Over the past few weeks, I have shared a lot of what I have been working towards for years with Halate. It’s the part of my life I share most often, and something that genuinely makes me proud. But there are also other sides of me that I like to share every once in a while. Building a personal brand and starting a new company are deeply personal. It can feel like you are creating something for yourself, but in ways it can also feel like you are simply trying to make enough money to pay the rent and cover your basic needs. Sometimes I feel like just another cog in the machine we call capitalism. Over the last few years I have been working a lot on myself and trying to see who I really am and what I really want. But because of internal and external struggles I also feel like a ghost in a shell that is just here to fulfill the social standards that we have build. I struggle with depression, loneliness and a general feeling of uselessness. I question life often and a lot of times it feels meaningless. Besides those internal struggles, I am constantly confronted by everything happening around us… trying to find a home, searching for more work, struggling to form meaningful connections, the state of the world, people blaming minorities for society’s problems, the rise of AI and whatever else comes next… These thoughts occupy my mind almost every day. Even though I have managed to turn my passion into my work, I still struggle to tell my own stories and express my own creativity. So from today, I want to do something with these thoughts and struggles. I want to make space for my own stories, not to chase likes or views and not because I expect to change anyone’s mind. Simply to express myself, for myself.