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!
