Literaly Half of a lifetime, or "Whatever happened to Antek"
Jan 13, 2024 11:22:47 GMT -5
thilion likes this
Post by anthony on Jan 13, 2024 11:22:47 GMT -5
This Is going to be a Very long post, mainly about my life, so if you don't know me or are not interested, feel free to just skip it and don't pay attention. It's not very interesting, some parts are crazy, viewer discretion is recommended.
"Literally half a lifetime"
Hello there, to anyone who might read this.
I’ve just been digging through some of my ancient e-mail history, and I’ve realized that I’ve been around the Niklas & Friends fanbase community for nearly half of my life now. To those who have known me, or my have interacted with me back then, I wrote this "short" account of what has that crazy kid been up to for all those years.
My first post on the long-gone Dreambook fan chat was in mid 2011, I was 14 back then.
I went so far as to track the record of those posts from back then using the ‘internet wayback machine’, and let me tell you, It ended up being quite a deep dive, an introspective and nostalgic one at that.
Reading my own first messages in English, along with some great answers to my back-then troubles and worries by some really supportive people (a big shoutout to Eidan, James and Nikfan, you guys were great, if you’re still around anywhere, Thank you!) was quite an experience after so many years.
I was a really troubled kid back then, coping with loneliness and unable to find my spot in the society I was living in. To be honest, now I’m a quite troubled adult, but that was to be expected, and is mainly due to the outrageously crazy path that I’ve chosen for myself (If I did choose anything at all).
From a kid with no friends I went through many phases. Never ceased to be a weirdo, but I pride myself in not giving in to the dull and gray society. I quite quickly learned the social skills necessary to interact with people, and met many wonderful friends and companions on my way until now.
Just about a year after finding the Niklas fan community I turned from a shy introvert kid into a way more social hippie kid.
Back then some people advised me to join the church or boy scouts, but I guess my decision had to be more “extreme”, so I did kind of both at the same time, packed up my backpack, and hitchhiked off to a “hippie” gathering up in the mountains. Me being 15 at the time, and already causing enough trouble at home, my parents didn’t care much, and they just let me off the leash (not like they could manage to hold onto it anyway).
It was about then that this forum was starting up, and I was still more or less active from time to time, both writing here, and attempting to do some translations at the new Niklas comics website. My everyday life started to overtake my excess free time however, and I had less and less interest in sitting in front of the screen.
I was a teen, and even with my periodical depressions I fully intended to have fun.
I changed my dreaded aviation mechanic school to a way more “weirdo-friendly” and relaxed high school for outcast teens, and was meeting new, interesting people (my greatest wish from some years back) on the daily basis, and by the hundred.
I started playing guitar, partying, socializing, and in general I made one dumb teenage mistake after another. I recall playing my guitar somewhere on the streets of the old town, in the middle of polish winter, with my head full of acid, tripping balls. Other day I was stalking wild rabbits in the mountains on a weekend trip with some random guys I met, completely shroomed-out.
It was a full on “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” experience, and the party lifestyle lasted for about a year, between my 16’th and 17’th birthday. Then the “Fear” overtook the “Loathing” and just as easily as I started, I quit.
I’ve never touched drugs since, maybe except an occasional whiff of grass once a year on the hippie gatherings, which I attended for 3 or 4 summers, in different parts of Europe.
I still have many good friends that I’ve met during those days, and my 2 best friends from school (I met them shortly after I started writing in the old Dreambook chat) are still with me.
After finishing high school in 2015 I set out mainly to a life of travel, and for 4 years I have worked in many different professions, different places, from doing farm work in Sweden to boat building in southern Portugal, or being a street musician in the south of Tenerife, whilst living in a literal cave for half a year.
In 2019 I returned from by boat-mechanics job in Portugal, and I was kind of lost, not knowing what to do with myself. On a whim I signed up to the university, to study forensic science. I bought a gunsmithing workshop in the center of the city, and tried to make a living while studying. It was right in time, as the whole pandemic struck down.
Owning my own workshop proved unprofitable, and I had to work additionally in a gun store in town, to keep up with living expenses.
At some point in the pandemic I got so tired of sitting in one place, that I decided to buy myself a sailboat, and sail out towards the south as soon as I get my bachelor’s degree.
I actually bought the boat in Sweden while I was still studying and working, I took a week long leave from both, and sailed the 29ft long keel beauty from Stockholm to Gdańsk, across the Baltic sea.
For the next year I was studying, working at the store, and driving between Warsaw and Gdańsk on the weekends, to work on the boat. It was rather intense.
In the early summer of 2022 I finally managed to sell my unprofitable gunsmith workshop off to someone, Took a permanent leave from the gun store job, and started spending more time on the boat, doing some necessary repairs and upgrades for a long trip. I finished the lectures at uni, but still had to write my thesis.
I sailed out towards Copenhagen in August, Intending to make it to Portugal before winter. I was rather bad in my timing, the weather prevented me from getting onto the north sea until the very end of October, when I managed to sail across to Amsterdam. At least I had time to finish my thesis during a longer stay in a harbor in Germany.
Well, Amsterdam wasn’t really a planned stop, but I had so enough of being bashed around by swells and storms on the north sea, that I basically decided to “blip it”, and spend the winter in the Netherlands. I found work as a skipper on canal tour boats, and doing some boat mechanics in the marina where I lived aboard my “At Last” during that time.
As the spring came, I decided to unstep the mast from my boat, and cross to the Mediterranean through the inland waterways of Netherlands, Belgium and France. It was a rather long journey, with over 300 locks on the way. Doing it alone for most of the part was quite a hassle, but I emerged in Port Saint Louis du Rhone in the first days of June 2023.
Sailing the Mediterranean was rather a nice experience in comparison to the rough and gnarly North Sea, and I’ve spent plenty of good time relaxing on nice, warm anchorages in the Ionian sea, mainly around the beautiful “Garden of Gods”, the Greek island Corfu.
By late August I arrived to my ancestral home island in Croatia, where I managed to get a winter mooring for my boat for a rather reasonable price.
Well, And that’s basically where the whole story concludes, at least for now. I’m back in Poland for the time being, Waiting for spring to come yet again, and sail out somewhere for the warmer season.
Torn with depressive lack of new ideas, bored out of my mind by not being able to envision anything new and decently entertaining, addicted to an impossible lifestyle of a crazy nomad, surrounded by good friends, yet lonely inside (as I’ve always been, I guess).
Too spoiled by the life for my own good, unable to even imagine myself gaining any kind of work – life stability, currently basically unemployed, broke, and barely coping with making enough income on some small projects here and there to stay alive.
Finding a permanent job in any field doesn’t really look like a tempting possibility, as I know far too well that I would be completely unable to just stay in one place, and be satisfied. Even the vision of sailing on isn’t that tempting anymore, as It’s starting to lack the air of “freshness”, that I desperately need to breathe.
All those years ago, when I wrote my first few posts on the old Dreambook chat, I stated that someday I’ll have a wife, family, and live a “normal” life. I thought that my interest in the same sex was just a temporary fluke, due to my teenage hormones buzzing and causing some confusion.
Well, In the end I guess was wrong about that, I stayed as bisexual as I found myself being then, and as just as crazy and everything except “normal” as I was. I did manage to find good friends, and live a really decently messed up life, I learned to cope with stress and depression (more or less), I’m still alive and kicking like a mad mule.
I’m glad I found this community, and I’m still dropping in from time to time, even now when it seems more quiet, dead and dusty than ever.
On here I made a great long-distance friend, Andrew, and I’ve sincerely enjoyed all of his works and writings, most of them unpublished here or anywhere else.
I’ve lost contact with him some years ago, and I can’t reach him by E-mail, or find him in any other way (and trust me, I’m good in finding the Info that I want to find, Forensic science after all ).
I deeply hope that he’s still alive somewhere, and is doing well, on the other side of the world, or wherever he might be. Andrew, If you come by this message at some point, drop me a line, my E-mail is the same as always.
Best regards to all of you who might read this, those mentioned and those unmentioned, I’m really glad our paths have crossed in some way, at some point in my life.
I’ll keep living my crazy and eventful life, and I hope you are all living your lives with joy and at least some degree of satisfaction.
Cheers!
Anthony/Antoni/Antek, 13 Jan. 2024.
"Literally half a lifetime"
Hello there, to anyone who might read this.
I’ve just been digging through some of my ancient e-mail history, and I’ve realized that I’ve been around the Niklas & Friends fanbase community for nearly half of my life now. To those who have known me, or my have interacted with me back then, I wrote this "short" account of what has that crazy kid been up to for all those years.
My first post on the long-gone Dreambook fan chat was in mid 2011, I was 14 back then.
I went so far as to track the record of those posts from back then using the ‘internet wayback machine’, and let me tell you, It ended up being quite a deep dive, an introspective and nostalgic one at that.
Reading my own first messages in English, along with some great answers to my back-then troubles and worries by some really supportive people (a big shoutout to Eidan, James and Nikfan, you guys were great, if you’re still around anywhere, Thank you!) was quite an experience after so many years.
I was a really troubled kid back then, coping with loneliness and unable to find my spot in the society I was living in. To be honest, now I’m a quite troubled adult, but that was to be expected, and is mainly due to the outrageously crazy path that I’ve chosen for myself (If I did choose anything at all).
From a kid with no friends I went through many phases. Never ceased to be a weirdo, but I pride myself in not giving in to the dull and gray society. I quite quickly learned the social skills necessary to interact with people, and met many wonderful friends and companions on my way until now.
Just about a year after finding the Niklas fan community I turned from a shy introvert kid into a way more social hippie kid.
Back then some people advised me to join the church or boy scouts, but I guess my decision had to be more “extreme”, so I did kind of both at the same time, packed up my backpack, and hitchhiked off to a “hippie” gathering up in the mountains. Me being 15 at the time, and already causing enough trouble at home, my parents didn’t care much, and they just let me off the leash (not like they could manage to hold onto it anyway).
It was about then that this forum was starting up, and I was still more or less active from time to time, both writing here, and attempting to do some translations at the new Niklas comics website. My everyday life started to overtake my excess free time however, and I had less and less interest in sitting in front of the screen.
I was a teen, and even with my periodical depressions I fully intended to have fun.
I changed my dreaded aviation mechanic school to a way more “weirdo-friendly” and relaxed high school for outcast teens, and was meeting new, interesting people (my greatest wish from some years back) on the daily basis, and by the hundred.
I started playing guitar, partying, socializing, and in general I made one dumb teenage mistake after another. I recall playing my guitar somewhere on the streets of the old town, in the middle of polish winter, with my head full of acid, tripping balls. Other day I was stalking wild rabbits in the mountains on a weekend trip with some random guys I met, completely shroomed-out.
It was a full on “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” experience, and the party lifestyle lasted for about a year, between my 16’th and 17’th birthday. Then the “Fear” overtook the “Loathing” and just as easily as I started, I quit.
I’ve never touched drugs since, maybe except an occasional whiff of grass once a year on the hippie gatherings, which I attended for 3 or 4 summers, in different parts of Europe.
I still have many good friends that I’ve met during those days, and my 2 best friends from school (I met them shortly after I started writing in the old Dreambook chat) are still with me.
After finishing high school in 2015 I set out mainly to a life of travel, and for 4 years I have worked in many different professions, different places, from doing farm work in Sweden to boat building in southern Portugal, or being a street musician in the south of Tenerife, whilst living in a literal cave for half a year.
In 2019 I returned from by boat-mechanics job in Portugal, and I was kind of lost, not knowing what to do with myself. On a whim I signed up to the university, to study forensic science. I bought a gunsmithing workshop in the center of the city, and tried to make a living while studying. It was right in time, as the whole pandemic struck down.
Owning my own workshop proved unprofitable, and I had to work additionally in a gun store in town, to keep up with living expenses.
At some point in the pandemic I got so tired of sitting in one place, that I decided to buy myself a sailboat, and sail out towards the south as soon as I get my bachelor’s degree.
I actually bought the boat in Sweden while I was still studying and working, I took a week long leave from both, and sailed the 29ft long keel beauty from Stockholm to Gdańsk, across the Baltic sea.
For the next year I was studying, working at the store, and driving between Warsaw and Gdańsk on the weekends, to work on the boat. It was rather intense.
In the early summer of 2022 I finally managed to sell my unprofitable gunsmith workshop off to someone, Took a permanent leave from the gun store job, and started spending more time on the boat, doing some necessary repairs and upgrades for a long trip. I finished the lectures at uni, but still had to write my thesis.
I sailed out towards Copenhagen in August, Intending to make it to Portugal before winter. I was rather bad in my timing, the weather prevented me from getting onto the north sea until the very end of October, when I managed to sail across to Amsterdam. At least I had time to finish my thesis during a longer stay in a harbor in Germany.
Well, Amsterdam wasn’t really a planned stop, but I had so enough of being bashed around by swells and storms on the north sea, that I basically decided to “blip it”, and spend the winter in the Netherlands. I found work as a skipper on canal tour boats, and doing some boat mechanics in the marina where I lived aboard my “At Last” during that time.
As the spring came, I decided to unstep the mast from my boat, and cross to the Mediterranean through the inland waterways of Netherlands, Belgium and France. It was a rather long journey, with over 300 locks on the way. Doing it alone for most of the part was quite a hassle, but I emerged in Port Saint Louis du Rhone in the first days of June 2023.
Sailing the Mediterranean was rather a nice experience in comparison to the rough and gnarly North Sea, and I’ve spent plenty of good time relaxing on nice, warm anchorages in the Ionian sea, mainly around the beautiful “Garden of Gods”, the Greek island Corfu.
By late August I arrived to my ancestral home island in Croatia, where I managed to get a winter mooring for my boat for a rather reasonable price.
Well, And that’s basically where the whole story concludes, at least for now. I’m back in Poland for the time being, Waiting for spring to come yet again, and sail out somewhere for the warmer season.
Torn with depressive lack of new ideas, bored out of my mind by not being able to envision anything new and decently entertaining, addicted to an impossible lifestyle of a crazy nomad, surrounded by good friends, yet lonely inside (as I’ve always been, I guess).
Too spoiled by the life for my own good, unable to even imagine myself gaining any kind of work – life stability, currently basically unemployed, broke, and barely coping with making enough income on some small projects here and there to stay alive.
Finding a permanent job in any field doesn’t really look like a tempting possibility, as I know far too well that I would be completely unable to just stay in one place, and be satisfied. Even the vision of sailing on isn’t that tempting anymore, as It’s starting to lack the air of “freshness”, that I desperately need to breathe.
All those years ago, when I wrote my first few posts on the old Dreambook chat, I stated that someday I’ll have a wife, family, and live a “normal” life. I thought that my interest in the same sex was just a temporary fluke, due to my teenage hormones buzzing and causing some confusion.
Well, In the end I guess was wrong about that, I stayed as bisexual as I found myself being then, and as just as crazy and everything except “normal” as I was. I did manage to find good friends, and live a really decently messed up life, I learned to cope with stress and depression (more or less), I’m still alive and kicking like a mad mule.
I’m glad I found this community, and I’m still dropping in from time to time, even now when it seems more quiet, dead and dusty than ever.
On here I made a great long-distance friend, Andrew, and I’ve sincerely enjoyed all of his works and writings, most of them unpublished here or anywhere else.
I’ve lost contact with him some years ago, and I can’t reach him by E-mail, or find him in any other way (and trust me, I’m good in finding the Info that I want to find, Forensic science after all ).
I deeply hope that he’s still alive somewhere, and is doing well, on the other side of the world, or wherever he might be. Andrew, If you come by this message at some point, drop me a line, my E-mail is the same as always.
Best regards to all of you who might read this, those mentioned and those unmentioned, I’m really glad our paths have crossed in some way, at some point in my life.
I’ll keep living my crazy and eventful life, and I hope you are all living your lives with joy and at least some degree of satisfaction.
Cheers!
Anthony/Antoni/Antek, 13 Jan. 2024.