For a biscuit

It was late October and during a lesson of entrepreneurship and innovation the class moved outside to take a picture with the guest lecturer from the company “Dr. Schär”. He told us about his personal story and his business.

I was walking out the building and I casually met a person, who offered me a biscuit and we just started chatting about how the seminar went and why we were there. We spent more than an hour chatting around in the cold and under the rain, so I had to take the later bus. But it was worth it all the way.

Why a hackathon

Julian and I kept in touch, but it wasn’t until the hackathon of November that we met in person and went off with two different teams. In that occasion I brought what seemed to be some cutting edge technology: The oculus quest 2. My team won the hackathon and both me and Julian were thrilled by the prospective opportunities that this technology promised.

A couple week after he told to me about a long forgotten project about videogames for the world war 1 in the Dolomites. I was over the top: the technology hyped me, the victory from the hackathon gave me so much confidence and the fact that a good bunch of money was involved was all I could see at that time. So I accepted, and the rest is history.

History?

We proposed the project to the enterpreneur and he was more than stunned to see what this technology would enable and the (at the time) limitless possibilities of this piece of hardware. Off we went, after a couple weeks we got an offer and without esitations and no experience whatsoever we took the plunge. We were able to get all the burocracy done with the help of some friends and we were ready to show the world what we were capable of and to start a multi-billion euro company.

Well not exactly

That’s all about the heroic and cool part. We didn’t have any experience, no computing hardware that was capable of doing anything near what we promised. And our skills were limited to what I and him learned in the University.

We had to learn everything and do all from scratch. And that’s exactly what we did. I got a new Gaming computer, set up everything, and in doing so I asked a friend for advice and he ended up joining us. We were now 3 undergraduates just trying to pull off a mission.

The plan

I came back from Erasmus around August and the plan was to start from the 1st September and work until December, every day for 8 hours, 4 days a week. How long did we last? Less than a song.

We started strong but in the end I felt overwehlmed by the work as I put everything from my health, people to my wellbeing aside. I wanted this to be the most important thing in the next 6 months. I didn’t study German, and eventually I failed on it. I didn’t persue anything else than just working tirelessly. I was heading directly towards the valley of burnout. It was around October, nearly a year later, when most of us had resized the time allowed for this work that I found myself obsessing over something I shouldn’t have. I am used to work many hours a day. But when it is for something I really care and I see my team working as me as well it is when I am pushed to my best and even further. In such a way I do grow.

It was not about the team: we were having good interactions, I learned to work in a group project as I did not during my university years, I learned new skills, learned how to manage a big project and retarget the plan once in a while. It was indeed an experience that improved me, but I didn’t see myself growing in the right direction. And this insight was not clear from the beginning. I couldn’t see anything that made me grow as a person.

It was clear that my head was clashing against my actions, actions made towards a project that I long searched and thrived for.

The pain

The pain arrived from more sides. I was literally sorrounded. I started lifting weights and going to the gym regularly every day since mid October, that has been my saving. The pain was still there but I learned to manage the physical one. The worst was indeed the mental pain. It was for me way harder to manage, because I was not used to it and didn’t know how to handle it properly.

So, as always when I don’t know what to do, I seek advice from books, the masters of time. I started reading, I started journaling, I started going around with a backpack filled with weights in order to feel other pain, the more manageable one.

November came and I remember it as the thoughest month of the year 2022. From the first day to the very last. But if I look back now, it was the most insightful and it teached me the most. I was also going through some kind of relationship problems and that drained much of my mental energy. I started overthinking and I can feel the effects of it still now.

How does this all relate?

Well the insights from that month, really stood strong and gave me direction on how to come out this lonely, heavy and fearful state of mind. Because everything is in our mind, if you want it or not. Two facts really stood by me:

Start planning your life from the end
How much would you do to have it if you did not

The first resonates with me because I finally felt, and I was able to admit to myself, that I was going down the wrong path. There is nothing wrong with making such videogames and this career path. But at the end of my life I just didn’t want to be remembered as such figure.

The second instead, taught me some hard lessons about work, love and life. If I didn’t have this position, I wouldn’t have done much to get into it. I was finally able to explain the situation. Also it taught me about love and what I had lost, it pushed me to try to get it back if I ever will. Because this shows how much I would have been doing, if I didn’t have it.