’t want others deciding for me on how I should live and thus I’m ridiculed and hated.

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In any case. Breaking free from my culture and from people’s expectations helped me in a way, but is pushing me down whenever I come home paradoxically. The later thing still breaks my heart. Why don’t my parents and my surroundings accept my decisions and respect how I chose?

Nevertheless I did the best decision for me.

Blindly accepting culture ties you up. People try to break your will. Fight that. Fight it with all of your strength.

I refused to fill the void of my life with bullshit.

What I want to write a bit about is the todays attitude to building startups, creating the atmosphere in which people work and how we are all in a craze.

I’ve seen several young startups that have received funding and which can only operate based on the good will of the investor and the same startups have less freedom. They are also in a need to do things fast, since they begin with a certain amount of cash which is running out fast.

I view these circumstances as being ingredients to a toxic environment. 

On one hand you have young entrepreneurs with minimum experience in management which didn’t enter the game with any capital and on the other you have experienced managers who know very well that the money they invest is worth less than the work and intellect put into the work of the startup. So one side doesn’t really know how to manage a business or create an environment in which they are able to get onto the market fast and have money for their operations right away and on the other you have people who can just stop the influx of cash.

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Working in such startups may be exciting at first, but then you see how much you’re being pushed and pushed to work overtime, to work on the weekend and to accept the many times immature acting of the childlike leaders.

I’ve been in such spaces in the past and what I can say is that - no matter what, the goals of the management may many times differ from the goals of the staff and in many cases the only reason the staff is staying is because the product looks cool or that they are in this craze of working in a startup.

Money.

Let me say it again. Money.

And one more thing.

Life.

Now I cannot imagine pushing someone who works for me to the limit and trying to convince him that he/she should work fourteen hours a day and weekends just because of my vision and because they maybe get two thousand euros more per month.

This is insane, but so many people do it.

It would all fall appart if you’d have people with actual lives, children and wives involved. How can you justify saying “I need to stay in the office longer honey - we have a deadline to reach. If we don’t the company won’t get cash, etc.”. And you say to yourself “it will change, it will change, these are only the beginnings”.

It will not.

Again.

It will not.

Once you / your leaders begin working in such a way they won’t stop.

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Now I would rather eat bread and cheese for half a year than to create such an environment again or be part of such an environment.

And I have been part of such an environment and also have created such an environment. And it was a mistake.

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So today I am fed up with promises, visions, all the craze surrounding some teen startup companies and I’m also fed up with easy money.

I’m looking for sustainable development, creating a sustainable business and processes.

Let the casino startups be the casino startups.

So I live in Vienna, the second most livable city in the World. I must actually agree. Living in London, Prague, being in Berlin for a while this city is actually great.

Why?

Food’s still not that expensive. The U-Bahn (Vienna metro system) omg. It’s great and people are mostly liberal to you.

I mean I’m being laughed at when I’m in Bratislava or some other cities, because of my hair and how I dress (like a cyberpunk?). Here people just do what they want. 

And the city simply has cash. The businesses also. If I want a project or to find someone to work with I just search for ten minutes.

My grand-grand father’s been born here - orphan, then brought to the Czech Republic, then he had a son, he married a Slovak girl, they had a daughter and that’s my mom. Then I came back to Vienna. Geographically speaking our family made a circle around Central Europe.

I like using DMesh to transform photos. The software is not appreciated enough.

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