Every story has its darkness, but mine found a light so powerful it transformed everything.
Let me tell you how it all began and ultimately led to
@thenafi.
People who met me after THENA may think I had an easy life. But nothing could be further from the truth.
I got my first job thanks to my mom at 15 years old, gardening for the local municipality in a small town of Joensuu, Finland. My summer was filled with trimming the trees and cutting grass.
This was a dream come true, because my bicycle had been stolen prior to it. My parents couldn't afford insurance or to replace my old one, so I used all of my savings to buy a new one.
My high school was quite a distance away, and taking a bus was expensive. It didn't matter if the roads were paved with 30 cm of snow or if the air was minus 30 degrees Celsius, the wheels had to keep spinning.
I was lucky enough to get into the International Baccalaureate program. Barely. As a teenager focused on girls, and wasted that opportunity.
Despite that, my grades were good enough to get accepted to study Physics at the University of Helsinki without taking an entrance exam.
I only applied because I thought I needed something while I was preparing to enter medical school. Yes, I actually wanted to become a doctor. But in hindsight, probably not for the right reasons.
Life in Finland is expensive, and I didn't have any savings, so I took a job as a blackjack dealer during my first year in college.
It was tough. I spent weekends up at nights serving intoxicated customers, helping them lose money. And during day, I tried to find the energy and focus to study.
Shortly after choosing to focus on astronomy, I gave up. I stopped showing up to classes, and decided it wasn't for me. This wasn't my mission.
I always felt like going into finance was the right move for me. So I did some research into business programs, and somehow ended up applying to one in Bangkok, Thailand.
Don't even ask me how and why. I still can't quite explain it.
Funnily enough, it was a private catholic university where other students drove LAMBOS to school. Not kidding. ABAC chads know.
I borrowed 10,000 euros from my mom to be able to complete my studies, and finally graduated with a major in management. It was meant to be finance, but I wasn't disciplined enough to get into that.
Before graduation, I had gotten a job with Bangkok Hospital, being a medical interpreter. From wanting to become a doctor to working around them. It was like a painful reminder of my past failures.
So, when I graduated, I decided to leave Thailand behind, and moved back to Finland.
The harsh reality of life set in as me and my wife landed at 0 degrees Celcius in complete darkness, void of any hint of light or warmth in Helsinki. This was her first time in the country.
We had no money to get an apartment, but my brother
@PantheonFi was generous enough to accommodate us in his living room.
Because I was autistic and not willing to face my own fears, it took over a year to find a job. And when it finally happened, it wasn't what I had expected.
No, majoring in Management doesn't make you a Manager. I was far from being ready for that.
A major life lesson ensued.
Despite working 2 jobs 60 hours a week for 3 years, I ended up tens of thousands in debt due to some very bad choices.
It led up to a point where I gave up. I needed a reset in life. At this point I had failed everyone around me, and I was ashamed to even exist.
So I decided to start fresh. The 3 years had thankfully taught me a lot, and allowed me to build up enough strength and courage to take on a new challenge.
The struggles didn't end there. Serving the debts took half of my pay every month. We could barely afford rent, let alone eating outside.
I had already learned about Bitcoin back when I was in Thailand. In fact, I already mined some with my gaming laptop my wife got me (and paid for it monthly for 2 years).
But I wasn't smart enough to invest and hold. I did use it, though. Being able to transact free from any intermediaries was revolutionary. And that was THE spark.
My brother Pantheon was more into the stuff than I was, and got into Etheureum early on. Once that started to take off, he took those profits and invested them into Chainlink.
Hearing him talk about Sergey Nazarov's vision for the future convinced me.
Bit by bit, I got deeper.
Then one day, I learned about Fantom, and dove deeper into the ecosystem's projects.
I joined the LiquidDriver Discord just wanting to learn more. And decided to lock some all my money, maybe around $1K at the time (mind you my net worth was negative tens of thousands), for 2 years to earn passive income.
Then all of a sudden one day Dr. Liquid aka Theseus sends a message in the general channel asking if there's someone with the skills to be a marketer for the protocol.
I was like, yeaboi I have used Photoshop in the past and knew my way around English language. Or so I confidently thought.
One interview and a few days later, I became the intern responsible for nearly every single tweet coming out from LiquidDriver account from that moment on. And because the previous marketing person burnt out as I started, I essentially became the head of marketing.
What a twist of fate.
I had zero marketing experience apart from introduction to it during my Bachelor's degree.
But I knew deep within me I was on the right path. So after 2 weeks, I quit my real life job, and jumped into Web3 full time. What could I lose?
After I started, LQDR price rallied from $2 to $50, partly fueled by the Solidly frenzy back then.
Funnily enough, before Solidly was announced, top protocols from Fantom had gotten together to launch something that would unite us all under one umbrella.
We wanted to call it Athena.
But when the news of Andre's vision came out, all of our plans took a back stage. Things went from 0 to 100 in a blink of an eye, before crashing down as the father of Fantom publicly left the stage.
My portfolio that was supposed to help pay back the debt went from hero to zero, and it seemed like no hope was left.
Until one day. Dr. Liquid messages me out of no where about generating an NFT collection with AI.
The rest is history.
Two weeks ago, I paid my mom back with interest, and cleared every single debt to my name. I'm now worthy enough in society's eye to get a rental apartment and insurance, which I couldn't do prior to this.
And THAT is how I met THENA.
GOD is great.