Thursday, July 31, 2014

The source of my frustration

During my teenage years I found myself to be completely invincible at strategy videogames like Rome Total War. It's quite unfortunate for the military that I had (and still have) such a Peace-and-love mentality. Cause instead, I applied my tactical insights to promote my own music band. The peace and love expressed itself in trying to benefit others with my plans.
Tangible proof of my artful strategic mind is Rock Bottom, a small festival me and my friend, Wannes, organized in October 2012. Living in a very rural area and not having a lot of money at our disposal, we managed to combine an evening concert with an afternoon Battle of The bands. In the process we brought together 13 bands and 6 youth houses, while giving away lot of cool prizes (the top prize being a 6-gig Rock-Bottom winter tour).

And although I've done some crazy shit since Rock Bottom, it is still the last thing of which I'm really really really proud. It is the last cunning plan I successfully executed in style!

Me, Wannes & The Rock Bottom poster

The source of my frustration

After Rock Bottom I concentrated myself on devising business plans and strategies to take my first steps into Vertical Farming. Yet, fifteen months after Rock Bottom, I found myself incapable to execute any of them.

And it was not because of the quality of the plans, on the contrary, they were and are still really good!

For example, when Pat and I were working to build a small pilot Vertical Farm in Switzerland (february 2013) we had to overcome the known VF-issues. So, like with Rock Bottom, my Tactical-Peace-and-Love brain came up with a plan that would not only accelerate the execution of our undertaking, it would also benefit many other projects (a message of hope). And although Pat believed it was a good idea and a solid plan, he had his doubts from the beginning. He said it was a gut feeling and that he did not really know why he didn't have a good feeling about the plan.

Yet, Instead of trusting Pat's experience and instinct, it all got to my head and I let my ambition take over. Since then, that ambition destroyed many important things, it crushed my self-trust, made me question the meaning of my life and it even made me lose the feeling of “why” I'm into Vertical Farming in the first place. Had I made the wrong choices? Was Vertical Farming not my future? Why was I'm alive and why the fuck would I waste any of my precious time on trying to make this world a better place?

Clearly, I was doing something wrong, and somewhere around March/April 2014 I hit Rock Bottom.

Behold, the legend of Rock Bottom 2012.

Have I told you that in the beginning we just wanted to organize a gig with befriended bands to locally promote our hard rock music? And still, even with these humble initial intentions, we ended up organizing a pretty big event. This was because the lovers of the distorted guitar-sound were spread very thinly across the rural lands of Diksmuide, and because there is just too much concert-competition in Belgium (booking a big headliner wouldn't assure many people showing up). So, in order to reach our goal, Wannes and me had to think outside the box and devise a well though out plan. The evolution of Rock Bottom happened not out of ambition, but because of necessity!

So, what is my point here? What is the reason I'm telling you this story?

Hell, I don't know, I never make a point before I start writing. I never know what the end or the moral of my story is going to be. What you read, is just a portion of what I'm writing. Because

When I'm writing, I'm reflecting.

And when I'm reflecting, I'm learning... or making excuses (I don't know anymore. It's a very thin line).

Yet, the most important thing I learned while inditing this shit, is that my most memorable successes originated from having fun, while the bigger dreams came second to that!


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