Greatest Adventure

Every time I start writing, some life events shake things up and I stop. I have set up this page almost a year ago and still haven’t migrated the content from my old blog.

So at this point I imagine a lot of people, former colleagues or friends, have kinda given up hope on me as a writer. Still, I first and foremost want to write because I love writing and reading and I will try to have this blog updated on a daily basis. Some days reviews, others my thoughts, but mostly, I will try and focus on writing my first book (novel) Lambda.

Still, I want to introduce myself in a way and I love words as a means to do that. Perhaps some people will recognise me, even though I was and perhaps still am, really horrible at keeping in touch with friends. Not out of malice, but because honestly, my life feels like an epic adventure and I am really enjoying every second of it – but I am getting ahead of myself.

I was studying to become a Particle Physicist until the summer of 2014, when I quit my PhD at CERN (I was part of the CMS experiment) telling everyone I want to be a writer. At the time, I was struggling with depression which clung onto me for likely until the autumn of 2015. It’s hard for me personally to draw a line, because as anyone having ever gone through a depressive period (however long or short) will tell you, it’s not like an on/off switch. Depression tends to sink in slowly and it’s equally slow to eradicate via help of psychology, and in severe cases medication as well.

I know that it’s easy to just say something these days and at least some people will find it credible. I have been wondering myself if I was really depressed (both at the time and later on), or if I was imagining things and some friends were and still are skeptic about that. But that’s the thing about depression: to an outsider, the depressed person can seem like everything is fine, smile and wave, while on the inside, there are thoughts competing for attention. In my case, I was really shocked by the death of two of my friends that were born in the some year as me. Tomaž was my elementary school classmate, and didn’t want to be included in the book I was writing when I was around 12 years old (book never finished). Elvis I met in a physics competition during high school and we were good friends since, playing board games and sharing the love for physics. Those deaths shook me to the core. Also, me and my ex realising we were not in a good relationship after 5 years and 8 months of trying. When I was doing my PhD I didn’t have enough time to write or process the above events – spending time at the office plus researching at home or thinking about a problem or studying.

After I had quit my PhD, I started writing ambitiously, telling myself I’ll have my first book written by the time I would have otherwise finished my PhD. That would have been by March of 2016. What happened was that when I quit, I suddenly had all this time at my disposal, and I always thought that my books will be better if my life is interesting. So I spent my time redditing, mostly lurking around, reading news and upvoting – rarely downvoting honestly, only if something really insulted me – finding out about what world we live in. The enormous inequalities that are forming around the globe between the rich and the poor. And on the other hand, incredible almost borderline science fiction achievements. In physics, the measurement of the Higgs boson, the gravitational waves from two rotating black holes, Space X and in general anything Elon Musk works on, etc…

I also spent a lot more time socialising with friends and meeting different girls, but not really managing to get in a relationship. In some cases, I would have been content with friends with benefits option, but for a little over 3 years and a half, even that happened only with one girl, for a few weeks. I used to post on Facebook various thoughts and links I liked etc. and write a lot of personal stuff in diaries. I would let people read what I wrote, and mostly girls wanted to do that. I received plenty of help and good friendships, but at the end of the day, the drama and irrational thinking of people in love or in really bad abusive relationships was what only deepened my depression.

Because everything said and done, what I looked for most in life was love. I don’t think life makes much sense otherwise. Power? Money? Control? At the end of the day, what could you wish more than to live every living moment loving someone and being loved back?

But time of course doesn’t stop. At the time of quitting my PhD, I didn’t have much money saved and I am immeasurably grateful to my parents for sustaining me financially for some time. I never took a year off of college, so in my mind, it was “fair”. But that year of being in personal turmoil and drama was over and I had to get a job. So in the middle of 2015 I had a really bad experience with a company in my home town. They wouldn’t even pay me or straight up say to me that they’re looking for an experienced programmer, not someone who did physics and only program in some courses and during the PhD. I wasted three whole weeks with that company and then, a few months later, a friend of mine told me they were hiring at Diners Club Italy, the Izola branch. I applied, worked there as a phone operator for a month or so and then got promoted to working in the Project Office, getting gradually more tasks and better tools to do them.

So After a few months working, and quitting Facebook in 2016, my life got better, because I had no more time to think of love that much. At least I got money. It’s how our capitalist system works until we’ll have robots for everything and hopefully we either introduce a fixed basic income for every citizen of every Country on Earth, or abolish money altogether and learn that sharing is caring. So I stopped complaining so much about what everything is wrong in the world and how alone I am and just did my part, worked 40 hour shifts and bought this webpage domain to get on with my writing.

And then, my greatest adventure started. Before this, I would have said that the greatest adventure is The Longest Journey (PC game). And then out of the blue, as I was getting the hang of my job and preparing to write, I met Katherine Claire Alexander. In short, the most amazing woman there ever is, or was, for me. I met her June 15th, and until January 15th of 2017, we have already written 315 love letters to each other via google docs (no, they’re not the “classic” letters I’m afraid, and neither is their content which can vary from being extremely sweet to rough and weird).

She is truly the one person I was looking for and I have now absolutely no excuses anymore as to why I’m not writing. I truly believe I am most inspired when I am at my best. When I am happy. And ever much more so when I have a muse. Now plenty of poets and artists in the past were admiring an unreachable woman. I was not like that. I was miserable, but moved on, each and every time my heart got broken in the past few years I was telling about above. And it was all worth it, because in the end, I met this wonderful American woman and I’m soon going to be moving to the US to marry her and live together. We both feel that this is the adventure of our lifetimes and love each other.

That’s another reason why I want to write now, more than ever, and try to make an earning out of it. In order to spend as much time as humanly possible with the love of my life, as well as do all the ideas and passions that we share, from sailing around the globe, to playing instruments (perhaps in a band) and learning languages, as well as ultimately, more writing – to each other, as well as together.

This is of course only possible if enough people read my lines and enjoy them. My promise to you my dear reader is, that I will give it a shot and write the best I can, drawing from my adventurous life to write some (hopefully) amazing adventures. And at the same time, if it will be at all possible, I would love to render all of my writings online FREE of charge. And then if you support me, I’ll have donations set up or a kickstarter page. But it’s too early for that as I first need to provide some content. If you don’t agree with what I’m writing, or would have a topic to propose for me to write about, please don’t hesitate to leave some feedback.

Tomo Umer