Who am I? #
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
For years, I chased what I was told was success. I poured my passion, my intellect, my very essence into building, optimizing, creating. I was in a paid software engineering post-internship, on the cusp of graduating university, brimming with the naive belief that hard work and demonstrable value would be rewarded.
I automated their entire backup system, slashing deployment times by a staggering 80%. I streamlined the onboarding process for new developers, transforming a week-long ordeal into a seamless day or less. I delivered, I innovated, I believed in the work.
And what was my reward? The last three months of my already meager salary went unpaid. The final, soul-crushing blow came when the CEO, fresh from a heated dispute with the sales team—a conflict entirely unrelated to my work—stormed into our office and unleashed a torrent of undeserved fury directly at me, for a trivial, manufactured issue.
In that moment, something inside me snapped. It wasn’t just disappointment; it was a profound, visceral disgust. Disgust at the injustice, at the betrayal, at the realization that my passion, my dedication, meant nothing in a system that valued control and ego over contribution. I looked at the lines of code, the automation scripts, the very tools I once adored, and felt a chilling hatred for them. My love for coding, for creation, was poisoned.
That was my journey towards the edge. That was the moment the desire for freedom became a non-negotiable demand. It started as a desperate quest for time freedom, which I quickly realized was impossible without financial freedom. And the ultimate expression of that, for me, was location freedom—the ability to live and work from anywhere in the world, on my own terms.
Trading became one such vehicle, but it quickly exposed a deeper truth: any high-stakes environment, be it the market, a demanding career, or a personal challenge, is merely a mirror, reflecting our own internal state. My biggest enemy wasn’t a bad setup; it was a moment of fear, a surge of greed, or a lapse in discipline—universal struggles that transcend any specific field.
This is why these ‘Notes from the Edge’ exist. They are the answer to the question that drove me from that cubicle: How do you master the inner game to achieve true, fulfilling success, on your own terms?
This collection challenges the conventional wisdom that leads to burnout and dissatisfaction. We will explore the fundamental paradigms that govern our lives, using a powerful analogy to guide us: your conscious mind is the Rider, and your subconscious is the Horse. This book is about training the Horse so the Rider can finally steer towards the life you actually want.
Your journey to the edge begins now.