Featured

Blog’s structure quick guide

Hi, here you can find the quick info about the Blog’s topics.

Reforged Life – How to be happy in life? While there is no simple answer to this question, I think I have found some interesting things on my way to a happy life that I want to share with you.

Reforged Italian Dream – Some time ago my wife and I decided to move to Italy and start a new life there. This is definitely the biggest and most interesting project I have ever run, so I decided to write about it.

Reforged Reviews – My opinion on various products and brands.

Reforged Photography – Photography has been with me for many, many years. Here you will find posts about my activity as a photographer.

Welcome everyone!

Welcome everyone!

Here I’ll be covering topics that I think are important, but mainly I’d like to talk about happiness, or more specifically, what I think is worth doing to be happy.

And here’s an important note: we won’t talk about what I do to be happy, because what makes me happy won’t necessarily make you happy. Here we will talk about activities that I consider objectively good for everyone, which I believe are essential ingredients for a happy life.

I am starting this series because I feel a deep need to share with you my feelings and thoughts on various topics, and I would also like to add my voice to the very important discussion about truth. About how the truth is currently under attack, distorted, hidden.

I hope some of the topics we will be covering will help you look at important issues from the real side.

We will cover topics that are difficult, controversial, and they will require deeper reflection, which I encourage you to do. I also encourage you to actively comment, and hopefully together we will build a base of materials that will help many of you on your way to a happy life.

See you soon!

Reforged Italian Dream – episode 3 – We are taking two steps back

So as you know from episode 2 post it turned out that buying fees and taxes are not so scary as they could be. I have to be honest I was little worried, but thanks to deep research we know now that we can handle them. Uff 🙂

But because we are from Poland we have another crucial issue to be addressed -costs of living. We don’t want to move to Italy and look for regular jobs there. We want to slow our life’s pace and work only on our own projects. Because of this need, the cost of living is a very important factor that we must consider.

I made a simple assessment of the monthly cost of living and received a figure of around 4,000 EU. I think that for many people, especially for those who live in countries with strong currencies like Euro, Dollar or Pounds this 4 000 EU is not a big of a deal. But for us it is. In Poland 4 000 Eu is around 18 000 zł.
To understand how much it is let’s take a look on the National average in Poland. In 2019 the National average was around 3 800 PLN (around 830 EU). To give you a reference point lets take a look on the National average in Germany – in 2019 it was around 4 000 EU. So yeah, 4 000 EU monthly is a lot.

So our plan to deal with this living costs is twofold.
Firstly, we want to start few businesses here in Poland, develop them as much as possible and take them to Italy. (If you interested to know more about our businesses, feel free to take a look on other sections of the blog).
Secondly we want to start some local business in Italy. We want to have a guest house there and some special services for our guests.

The first part (businesses) is going quite well, but they are not generating as much revenue as we would like yet, so we need more time to improve their performance.
The second part (guest house) is of course only possible in Italy, but to know what to expect, we made estimations for the performance of the house with 5-6 rooms.
Therefore, it is planned to cover 70-80% of living expenses with revenues from businesses created in Poland and 20-30% with income from renting guest rooms.

Unfortunately the COVID-19 came and the situation changed dramatically. Because of the panic and all those restrictions and bans the major recession is expected. Especially in Italy, a country whose revenues largely come from tourism. For this reason, all estimates are pointless now and we have to wait and see what the future holds.
Also, I think that this situation can be really big opportunity for us. I think that there is a big chance that this pandemic will cause a massive property price drop in Italy.

So, yes we are taking two steps back and will see how the situation will develop in the near future.

Reforged Life – an easy way to get a lot of extra time in your life

When I talk to people about things that I do in my life and try to encourage them to change their lives, I often hear the very same answer: “I would like to have time for such activities, but unfortunately I don’t have one.” or “I don’t have the magical power to extend the day, so because of that I have enough time for everything.”

I think, in fact, it is true that some people may have such a busy schedule that there is simply no space for anything new. But when you take a closer look at the average schedule of the day, you’ll see that some things consume so much of your time that’s pure madness.

For me of the most important thing in my life is my free time. When I don’t have enough time for myself, I feel unhappy. That’s why I hate wasting my time when I don’t have to. Therefore, I followed some rules that allowed me not to waste too much time on meaningless activities. On this post I would like to share few tips, that can give you a lot of additional free time.

First and the most important rule is to choose activities that are close to your home.
Yes, it’s really that simple. This single rule can save you many hours monthly.
One of the most time-consuming tasks is getting to work and returning home from work. In some cases, this task may take 2 to 4 hours a day!
This task has two main factors:

  • The distance from your home to the workplace – just pick the workplace that is as close to your home as possible. The ideal situation is when you can walk or drive to your job in less that 10 min. If you can’t change the job, maybe you can change the home?
  • The way you get to your job – is the way you chose to get to work is the fastest possible way? The same distance can be covered very quickly or very slowly, depending on the chosen means of communication. So, if you are stuck in your car in traffic everyday, maybe is good idea to go with subway or some electrical vehicle?

But of course this is not just about work. It is the same case with all everyday activities you do. Just make a fast calculation and you will see that small changes can give you a lot additional free time.

Get a car
I know it is obvious, but I will write it anyway. Car is one of this special things which can change money for time! It will help you save so much of your time that you can’t even imagine.

Get a electrical vehicle
If you live in a big city, I definitely recommend buying an electric vehicle. It is also a very strong time saver. Plus, many models will also give you a lot of driving pleasure.

To sum up I would like to show you quick calculation I made, so you can see some numbers:

Far away from homeTimes a dayMinutesTimes per weekTotal min per activity
Work2605600
Training2305300
Studies (weekends)2402160
Weekly17,67
Monthly70,67
 
Close to homeTimes a dayMinutesTimes per weekTotal min per activity
Work2105100
Training2105100
Studies (weekends)220280
Weekly4,67
Monthly18,67
Difference52,00

As you can see with only 3 main activities the difference is huge +50 hours monthly. And the savings will be the greater the more activity in the month you have. Take some time and make your own calculation and you will see how much extra time you can get for yourself.

Do yourself a favor, make a change and enjoy the many extra hours of free time!

Reforged Italian Dream – Episode 2 – purchase taxes and fees and living costs

Ok., so we finally are finished our consultation with an Italian Accountant. To be honest we didn’t learn anything that we couldn’t find on the internet already, but what’s very important we were able to confirm the information we found and discuss it in more detail. So, below you can find what we found so far. I think is quite complete guide for buying a House in Italy.
At the end of the post I will also write few words about the costs of living in Italy.

Purchase guide and Ownership taxes
During the research I found amazing purchase property guide made by Studio Legale Metta for 2018. It is in english (not so common when it comes to Italian companies) and is written in a simple and easy to understand language.
You can find there all you need to know about the proces of purchasing a property in Italy and about the taxes and fees related with this process. You can also find there information about ownership taxes and fees.
You can download full guide here.

Business costs
Because we want to move to Italy with our businesses we are curently building here in Poland we wanted to know how the tax system looks like in Italy when it comes to self-employment.
Below you can find information we gathered (remember that it is March 2020 and this numbers may change in time):

The VAT
VAT is 22%.

The Income Tax
Income tax in Italy is progressive and has the following thresholds:

€ 0 to € 15,00023%
€ 15,001 to € 28,00027%
€ 28,001 to € 55,00038%
€ 55,001 to € 75,00041%
Over € 75,00043%

The INPS (social security)
This is quite a big tax, so be aware and remember that this one will consume a lot of your income.
Standard equasion for INPS is: (Total Income – deductible costs)*27-28 %
But INPS has an annual minimum contribution of about 3 500 EU (for partner in marriage company) and 3 800 EU one person company. So minimum of 7 000 EU for 2 people company (marriage type).

Accounting cost
Of course, the exact numbers depend on the amount of work the accountant will have to do, which is related to the number of documents and invoices you will produce monthly. But we can assume that the costs would be between 2 500 – 3 000 EU annually.

Abroad income, properties and assets
If you own a house or other property you will have to pay 0,76% on the market value annually.

If you have financial assets including bank account you will have to pay 0,2% with a minimum of 34 euros for each current account.

If you have income including rentals or interests from financial assets or any income, you will have to pay taxes on it at the regular tax rate (progressive from 23% to 43%) but you may be able to deduct from the amount payable the taxes you have paid already in you country. It depends on whether specific income abroad is regulated by a double taxation agreement.

Tax incentives
In some cases you can take advantage of the preferential taxes that the Italian government has prepared as an incentive to attract human capital to Italy. You can download this guide below:

Local differences in taxes
Please note that in Italy each region and often each municipality or even city or village may have their very own rules and taxes. So, it is crucial to check this before you decide to buy a property. With that issue I would recommend you to contact Italian accountant.

Living costs
This issue is very crucial for us. It’s because we live in Poland and here, we have Polish Zloty (PLN), which is more that 4 times weaker currency than Euro (1 Euro = 4,25 PLN). We have to calcutale everything very carefully, so when we take our businesses to Italy they will withstand currency change and much higher taxes.

I will certainly write a dedicated post about the cost of living, but for now I can say that we have estimated that we need around 4,000 EU per month.

Inmotion V10 is a great vehicle, but it is not suitable for everyone. Think twice before you buy it.

I was looking on the electric vehicles market from the beginning (yes I’m that old :)) and I was waiting until the bateries will be more powerful and the specs I want will be affordable for me.
So this time has finally come and I decided to buy one for me. I wanted to have something that could help me to move around the city without a car. My main activities are no too far away from my house, so driving a car two or three streets does not make much sense.

I was looking for vehicle who has this three things:

  • Big wheel, so it will be dealing nice with different surfaces
  • Long range, so I can go deep in the city and back
  • Speed around 30km so I can move fast and have some fun

All additional features were of course welcome but not so important for me as those three.

So after quick research I found that there is something I was looking for. Inmotion V10 electric monocycle. I used the black friday sale and I got my first electric vehicle 🙂

But this post will not be a standard review when the owner pointing out why he loves his new gadget. I would like to tell you very important thing that I think you should know about this device.
Inmotion V10 is really great monocycle! But it’s definitely not for everyone. If you are not careful, it can catapult your face into the pavement so quickly that you won’t even notice.
I think that is should be quite obvious for everyone that a monocycle which can go 40 km/h may be dangerous. Specially with unexperienced rider. Unfortunately I didn’t find even one video on YouTube about it, so I decided to make my comment on this.

Issue 1 – Learning curve
The learning curve is really steep. It means that you have to put a lot of time and effort just to learn the basics like: getting on, moving forward, braking, turning, keeping the balance. And learning this will not take you an hour, it’s gonna be much, much more.

Then, when you finally will be able to get on the monocycle easily, you’ll acess to it’s all capabilities. And to use them safely you have to master riding techniques and this task will definitely be a difficult process. It will require a lot of time, effort and mindfulness to do this right. I think that this may be too much for most people. And if you simply would not be eager to learn the technique you will propably end up injured quite badly.

Issue 2 – Riding on one wheel it’s hard
Maybe this is obvious but I still want to say this – riding on one wheel vehicles is hard and unintuitive. Although when Inmotion V10 it’s turned on it will keep the tension in the motor, so when you stand on it, it will not flipp backwards or forward but it still can easily fall off on side.

Another thing is that when you stand on the wheel you will work like a little sail. Every stronger side wind can affect the wheel behavior. The wind can push you and your wheel off the track. Also a sudden gust that occurs, for example, when you leave from behind a cover or building may cause the wheel to wobble and when it happens it’s very hard to take control back and it probably will lead you to a fall.

Issue 3 – Power
With great power comes great responsibility. This famous sentence from Spiderman movie is quite well known. But I’m not so sure if people really see the message. People often underestimate the power of vehicles and at the same time overestimate their skills. The perfect prescription for an accident.
You should know that Inmotion V10 has the power that can deliver fast acceleration and max speed aroud 40 km/h. Everything will be ok., when the speed you ride will always meet you skills level. But I don’t believe that avarage rider will use it this way. So, if you are not patient enough and you cannot dose the power right, you can seriously hurt yourself.
You should also understand that good and safe riding at 20 km/h is something really different than good and safe riding at 35-40 km/h.

Isseu 4 – Weight
Despite the fact that Inmotion V10 is able to ride well on many surfaces, it climbs well uphill and even doing very well offroad, there still will be some situations when you will have to pull it up and carry with you for some time. Just remeber that this wheel weighs 20.6 kg. It’s good to make a small test and try to pull up 20kg with one hand and walk few steps with it.

Summary
I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I really think that Inmotion V10 is amazing, well designed vehicle and the performance it can deliver is top notch. I can guarantee that if you take the time and effort to do it right, you won’t regret it and I will have a lot of fun riding it.

But I just want to tell you that riding on Inmotion V10 it is not easy. If you are a person who does not like challenges and does not like to spend a lot of time and effort to acquire the right skills, this vehicle is simply not for you and riding it can end up with serious injuries.
So, please take your time and think twice if this kind of electric vehicle is right for you.

Reforged Italian Dream – episode 1 – picking the right house (house requirements, transaction fees and taxes and best real estate online base)

Welcome to episode one. The first of many to come. In each post I will describe what issue we are currently working on, we have just worked or we will be working in the near future.
I hope that in time this section will become a mini guide for everyone who wants to know how to carry a project like that and maybe help you make your Italian Dream come true.

So, as you know from the section’s opening post we decided to move to Italy. For us moving to Italy is a part of a larger plan – we want to change our lives and slow down our life’s pace a little. Our business plan for moving to Italy is partly based on the idea to make a guest house there (I will write about our business plan in details in near future). So, because guest house is an important part of our business plan, the house has to meet specific requirements. Because there are thousands of home ads online, before we could start browsing ads, we wanted to specify requirements for our dream home.

Our requirements list looks like this:

  • Size: at least 200-250 m2, ideally around 400-500.
  • Rooms: at lest 6, ideally 8-10
  • Bathrooms: at lest 2, ideally 3 or more
  • Constuction:
    • Detached house, free on four sides
    • Region specific desing, ideally traditional italian stone house
    • 2 or 3 floors with bathroom on each floor
    • Terrace or/and balconies and ideally large windows
  • Condition:
    • Ready to move in or small renovation works required
  • Location:
    • House in quiet place, but at the same time not to far from small city or village
    • Not to far from the main tourist attractions such as a big city or natural attractions located near lake, sea or in the mountains
    • House in dominant position with panoramic view on mountains, lake or sea.
  • Important additives:
    • Medium or large size garden with few trees
    • Garage at least for one car – ideal for 2
    • Good quality road leading to the house
    • Furnished or partly furnished
    • Possibility of connecting the internet with a good quality connection

The next key thing when it comes to buying a home is of course money. You probably think that this should be the first thing to consider and maybe for you this is the issue number one. But for me, and it’s not just about buying a house, I like to first build the vision of my dream in my mind and then think about the money and how to make it happen. So first I build this picture in my mind:

I see us living in a nice, stone house in a beautiful place in Italy. As every morning, we go out to the terrace for tea and we look at the breathtaking view. In our garden we can see our dog happily gambols. While drinking tea, we think about tasks to be carried out on the coming day and we can’t wait to start. We are happy and calm and we feel really special.

I know the picture is nothing special in general but it is special to me. Maybe your picture would look different? I think it’s worth spending some time visualizing your dreams. In my life I made a lot of many different projects and I made a lot of my dreams come true and I would not be able to do that wihout vizualization. Visualization is a powerful tool that has this magical power of making things happen. I honestly recommend it to everyone.

Ok., so after we did the visualization and requirements for the house, we started to work with the numbers. After short research I found that buying a house in Italy is quite expensive when it comes to transaction costs. According to the report from Global Property Guide it could be even 32% of the property’s value. Below you can find detailed table with fees and taxes and here you can read the whole article about the costs.

Registration Tax3.00 – 7.00%buyer
Value Added Tax (VAT)4.00% – 22.00%buyer
Land Registry Tax1%buyer
Notary Fee1.00% – 2.50%buyer
Legal Fees1.00% – 2% (+ 22% VAT)buyer
Real Estate Agent´s Fee1.50% – 4% (+ 22% VAT)buyer
Costs paid by buyer9.05% – 32.82%

So, all these fees and taxes are really high even if I would consider the optimistic variant that the costs will be around 10% (and they will probably be more). This is especially problematic for coutries that do not have the Euro or their currency is much weaker than Euro.
In Poland we have Polish zloty (PLN) and we have to pay around 4,25 PLN for 1 Euro. So for example if we consider buying a house that cost 250 000 Euro, the fee would be around 25 000 EU. To make you realize how much it is for us, I will say that it is a quarter of the price of a two-room apartment that can be bought in a good district of our capital city, Warsaw.

So knowing exact fees and taxes values for a specific house is crucial information. Reading online articles about fees and taxes are great source of information for the start, but to know the exact numbers we have to contact with some local accountant and real estate agency.
To find the italian accountant I used the Advocate Abroad site. Currently we are in the middle of consultation about the costs, so I can’t say if the contact was ok or not. I will definately update this later. The results of this consultation is crucial for our business plan, so we are really looking forward to it.
I have to admit that I’m a little afraid of the result of the conversation with the accountant, because I’m afraid that the amount of taxes can make it very difficult for us to make our dream come true. As soon as I will have the numbers I will definately write a post about this.

Regardless of the result of the conversation with the accountant, we have already started looking for a home so that during the next vacation we can see a few of them personally.
We currently mainly look for houses on Idealista.it and I can definitely recommend it. It has good interface, very nice search tool (you can draw a search area on google maps), but the most important thing is that its data base is really, really big, so you will not have a problem to find houses in any area you are interested in.

So that would be all about how we defined the criteria for searching for our house, how we determine the budget and where we are currently looking for online real estate sale advertisements in Italy.

The next step will be to create a complete tax and fees table, so we can see how much money we actually have for the house.
Then we will start working on a business plan that will show us how our plan looks in numbers.

Our Italian Dream – how it’s all started

I love when its warm, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. For me 30 degrees celsius is just ideal temperature. I have always thought that I was born at the wrong latitude and I should live somewhere in the south. Unfortunately I was born in Warsaw, Poland. Don’t get me wrong I love my country and I am really proud to be Polish, but the weather here is just killing me. Although, I must admit that the last two years have been really great, it does not look so beautiful normally. Our polish summer weather is very capricious and unpredictable. You never know if its gonna rain or not, and you can be sure part of your long awaited holidays you will have to spend in hotel room because of the rain or rapid temperature drops.

There is one more thing that makes it very difficult for us to spend our dream vacation in Poland. It’s geography. Like our great comedian Marcin Daniec said in one of his standups: “Every normal country has a sea in the south and mountains in the north. But of course in Poland it must have been the opposite.” As a result, it is often too cold and unpleasant by the sea in the summer, and in the mountains in the winter it is too warm and there is no snow.

But by far the worst for me when it comes to the weather in Poland are the long, dark periods of no sunshine in autumn and winter. Often for many days or even weeks all we can see are dark, steel and heavy clouds that cover the whole sky. Every winter I feel that it will never end and I will never see the sun again. After every winter I am trully exhausted because of lack of the sun.
We both with my wife simply love the wormth and hate the cold. That’s why for our holidays we choose mostly south destinations. So few years ago we decided to go on Canarian Islands. We stayed one week on Tenerife and one week on Grand Canaria. Before this trip I was only one week on a boat in Croatia, so for me this was the first true holidays in someplace warm.

The whole holidays were amazing and I simply can say that Canarian Island are true paradise. I remember that waking up with certainty that today the sun would definitely shine was a great experience for me. I felt like a great weight was removed from my shoulders. It was very, very nice feeling.
I feel that I never came back from this amazing place. I mean my body is back in Poland but my mind and heart stayed on those amazing islands.

Just after returning to Poland I started to search the information how we can move to Canarian Islands. My plan was simple, we will buy a house and we will start Guest House there. Unfortunately I found very quicky a law that says you can’t rent a home to tourists in which you live at the same time. It simply means that you have to have two houses – one for you and one for tourist. So, because we simply can’t affort to buy two houses, this was the end of the Canary dream for us.

But the idea to move to the south didn’t died with this little spanish obstacle. We continued our search and soon we found two new localizations: Croatia and Italy. We have been in both destinations few times and we loved them both. Two years ago we decided to go on two weeks holiday – one week in Croatia and one week in Italy. The oportunity to be in both countries on the same holiday really helped us made the final decision. We always wanted to live in Italy but we tought that we simply can’t afford it, that’s why we were looking for an alternative locations. Croatia was looking really good especially when it comes to financial issues, so we consider it very seriously. Unfortunately we discovered that many things has changed in Croatia over the last few years and the prices went really high and now there are even higher than in Italy (sic!).
In the meantime we did some research about the prices in Italy and we discovered that we are able to buy a House there. So the decision was done – Italy will be our new home!

Ok., so now we only had to pick the region and start looking for a house. In the past few years we visited: Merano, Cortina di Ampezzo, Bergamo, south and middle part of Lago di Como, northern and middle part of Lago di Garda (Molveno, Tenno, Arco, Riva del Garda, Limone, Malcesine, Arco, Bolognano).
We love Dolomites, so we liked Lago di Garda the most, especially around Riva del Garda. However, this is one of the most expensive regions in Italy and we don’t think we will be able to find a house that we can affort, so our search is around four regions: Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy, Veneto and Tuscany.

Moving to Italy is by far the largest and most complicated project I’ve ever carried out. In this section I will describe each step we take to make our Italian dream come true. There are so many aspects that need to be taken into account that I’m sure we won’t have any problems to find new topics.

My Reforged Photography

I think that photography is something really magic. For me the most important thing is that it helps you keep the best moments of your life. You simply take a photo and this moment is saved forver. You can return to it anytime and how many times you want. It also changes the way you look at the world – it strengthens your attention and affection to all these amazing things that are invisible for most of the people. All you need is a moment of fun with the camera and you will start to notice that everything can be beautiful and interesting. Another great thing is that you don’t have to travel to the end of the world to take great photos.

I was really fortunate that photography found me very early. It was just after my high school graduation. So, photography has been with me for over 15 years and I still enjoy doing photos. Thanks to how long I have been doing photography I was able to catch a lot of amazing moments of my life and I’m really greatful for that. On the other hand I had all time I needed to learn a lot about photography.
In this section I will try to share my experience with you and I hope you can find something usefull here.

But before I start making posts about more detailed topics I would like to show you some of my photos. I hope you will like it 🙂

Here you can take a look of my panoramas (3:1 aspect ratio):

Here you can find standard photos (3:2 aspect ratio):

Burnout – the best thing that happened to me in my professional life

When in comes to working life I think I was really lucky. I always knew what I want to in my life. Thanks to that I have never felt lost in my professional life. Well, at least until burnout.

I started working soon after the high school. My first serious job was a waiter job. This job was really nice for me that time. The job itself is quite easy, there is a free food, sometimes also free alcohol, the schedule is very flexible, you have 15 days off each month, and the money you can earn are very nice.

First, I was working in of the more famous and prestigious restaurants in Warsaw as a waiter’s helper. The work there was super hard and the atmosfere was really, really bad. But the service standards was super high, so, I learned quite a lot there. Unfortunately I was only able to last there for two months.

The second job I got was in another restaurant in Warsaw. I worked there for about two years and after that for another four years on special corporate events with couple of restaurant from the group. The job, specially the special events was really hard physical work, but I really like it. This was really amazing time for me. I was young, I earned a decent money, I had 15 days off each month, so I had the time to spend the money. It was like a never ending party. So if you are wondering which first job to choose, consider working as a waiter – its really nice job for the start.

In the meantime I started my master’s degree in psychology with specialization in social psychology. I have chosen psychology because I wanted to use is in my life – to better understand myself and the world around me and in my target job, which was to be a job at an advertising agency.

I wanted the job that is interesting. The job that gives you an oportunities to do many different things and you don’t have to do the same things every day. That is why I have chosen working in the advertising agency.
When it comes to the position, the matter was simple – I always loved to organize and manage projects, so the Project Manager was ideal position for me. With that criteria I started to looking for my first office job.

My first office job was in the biggest (that time) advertising agency in Poland. The brands we were working for were the biggest ones in the industry. The team I was part of was very nice, people were friendly and the work standards were really top notch, so everything was looking very good. I really liked this job and learned a lot there. I worked there for almost a year (this “almost” caused me quite some problems later), but unfortunately I was reduced as part of mass layoffs. That way I became unemployed overnight.

After that I had a really big problem finding another job. This “almost” year was very bad for me, because I was not a Junior anymore but still not a Project Manager, so I didn’t fit either on Junior Project Manager or Project Manager Position. Because of that and because I was not interested in anything else than working in advertising agency I was looking for my next job for almost a year. It was not fun.

Finally I get the job in another advertising agency where I met very interesting girl (my boss at that time) and when she proposed me to move on to her newly created agency I didn’t hesitate even 5 min. That way I joined the company which was the most important one in my whole career.
The company was indeed two companys in one. Advertising agency and a software house (with my girl boss partner as a boss). This was great because I could make and learn many things from two different areas.

Before I get to the details how the process of burnout started and ended I have to say few words about me and my approach to work.
I think the crucial thing is that I was raised by my grandmother. I owe her a classic old school values like: to keep one’s word, iron moral backbone, a passion for honesty, truthfulness and commitment to the job. Also I really engage emotionally in everything I do. I hate fails, so I always try my best and work that way, so I can avoid as much fails I can. For me, working well is not a duty performed for my boss, it is a matter of honor.

So I worked really hard and was giving all the time and effort to make things right. I made a lot of overtime not because I had to, but because I believed that this will take me to the place I want to be. The place where the time I invested will be returned to me and I will claim all the benefits from my hard work.
Because of how I worked I was able to get my bosses attention really quick. Thanks to that I had a oportunity to do many interesting things that were far away from my job description. I really like that.
When we gained our mutual trust we started talking about the plans for the future. We were talking a lot about the future and how we want to get there. I felt quite special and felt that I am an important part of a grand plan. I really believed in this plan and this gave me the energy to work even harder.

But time went by and unfortunately I began to notice that what we were talking about was not implemented. The promises made were not kept. Something else was always more important. So we did everything but our promised plan. Work has become repetitive and boring. Clients were dissatisfied all the time because we didn’t meet the deadlines. So my work turned into constant apologizing to clients and chasing unrealistic deadlines. Overtime didn’t change anything and there were a lot of them every day. I remember I felt really hopeless that time.

In the meantime, we were looking for an employee who was to work with me in the team. We managed to find a very interesting person. We managed to get along very fast. We had a similar approach to many matters and understood each other very well.
We noticed some things that we could change to improve the situation in the company. We wrote all our ideas down and full of energy and hope we went to present them to our boss. I remember this conversation very vividly. He listened to us carefully and then criticized all our ideas. That single event was crucial for me. That day I realized that there is a very small change that anything will change.
So my job was still constant apologizing to clients and chasing unrealistic deadlines and making meaninless overtime. At least now my boss knew what we were thinking about the situation.

Soon I started to feel very bad. Constant pressure made me nervous, restless and stressed. I often felt that I wasn’t myself. I had frequent abdominal pain and chest stinging. I felt hopeless and I thought that I’m waisting my best years on a meaningless job that is simply not worth all the time and effort. On Sundays afternoons, I had a standard stomach aches because I knew I’m going to work on Monday. I couldn’t fully relax even on holidays, and on some of them I even experienced a panic attacks.
I could not stand that long and soon I gave my notice. We had a long conversation with my boss and he convinced me to take 3 months unpaid leave before the final decision. This 3 months didn’t change anything for me, so I decided to change the job.

When I was looking for a next job I decided to give an advertising agency one more chance. It was because recently I was doing mostly IT projects, so I wanted to switch not only a company but also the type of the projects. I sent some CV’s and soon I get the job in one of the Warsaw advertising agency.
I worked there almost two years. After a year and half I started to feel the same symptoms, only much stronger. I remember that one day when I was coming home I experienced such a strong pain in the chest that I had to stop the car for a while.
That was the last warning for me. I knew that if I did nothing I would get a stroke, a heart attack or both.

So I made the fisrt step. I quit my job and started to make changes in my life. Already in the first month I received a little present from the Universe. I achieved massive sale in my guitar shop which I started two years before. I will never forget this day, the day I felt really, really good with my decision.

It’s been almost two years since I left my the standard working life and everyday I’m greatful that this burnout happened to me so quicky. I’m only 35 years old now and I have all the time and energy to build a different live for me and my family.

I take my time to do all the things I always wanted to do but I never had the time and energy for it. I changed the way I eat, the way I work, the way I rest. I returned to my big passion which is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I feel free and I feel I can do everything I dream of.

Do I regret all these years of working like that? Definately no. I learned many important things. I gained a lot of professional skills and I was working on many interesting projects. All this experience I gained is very useful for creating and managing my own projects.
But the most important thing I got from all this years is knowing who I don’t want to be. I had to experience it, but now I know exactly how my life should look like. Maybe for you this kind of event would be a disaster but for me this burnout was simply a liberation.

To everyone who struggles at work every day I can say one thing:
I’m on the other side of the fence now and you know what? The grass here is indeed much greener.