Hello. This is the first time where I record a voice entry—just give me a second.

I want to talk about me, in general. The past year has been heavy for me. I went through a breakup, I went through an identity crisis, and I dealt with every trauma possible that I could have dealt with.

And today, when I sit here with the camera on and my microphone—my very nice microphone—I am just very emotional, because I get to be present with myself, I get to know who I am. I've exited this trauma phase that I spent my entire twenties chasing. I've built a successful business, and I couldn't care less about it now, or I only want to manage it. My academic career doesn't matter to me anymore. All that matters is my friends, my coworkers, my relationship with myself, my sister, my parents. Grindr doesn't mean much to me. And the fact that I could sit here and speak about this is a huge thing for me.

I'm aware that life is really, really short. Long gone are the days where all I do is work—where I only want to achieve, where I want to accomplish, where my value is based on something external.

Recently my life became very, very routinish. I do the same thing every day, which is drinking coffee or cappuccino, going to my usual café for another coffee and working for two hours, seeing my friend for lunch, gym, coming back and maybe doing an hour of work, and then that's it—the day is gone. And recently I've been questioning this life, and I'm thinking: this is great. I practice gratitude in the morning, and I'm still ambitious, I still want to accomplish things.

A couple of months ago I met a guy called Julian, and I fell for him hard—really hard. It was the first time getting back into dating in several years, and I didn't realize how tough the dating market is. And I thought we were going to get somewhere. I thought something was being built up with this guy, and there wasn't. I was making it up for many, many weeks, and I'm still shocked that I couldn't see that we weren't on the same page. And this really hurt me.

And I feel hugely accomplished to feel like I'm human again, to have this privilege to sit here and sit in my emotions and just be present, and even doing this solo podcast, or whatever that is. I have journaled hundreds of thousands of words. And recently, I've been working on my voice—improving my expression, hence the microphone. But I love this microphone. Hello.

There is nothing to cry about. Just proud of myself.