1. Why I’m sitting in the woods alone
I will do everything in my power to get what matters. I will dedicate every second aligned with my purpose. Most things in life don’t matter; love isn’t one of them. Hence, I will go to monumental lengths for love.
That’s exactly what I did. In June 2023, at 16 years old, I started a blog. Every word became a testament to the indomitability of my spirit – I believe that even the times I wrote about my shortcomings made me no less sexy. Who was I trying to impress? Well, the girl I wanted.
Life is war. Everything worthwhile is finite. The only way to get a chance at winning is to give your best. I knew I could use my words as a weapon. So, I wrote, and to have things to write about, I did some cute little things here and there. After precisely one year, I had written 289.700 words.
In the end, I failed, and she was now gone forever.
So, on June 14th, after graduation, I started to rewrite my entire essay collection. I dedicated two months, until August 14th, with a short break in July when I executed the fifty rejections project.
Meanwhile, I sacrificed the gym because I can write best if I’m slightly hungry. My discipline fell far short of my expectations; I often went to bed at eleven, and my diet was poorer than usual. I didn't meditate much, either. Yet, I believe that’s okay – now isn’t forever.
June, July, and August were hot. So, what did I do? I biked around, sat down, and wrote. Because I'm Kiryl P., I sat outside at noon when the sun was hottest, with my six-pack on display. Most of the time, I sat a few hundred meters south of where I had taken my favorite image. Other times, I sat amongst the trees. When I needed a break from writing, I did pushups and punched trees to harden my hands and build a more combative spirit.
By rewriting my texts, I relived my most transformative year. What did I learn? Well, many things changed, and some even flipped. But in that change, I could identify constants. I had unveiled my core values.
Now, you may wonder, shouldn’t I have spent my time differently instead?
No. For what? For I'm not a parrot, I like to write. I found peace with my past, redefined my vision, and discovered who I am. Most people have lived for decades and still don’t know who they are.
If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If I have a blog, I may as well do it right.
My goal while rewriting was to clarify the subject of my second business. The first one, an app business that I started at 13 years old, failed when I was 16, a year ago.
Even though I dedicated two months, I more or less failed to find the idea for my second business. That’s no surprise because while my first purpose was building mental math apps, my current purpose was actually getting a hot blonde. So, instead of starting my second business, I reinvented my videos after three months of not uploading. I started to create self-improvement videos for highly gifted 16—to 18-year-olds. I would ride my bike, record videos at random places, and talk about life.
Even though I was so young when I started my first business, I felt such a rush. Now, I no longer do. Now I think bigger. Things take time, bigger things even more. I could set the goal to become a billionaire by next week and work myself to death without reaching this goal. Or, I could give myself more time and never burn out again. Hence, I'm not worried I won’t start my second business this summer. If I build my second business today, next week, in a few months, or maybe even in five years, it doesn’t matter.
This is why I was sitting in the woods alone.
2. Daddy, no
Everyone may bully me for my goals, but I don’t care. I am not calm because of what lies ahead but because of what lies behind me.
Three years ago, at 14 years old, my life was getting very stressful. The programming course designed for professional adults required my full attention. At the same time, school was getting hard because I went straight from 8th to 10th grade and had to study. Seeing my pressure, my mother wanted me to quit.
However, I was smart enough to know that I had to keep going, and it would only get easier.
If I had chosen the easy choice, my life would consist of books, movies, hobbies, tea, a half-fulfilling job, an ugly girl boss wife, and a monumental dose of bitterness, resentment, and despair.
Retrospectively, that was the test of my life; it looks like I passed.
Let’s go back to January 2024. At that time, my parents wanted me to apply for internships so that I could do something “useful” this summer. But I disagreed. I have one life. After weeks of conflict, I finally asserted myself. I didn’t have to do a pointless internship. My summer was free.
But it wouldn’t stop here. In June, my mother wanted me to intern at my local university. After weeks of nonsense, she accepted that I would run away from home if I had to do it.
For context, in 2022, at 15 years old, I had an internship there. Nothing less than my entire pre-puberty existence collapsed in on itself. Amongst the mediocre, skinny fat, and awkward engineers, I felt out of place. I cannot describe how badly I wanted to avoid this destiny. I started working harder on my first business than ever. After two months of brute force, my first app was online.
After a long series of events, my first business failed in September 2023. It hit me very hard because I knew that it would mean spending or wasting years of my youth in university and listening to daddy. After all, I didn’t know what my next business would be about.
Here’s one more thought. If you work, work. If you rest, rest. Don’t be a dim light. Why should I confuse my holidays with an internship? I would never have five free months ever again.
3. Me, of course, looking forward to university
I don’t know how to cope with the fact that I will go to university when almost every single entrepreneur I talked to said it didn’t matter. Even worse, I don’t know how I’m supposed to live in an ugly city while studying something that – simply put – motivated me to work nine hundred days in a row.
I’m not interested in studying biomedical engineering. I barely use a phone; what kind of technology should I be interested in? The purpose of medicine is to alleviate suffering. I don’t think some fancy machine can or should fix people’s corrupted lifestyles. Most health problems disappear if one does pushups, doesn’t eat processed foods, sees the sun and goes to bed on time.
I hope that, at least, I will find my hot blonde at university. But, most likely, that won’t happen because the options are limited, and my standards are colossal.
When I think back to school, I hated it. In fact, I skipped 9th grade to spend less time in school. While some of my classmates liked highlighting every word with a different color, doing homework, learning stuff they’ll never need, and getting up when the alarm goes off, I never did. I don’t even own a highlighter (although I find that practice adorable). Furthermore, after spending my summer alone, I noticed that my soul only hurt since I spent too much time with people I didn’t like and had nothing in common. After school was over, I stopped being arrogant because I had no reason to. I suddenly became very kind and compassionate. Decades of risk aversion and years of screentime kill the soul, hence, I don’t know what kind of people I will find at university. What if their influences make me weak? I don’t know how to handle that for five transformative years.
Yet, I convinced myself that I’d never given university a try. I also acknowledged that I was too immature and ignorant to make my first business successful and that I could still work on my projects in parallel. I also realized that I needed to think bigger, and that my life wouldn’t be over if I dedicated five years. So, I’ve come to terms with going to university.
I want to add an interesting detail. After daddy decided that I would study biomedical engineering instead of computer science, I was almost excited about university.
4. My new hot blonde?
If love is the measure of how much you’re willing to let go of, who do I really love? Perhaps very little outside of my goals and my mother. I cannot imagine a girl I would love so badly I would give up on my goals. So, what am I even trying to date for?
Well, I guess you could argue anything into oblivion.
On August 14th, I decided to finish editing my blog because I saw my creativity run dry. On August 15th, I started the new chapter, focusing on creating videos – and also dating.
During my 14-hour grind last year, I concluded that I must be the sexiest person in my village. Even though I am no model, I would catch girls staring at me regularly. For example, a few weeks ago, a blonde girl stared at me for a solid ten seconds, something I had never observed before. The day before, one girl from a group of girls looked at me for six times within two minutes. Today, a girl who looks like the only things she cares about are books and horses also made eye contact with me.
I decided that I might want to cash out on the person I’ve become. So, I decided to ask out the next girl I would catch staring at me. But life had a different plan. Because I was recording videos in the forest and the summer holidays ended, all the girls were gone.
Even if I find a girl I might want, I’m scared of dating. Who am I going to introduce myself as? Everyone bullies me for my goals, and rightly so, for they are very uncertain. Even though I don’t believe in psychology - what if her father is a normal person, which means fat and barely able to turn on a computer? If so, would I not be nudged into complacency and fall far short of the person I could have been? If I don’t even know what constitutes a good girl, where do I draw the line between perfect and good enough?
Maybe I will have to go on fifty dates to find the one.
But then, if my life is uncertain, be it so. Everyone faces uncertainty, and feeling uncertainty may indicate that I'm doing something right. If everything were determined, there would be no opportunity.
5. I can’t talk to anyone
I value love because it is the only light in the cold infinity of time and space. Otherwise, we are entirely alone. Most books don’t teach, most friends don’t encourage, and most clocks don’t tell time.
If it were not for a couple of friends, I would be completely alone. The relationship with my parents has been getting increasingly worse. In late 2023, things were much better because I made peace with my mother so that I could write about my maturity to impress that girl I wanted.
Leaving the nest means leaving people behind.
Back in March, I wanted to stop being friends with a girl.
To anyone confused, no, she was not a hot blonde. We started to be friends after she read my texts and wanted to find out which girl I kept mentioning. It was Christmas 2023; I was 16 and depressed. Being sick, heartbreak, and the death of my first business, deteriorated my life and slowly ground away everything. But because she was in a similar position, we had common ground.
However, since then, I tried to quit this friendship but have failed.
Perhaps I didn’t want to be isolated after 12th grade ended. Perhaps it was convenient. Perhaps I was grateful to have her in my life. I can remember the nights we spent talking. We biked many times together, and she’s why I started running. Together with another girl, we met the new year atop a mountain’s peak.
But in the end, I’ve grown away too much. I stopped liking her, even though we had nice times together. So, if I stopped liking her, who was I doing a favor?
6. Leaving the nest
The days in my room are counted. What is the last insight as I take the last breaths in my forest? What do I think of my childhood?
I didn’t like it; I was inferior in every realm. Everything was an illusion, and nothing was mine. Why should I go back to being awkward, asexual, and apathetic? I hate happiness; when I see happy children, I think of the life I never had and never really wanted. When I see my father, I do not feel anything, for he is nothing but a stranger.
On the other hand, I have grown to love the place I live. When I see my house, I see my home. For years, I was a stranger everywhere I went, a nomad, always wandering, never settling.
Yet, … When I see my mother, I do not feel like smiling. I know that’s a shame. I think that my story is not unique; no parent is perfect, and we need a break.
I don’t want to end this text this way but I that’s how it is.
Such is leaving the nest.
August 31st, 2024