My very first memory must be around around the age of 7-8. I was trying to fall asleep one night when I heard this strange noise from the living room. It sounded like a robot, and I thought for a second if it could be a terminator. Obviously the phone had to ring at that moment and I understood it was closer to Skynet.
Fast forward to 7th grade lunch break. I pass by the local youth center and see about a dozen kids crowded in the back of a little room, leaning over one computer where a friend was sitting. As I got closer I saw he's showing everybody free6 & ogrish.com on the public computers and the crowd was just getting bigger. An adult passes by, he immediately switches back to lunarstorm.se, then back again. People where bouncing off the walls until the grown up came back to check and everyone scrambled.. I had discovered lunarstorm, the first swedish online community. Which then led to msn messenger (where I "met" my first girlfriend), along with all the music via Napster & DC++. And of course we cannot forget counter-strike. Memories.
Then 1 month before ending my first year of high school I got hooked on crack world of warcraft and cut a lot of class.
I neglected 2 relationships out of existence and gained 30 pounds in 12 months. Eventually I went cold turkey and by the fall of 2006 I was back on communities like playahead.com, where a cool profile meant solid PHP skills. Still listening to illegally downloaded music. But this time I found a cracked version of a DJ mixing program and free 10 mb online storage, so now visitors at least got music on my profile.
After (barely) graduating we moved to the industrial capital of Sweden, Gothenburg where I started my life all over.
More active in communities but moving towards discussion forums. By this time Wikipedia had gained momentum. Youtube wasn't a house hold name yet but always showed up on this new site called Google. No job, no studying, no big social circle and a pritty decent internet connection prompted me to try to answer big questions like... Why am I in Sweden? How could this have happened? And the more I asked, the deeper into the rabbits hole I went. A year later I had 36 000 hard earned swedish crowns and a plane ticket to El Salvador. I was going to change the world. And I did contribute to a change, the elections were successful and a progressive (subsequently corrupt) government was elected. But the real change, the real oscillation of paradigm was hooking up an old Pentium computer to the internet at my grandmothers house and downloading Big L - Now or never for my cousins. The whole world through a screen in the living room. Knowledge and entertainment for free! Of course it took about a week to download a song, but we knew it was the start of a new era. Something no other cousins before us had been part of. So we started creating a family tree online.
When I got back home I fell into depression and got survivors guilt. I kept struggling to make a change where I lived and finally found the right context. The Black Panther legacy reached all the way to Biskopsgården in Gothenburg and I experienced a intense period of personal development. Learning everything from internal dynamics of successful movements to communications and project leading. A couple of months in I finally found an apartment 3 stops away from city center, and I landed a nice job selling electricity deals in a suit. I was even the first promotion of the group.
A week later I was unfortunate enough to burn a third of myself when a control cabinet exploded and things have been a little extra crazy since. Funny how life can be sometimes, because you're never going to be ready. There will always be room for improvement, but not time.
Since then I live by principles that seem so simple at surface but have more layers to them.
Never give up
Believe in what you do
Reality is never as rigid as it seems
I've had a great comeback leading projects with Save the Children and other board memberships. Once I raised $1300 for a free christmacy-dinner just by presenting myself as the project leader for StC.. But that game is so dirty.
I no longer try to change the world. Instead I change myself. And I begin by expressing myself.
Political topics, economy, psychology, maybe some projects I create. I also plan on making a series on cryptocurrency for beginners in Swedish. Maybe some english I guess. And some in Spanish. I don't know, we'll see. Right now I'm looking on how to make the technology easy to understand so adoption can speed up. But the decentralization of vital instances in society through means of technology is inevitable to speak of.
My membership on Steemit stretches back to September but the moment to contribute has come. I hope my writing attracts new and old steemers. Please let me know what you think and don't be a stranger.
Sincerly, A.