Professional Flash Developer & Designer.

what is this to be a “professional” ? I’m asking because I’ve seen so many people looking like so that this word doesn’t mean anything to me any more.

And that disappoints me. Because just saying that you are a “professional” generally works… yeah it works, even if you’re not. But if you look like so, it works. I’m sorry to disappoint you as well.

So when did I start to be a “professional” ? I would say: at Emakina. I think we all started to be “professional” there.

If it works, it’s because people need to know that what you are doing is “important“. And this is what is probably driving this world crazy. We are all looking to do something “important”.

So, I started to be “important” in 2008, two months after I came back from a trip. A long trip that lasted for 2 years and a half.

I travelled and worked in Australia for 1 year. I worked in farms, doing different kinds of jobs. Hard work but interesting and good money sometimes. I travelled and worked pretty much “everywhere” in the eastern part of Australia. Excpet Darwin (in the north) even if I know this would have been interesting but I think at that time, after 9 months, I didn’t need to see “more” of Australia. And I was slowly feeling the need to leave, but it still wasn’t time, so I stayed a bit more…

I met a lot of people. Even if I know I looked like I didn’t care, I appreciated the time with them.

At the beginning, I was doing that to “fight” against “something” in myself. Some nights, I dreamed that I woke up in my bed, back in Belgium. I felt bad about it and, in my dream, I tried to find a way to get back to Australia, to finish the “fight”.
I talked about that to my friends there and some of them had the same dream.

After a couple of months, I started to get used to it. I started to appreciate the freedom that you can feel there in Australia. I wouldn’t live there, the way they “think” and live in general is not something that suits me. But there, I felt something that is barely impossible to feel here in Belgium, I mean if you’re born in a “true” Belgian family as I don’t know for the others.

Here, in Belgium, the social security system is so “well” developed that now, on can live an entire life without having to work. You have insurances for everything and you need one for everything otherwise the system doesn’t accept you. In my opinion, this is bullshit. This kills people’s mind. Belgium has a lot of good things, really, but this is a real plague.
And being born in an old fashioned Belgian family doesn’t really help to get out of this system.
I would say that my parents are already a bit apart from it but that didn’t really help either…

Anyway, what I lived there, in Australia, was the freedom and simplicity to find your way to work and live. If you want to work, you just need a visa, apply for a Tax File Number and you’re done. No thousands of papers and insurances to get and apply for. You don’t even need this number to start working.

So yeah, I would say that life there is far more proactive than it is here in Belgium, where everything is “organised” and “secure” even if in the end, it’s not and that blocks you if you want to do something that doesn’t fit in a specific “case”.

Belgium has good sides too but I’m happy that foreigners are now coming, more and more (mainly to work for the European Commission). This gives a new youth to Brussels, where I live. (even though I’m not sure those guys working for the European Commission and earning lots of money are really doing something useful with my taxes)

So, after Australia, I went straight to Asia. I landed in Singapore and travelled my way up to China and then down to India. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, China, Tibet, Nepal and India.

Yeah, that was great. I took my time, 1 year and a half. Travelling mostly by bus and train, sometimes hitch-hiking, sometimes by plane when It was legally impossible to do otherwise (Myanmar) or easier (Thailand to China).

Travelling like this is cool but when you’re leaving with the hidden hope that you would fix something inside of you, that you would find an answer… coming back with nothing more than even more insecurities… was kind of hard, and depressive.

I lived and see a lot of things during this time. I met interesting people, some were crazy and lost (this guy travelling with laughing gaz canisters), others beautiful, funny, completely absurd and hilarious (this Flemish guy painting sado-masochistic things in Mumbay, India) … but coming back here, in Belgium, my country, my place… this wasn’t easy. And if I leaved again, where to ? and to do what ?

So I found this job at Emakina and started to be a “professional“.

This didn’t help me. But what helped me was that I got fired 6 months after. Because this is when I started to work the only way I can work, as a freelance.

This started with some guys I met at Emakina and working on the side in the hope to build a new company of their own. They contacted me for a job and this is how we started to work together.
Those guys have now created their company: 1MD, and they are doing pretty well.

This was a long time ago, and I’m still working as a freelance, trying slowly to launch a couple of things of my own here and there, sometimes with the help of others. Still asking myself the same questions about importance and necessity of what I’m doing. But if I’m doing this, I mean this job, this is because I like to create and discover.
A couple of days ago, I read an article about a guy who answers the question: “why do you make video games?”
In my opinion, the resume would be this: “because video game is about discovering, as life is”.

That’s it, no matter what I do, whether it’s working in farms, meeting people, finding the guts to tell a beautiful girl that I like her, working on a computer, coding tons of lines of code, playing games, drinking alcohol, etc… I do it for the discovery, the ever-ending discovery that fuels this life. And this might be love after all.