So… Here’s my life story in a nutshell as I look at it from some distance. It was a valuable exercise for me to write it down, as it got me to again reflect, travel back in time, and try to understand why I got here and how, and who I „am“. I hope you find it interesting. After all, several people have advised me in the past to write a book about my „adventurous“ life, so I guess there must be something in it that is worth sharing.

I did not receive much of what I would call love from my parents in my childhood. Still, I’m grateful to them for basically giving me the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do and to explore the world around me – unlike today where many parents micro-manage their kids, which of course does not work for either side. Although I never felt really deep love for my parents as a result, I still wish it were different and maybe we would finally find each other… Haven’t given up on it, but the chances are getting smaller with each passing year.

The feeling of being „not good enough“ for my parents left painful scars in me, and I now know that I have been always searching for love, security, skin contact (my parents couldn’t really give me that), and ways to to embrace my „inner child“ when it felt lonely. Only recently did I realize that I have forgotten almost anything from my early years, and digging deeper with my psychologist I found out why I don’t even seem to „recognize“ the blonde boy in my childhood photos. But that would take us too far…

I was born and raised in Munich, Bavaria, and shortly before my eighth birthday we moved to the far west of Germany. Coming from Bavaria, I had a difficult start there as we were practically foreigners. After being beaten up at least once too many (parents did not bother to overprotect their kids back then), I focused on making friends with girls – a pattern that stayed with me throughout my life. Although it made me stand out even more as a wierdo, it also brought peace. I did a lot of sports during my early years and even more so in my youth and coming of age, and tried out anything else that came to my mind.

When time permitted, I enjoyed the beautiful nature around my hometown and sports fields. And there was plenty of time. I don’t know why things are so different today, when some children are already stressed in elementary school or need a competent psychologist by the time they reach high school. Anyway, after some time, I was lucky enough to be accepted into the right circles of friends after having to endure many painful and lonely moments. My friends finally offered me a safe haven and helped me not to feel all too ordinary.

I don’t think too positively about my school years up to late high school either. Until I was 17 I was petite and slim, just 164 cm tall and weighted 65 kg, and I always felt inferior to my classmates. This, of course, just increased their temptation to also treat me as an inferior. Although I was really good at math and some other science subjects, I was too distracted and playful to really concentrate on school work. In fact, I was the undisputed all-time record holder at my high school of with over 1.200 kids for breaking school rules. I was on the verge of being expelled several times, but luckily a compassionate teacher took me by her hand, saved me from expulsion, and led me out of my mess.

I was a really bad boy, stole a lot and did plenty of other crazy things. I almost burned down the sports hall in my home village, and was just plain lucky that nobody saw me. Only my father knew as he knew me, but he didn’t tell me until 30 years later… On the other hand, my friends and I loved nature and enjoyed being outside all year round. Whenever possible, we hiked through the woods to build tree houses, went to the fields to “hunt” pheasants, waded through streams to collect tadpoles., and slept in our parents‘ gardens. We usually didn’t have to be home until dinner at seven. Looking back, it feels like I was already on the run…

I learned early to work hard for my money as my parents taught me that’s the way (aha aha … they like it), and spent Saturdays cleaning Dad’s car or mowing Grandma’s lawn to earn a few bucks. During the holidays I worked regularly as well, usually picking fruits or planting seedlings at the farms surrounding our village. Approaching upper secondary school my best friend and I started spending our earnings at flee markets, collecting used records, or hitting any pub or snack bar we could find within cycling distance to play the ubiquitous pinball machines. On Friday nights, our „gang“ would met at the pub to play cards and dice until we were all drunk. As long as we didn’t cross that imaginary line that we knew was there, no one cared what we actually did.

Sunday mornings were church days. I went not so much because I believed in God – already then the atheist in me kept asking questions – but to stare coyly at the girls‘ section across the hall, and, of course, to have a few beers with my friends afterwards. Turned out though that despite all this open admiration, none of us (four or five) close friends had a girlfriend until we were already in our twenties…

On Sunday afternoons we finally did something useful by organizing tea room events and various other recreational activities for the other kids in the village. The advantage was that we could use the youth center rooms as and when we wished, for example to play „real“ table tennis in a huge room whenever we wanted or to organize – soon to be regionally known – beer and dance parties with up to 100 or more teenies in the party cellar. Although we didn’t really plan for it, I think we learned that selfless efforts pay off in the end.

All in all, my youth allowed me to try as many subjects as I wanted, from all kinds of sports to nature exploration to community involvement, from parties to movie nights to photography, from drinking binges to singing in a church choir to money making and … to collecting lots of great music – well, besides books, stamps, Carrera tracks and beer mats in my case.

Anyway, I always knew that I wanted to explore the world, and I did. First opportunities came through Interrail, a comparably cheap train ticket valid for a month that allowed us to travel all across Europe and let us explore sunnnier countries (most often Spain), enjoy the feeling of total freedom and meet hippies from all over the world. We slept on beaches or roof tops, met lots of crazy folks, and lived on five DM (Deutsche Mark) a day. We bathed naked, smoked weed, and when we got home we did not (even have to) tell our parents what the heck we had actually done. At home we retreated to sports, nature and activities with friends, just that now we were high most weekends, had all-night video sessions or played poker and dice games for money, and we all loved to witness the explosion of soul, rock, ska, reggae and punk music. I would say we were basically happy.

I „ran away“ from home straight after school and joined the army for two years. I still don’t know why I had the courage to raise my hand at the right moment, and, as only candidate out of our regiment of 150 standing at attention, let myself be sent from Hamburg to the Netherlands, of all places. As the country is close by our home and as it had always been more liberal than stiff Germany, smoking weed was commonplace and from then on felt just like a natural ingredient to my life. And despite the downsides that most certainly come with every drug this one helped me a lot to find out who I am, give a fuck about anyone telling me what to do, read good books, develop self-confidence … and to finally grow up.

As I stayed longer in the army than we had to, and because I worked outside of Germany – we actually still had borders in Europe back then – I was already making a lot of money at the age of 18 years and on top enjoying duty-free alcohol, cigarettes and an „army“ car. However, I had still no clue of what I was going to do with my life, and in particular how to exploit my math skills, the only subject I had been really good at in highschool. By chance, I saw a newspaper ad that flashed me … and shortly after, with a considerable share of my savings, bought the very first PC that came out in 1984, an Apple II. Since I had a lot more free time than all of my friends I started teaching myself low-level „chip programming“ on its 6502 CPU and got really fascinated by the possibilities – and games, of course. Clearly now, Computer Science was the way to go and I finally had a … goal.

So, right after the army and just before my 20th birthday, I went to the cosy city of Aachen – where I still, or rather again, live – to study Computer Science at RWTH. I found some good student jobs, and soon after arrival managed to organize my life almost self-sustained, as I did not want to take money – and influence – from my parents any longer. As one of the few programmers around at that time, it was of course easy to get well-paid jobs. With a huge – and to me still unexplicable – investment of several months of continuous 8-hour days of hammering Analysis & Co into my brain I also managed to pass the fucking hard math exams. Only 5% of us actually made it. But finally I could use my brain for a „good“ cause.

I had always liked „giving“, too, which helped me sharpen my social skills and make connections in my new home town. I wrote many math exams for friends and aquaintances that were not as fascinated by the subject and doomed to fail their studies alltogether, and got them through also. At the time, I even thought of creating a business out of writing math exams for others, and enjoyed it silently when my friends called me „the Brain“. At last, I was getting some recognition. I started growing weed at home and loving the daily Reggae music and ganja sessions in our shared flat – I had already collected close to 200 reggae records alone – and riding my motorcycle through the Eifel „mountain“ ranges on the weekends, thereby quickly growing my circles of friends. And when I „by chance“ applied as a student helper at the Institute of Communication Science, a whole new world of weirdos and opportunities opened for me…

The chair was full of smart people who could both give and take, the atmosphere was challenging but easygoing, and the research conducted was at the forefront of Internet development, which had just begun its amazing journey to global triumph. Already as a student assistant, I got thrown into contributing to several international projects. Thanks to the daily proximity to clever professors and at close supervision by doctoral students who needed results, I was able to quickly expand my knowledge and work experience.

Riding the waves of this innovative environment, I graduated with top marks and received a price for the best diploma thesis in communication sciences written in Germany. After this success, all doors opened for me and the head of the institute tried to persuade me to pursue a university career. I truly felt honored. Yet, after some moments of reflection, I said „Sure, thanks! … erm … However, I can’t start until I have fulfilled my long-held dream of traveling around the world… (?)“. And my to-become-doctor-father – after some grumbling that he quite obviously wanted me to notice – said that he’s fine.

I bought a round-the-world ticket (11 stopovers, free choice of length of stay at each stop, for only 1.600 DM, i.e. 800 €!) and traveled for 5 1/2 months. This trip undoubtedly proved to be the most important development step in my life. I learned to gratefully admire the limitless spectrum of nature and to surrender myself to the amazing diversity of the world. I mingled with other cultures and experienced other – as I felt often more laid back – ways of living than ours. But above all, I learned to be attentive and modest. Most people in Germany have not seen much of the world, yet tend to believe that their way of life is the only right one. From then on I knew it wasn’t.

I met people in the Malaysian jungle who wanted to touch me because they had never met white people before. I was given an audience with the head of a tiny island in Polynesia who had still eaten humans (!). My head stood out of a crowd of probably more than 100.000 – more short-statured – people at a Muslim festival close to the Thai-Malaysian border, with no other white person in sight. And I made friends with most beautiful people from all over the world.

I stood in awe of volcanic craters in Fiji and New Zealand and at 60m tall trees in the leech-infested oldest rainforest in the world (Taman Negara). I snorkeled with sharks and giant tortoises over corals, hitchhiked through the breathtaking „Lord of the Rings“ scenery in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, was taught to play Snooker in an abandoned wooden hotel in old English style in the former capital of Fiji (Levuka on the volcanic island of Ovalao), and felt like Robinson Crusoe on Aitutaki, a remote island in the Cooks where the (actual!!) mutineers of the Bounty had taken a few weeks of rest. And so on and so forth… I was totally blown away and never wanted to go home. But of course money is not infinite.

So I came back and re-joined the university for another five years, teaching students, giving lectures, and co-inventing some nice „stuff“ related to the development of the Internet. Again, it was pure co-incidence that all of this happened shortly after the Internet was introduced on a larger scale in the US, and that we were among the first scientists in Europe to use it. Although we did not yet grasp what it could/would become even after „the Web“ spread like a tsunami from CERN in 1989, we were all instantly faszinated by the previously unknown joys of „traveling“ through virtual spaces. Moreover, already then we could basically access any content we wanted.

I finished my PhD at the steep age of 33. Well sure enough, I still loved to travel, party and smoke ganja… But even my sometimes intoxinated „self“ managed to graduate with highest marks (I should stress, however, that a PhD is always in significant parts a team effort!). As a nice side effect, my dissertation got publiziced as a book and I received a prestigious award from RWTH. So even though I was literally partying every night, even more doors opened for me.

I had developed a passion for Sweden during my student years, and as Ericsson operated a large development center near Aachen I started to establish joint projects and connections with our institute. Coincidentally, my by then close friend and mentor Frank, for whom I had provided a key mathematical proof for his doctoral thesis, was establishing himself as an Internet pioneer in Ericsson’s home country of Sweden (Mobile Valley, as it used to be called). So without any further consideration, the next step in my career path was already perfectly laid out in front of me.

Three years earlier I had met my future wife Anja, a beautiful and kind lady from a nearby town in the Netherlands, and just one year later we had our first son Jonas. Our peaceful life changed the moment he opened his eyes, as he greeted the world more like a constantly squealing howler. At least I got some breaks, as the international projects I now began to run for Ericsson Research required fairly regular travel through most of Europe. Our daughter Nina Malou was born in 1998, and we moved to the countryside across the near border in Belgium.

Everything seemed fine, and we expected some peaceful years ahead. But hey, here goes fate again… Since my first trip to Malaysia and Singapore in 1989, I had wanted to live in Asia at least for some time. So when Frank called me one fine evening and asked if we should set up a research lab for Ericsson in Singapore, it took me less than a second to decide. At first I didn’t even ask my girlfriend, but she liked the idea so all was cool.

We moved to Singapore at end of 1998. Internet and mobile Internet were booming, and since Frank was already widely known as an Internet visionary by then, Ericsson basically gave us free reign with our budget. So we went out, headhunted the very best guys we could possibly find on the island, and created an amazing team. Within the coming 15 months, based on in-depth user research, we invented the „iPad“, a „Facebook“ predecessor, mobile phones that supported Chinese natural language input (spoken and written – I even learned how to perfectly write a number of Chinese characters just for my „show-offs“), a futuristic home router, and so much more cool stuff.

We were soon known literally all over the world, and when we presented our gadgets at our home base in Sweden and at trade shows like CeBIT, people cheered. TV cameras were always there. What a time it was, the most exciting of my career. I had the great honour of leading the team that built the very first „DelphiPad“ in 2000, an amazing 10 years before Apple – with admittedly greater success – launched the iPad. We won global design awards, had business partners fly into Singapore just to meet us, and on top offered the best coffee in our entire skyscraper, so all high rank visitors would first pass by our coffee bar. As a nice side effect, we soon became a central point of essential information flows in the company. I remember our Ericsson CEO, after all, boss of 125.000 employees at that time, chatting with me, the „little“ researcher, for over two hours, drinking expressos and raving about his tough job.

And you know what I believe set us apart from others, beyond having a grand team and basically unlimited cash flow from our headquarters? Every year, Frank and I would book a place in a beautiful resort somewhere in Southeast Asia – with all families but no Internet access – and spend a few days discussing with our team what we should do and want to do next. After that, we would fly „home“, easily convince our bosses, and just do it. It was such a fucking wonderful time. We lived in a huge condo next to the jungle, had swimming pools, tennis and squash courts, later also a maid, a company car, and … expat salaries. Our kids loved it too, of course. Noel had been born in Singapore just 21 months after Nina and shortly before the turn of the century, and the always warm and clean city turned out to be a paradise for parents with young children.

Whenever we could, we crossed the border to Malaysia, just 20 km away, to visit some of the most beautiful islands in Southeast Asia. As a sort of more personal endeavor, I GPS-tagged and published the very first online map of the Singapore jungle, and went on to become a guide for locals to spread the importance of the forests even to the – at that time – rather nature ignorant Chinese majority on the island. And of course, I took the kids into the jungle whenever time allowed, planting a seed and passion for nature that is still present in them today. I climbed Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, close to 4.100m high, several times with friends and thereby re-discovered my passion from the Bavaria childhood days for the complete silence when you’re alone in the mountains. Everything was just awesome … until fate struck again.

The Internet bubble burst when we were at our peak, and Ericsson almost had to declare bankruptcy within days – only three out of the six Telco suppliers actually survived the steep ride downhill. Of our company’s 125.000 employees, 50.000 were fired within weeks, and our device business, i.e. the core of what we were researching, was sold. As were „our“ tablets. Frank left Singapore to setup a new lab in Silicon Valley, only to be sadly rerouted back to Sweden shortly before the lab was scheduled to be opened.

I was promoted to head of Ericsson Research in Asia, and faced the challenge of finding new work … and budget for our team. A two-year struggle for impact started, with important decisions now being made mostly in Sweden and sometimes requiring me to take on the 16-20 hour one-way trip to Stockholm on a weekly basis. One day I just knew it, our time was up and I decided to close the legendary Cyberlab Singapore. At least, as a nice side effect of our fame, I was able to reassign most of my employees, and only – under lots of tears – had to fire two of our 15 team members.

We went back to Germany at the end of 2002, and I knocked on the doors of my home base. In the five years I had climbed the technology ladder, however, I had become more „senior“ at Ericsson than many of the 1.000 people who worked in Aachen, so at first they had no idea what to do with me. I decided to work more at headquarters, and started flying to Sweden up to three times per week. With many of the key technology decision makers trusting my track record by now, I soon found a new role. Every year from then on I was assigned to lead one of the business unit’s five most strategic technology goals, reporting directly to our CTO and being able to build my teams from the very best specialists Ericsson had worldwide.

As part of those flagship projects, we first invented and then developed a lot of cool „stuff“, from new mobile services to home applications, from IPTV to mobile blogging, from connecting cars to networked machines. Within a few truly exiting years, my project teams and I filed more than 200 patents, developed standards, wrote a lot of code, populated Ericsson’s booths at trade shows with world’s first prototypes, wrote headline articles in leading research magazines, and impressed customers and the press.

Attention to and reputation for „my“ projects grew further, as we were also accountable for parts of the salary of ~25.000 business unit employees, and never failed once. Usually, as an important part of our assignments, I had to drive technology partnerships with Ericsson’s main customers, the 10 largest telcos in the world, in parallel. We’re talking several millions of dollars per project here, and experts and partners all over the world. I had to be available 24/7 and could soon enter any business lounge and „buy“ Christmas presents for the kids with air miles…

So up until this point everything was fine and my innovation career was what you could print into a how-to book. But times change and I got older and also tired of so much responsibility. So many people were depending on my performance. And so was my family, of course. Out of the blue the research department in Aachen was shut down and I had to find a new home organization. I went into product pre-development and from 2011 led some the first „cloud“ networking projects at Ericsson, only this time not having much of a clue about the underlying technology. To my surprise, it still somehow worked and the company rewarded me with the highest award they have. And again with a little help of my mentor Frank, who in the meantime worked as a dean at Agder University in Norway, I also became an (Adjunct) Professor for Computer Science.

Things went downhill from 2012. My wife became depressed and after a painful betrayal we divorced. This was of course very hard on the kids, but also hard on me, as I not only had to leave our home but also had to still support all four of them subsequently. I also lost interest and passion in being responsible for so much money, and for so many people. I myself began to get depressed and feel clear signs of burn-out. So I asked Ericsson three times to let me go – and to pay for my departure, an enormous amount of some 250.000€. As could be expected, they said no every time I asked. But I wanted to get out and finally find more peace.

It was – once again – sheer luck that I had applied to give a course at a vocational university – i.e. people already in their professions – on „Project & Innovation Management“ at that time, as I wanted to try out working as a lecturer. Well, only to find out I am not good enough at it. During this half year though I had to work at Ericsson during the day, and at the university in the evenings and weekends, which of course made life a nightmare. But as so often in my life, there was also an upside: One of my students was a psychiatrist, and she one day took me aside and told me that I didn’t look good at all. I had been in psychological treatments for some time, as I knew I wasn’t able to function much longer, so she took me in. Not only did she save my life more than once, but she also helped me to finally get out of my job.

What gave me energy though was that I had met what at that time felt like the love of my life, Carmen from South Africa. Incredibly beautiful, kind, happy … my dream women. I felt as happy as one can feel (I think). We had wonderful first two years (2013/2014) until her youngest son got epilepsy (she also has three children). After that, unfortunately, she stopped focusing on our relationship but only concentrated on her kids. As a result, we hardly ever got time with each other anymore, which frustrated me. Her other two children also had severe problems, so at least I understood her.

But there I stood again, not only responsible for my family’s budget but also larger parts of hers, thus ending up with eight dependents in total. It turned out as the final blow to breakdown, as I was of course also still responsible for all that Ericsson „shit“. I started to „drink away“ my frustration, which, not surprisingly, did not help either… Nonetheless, we also still had really good moments and enjoyed our love, a huge house 100m from a nature reserve and on an organic farm, and our passions. I had always dreamed of living like that. We loved Techno and Reggae, took a lot of weed and (sometimes) ecstasy, and danced the hell out of our lows at festivals.

She left me for the first time in 2018 after five years. I was devastated that I hadn’t managed to maintain our love. Well actually, I still have no idea today why she even ran in the first place. I got really depressed and sad, because I had always tried to give the best of me, even at home, and I can say that was all I could give. For example, I hardly bought myself any things, and took as much homework and worries from her as I possibly could. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t seen for that. I even accepted that I spent way less time with my children now as my energy was completely taken up by my job and all that homework.

We did get together again after one year, but I knew something had to change. She was always cold here anyway and every year I got down just from winter too, as I’m addicted to warmer climate and green forests. And the forests here alone are quite depressing in winter because they have no leaves. Carmen was by now also a yoga teacher, besides her half-day work as child psychiatrist. She introduced me to a couple from Sri Lanka she had met at her yoga sessions, and the four of us became close friends. They had been the first refugees from Sri Lanka to be welcomed to Germany 30 years ago, and had left behind a huge resort in the middle of the Sinhalese jungle.

And so my old dreams came to life again within days. We got involved as partners, and I lent them a lot of money (half of my rental savings) when concrete plans evolved to emigrate back to the tropics. Since none of the other three really knew how to establish a business I naturally took over management of the entire project again and in August 2021 we decided to move to Sri Lanka. Tough stuff, because we had to leave our children, our jobs, our apartments, our friends behind … At least the children were largely „on their feet“ by that time. The future looked bright again and the pearl of the Indian Ocean awaited us.

This time, however, timing was not on our side, as Corona hit us out of the blue and with full force. The tourism industry went down to zero, and as our plans had been to establish a resort for yoga, Ayurveda, and natural organic nutrition, our plans and our money quickly went down the drain. God, this was the job and the place I had always dreamed of. Excited by the adventures we had experienced on this fantastic island, but frustrated by the failure of our project, we moved back to Aachen in early 2022. On top of that, our „friends and partners“ turned out to be scammers who didn’t pay me back a cent. I’m still fighting in court today to get at least some money back, but it looks like I won’t succeed and have to pay more and more just to keep the case alive.

So I got really depressed again, even more than ever, especially as Carmen now blamed me for everything. Again, I was the person in charge and felt „wrong“, something that had made me sick already 10 years before. In parallel, she decided to live a completely spiritual life now and I could no longer identify with her beliefs. I mean, I’m a scientist of course, but I also admit that humanity knows nothing about anything, and until it’s proven I’m open. It’s just that when people tell me that they know and that my, or even worse their, problems are caused by me not believing in what they believe that I run … and fast.

Our love faded and I was frustrated as never before. Because I was now also facing worries about my finances, as I was unemployed and still had to „feed“ seven people, I started panicking. In the end, I lay on my bed shaking all over my body for two months (!). I only got up to go to the library to find out the best way to kill myself. After thorough research I chose freezing to death, the supposedly most „beautiful death“, and started to plan my exit. Of course, to properly plan I had learned. I had the pills, had drawn up my will and written the farewell letters…

(Un-)Fortunately, it did not get cold enough in that early winter of 2022, and I waited „in vain“ for several weeks. Carmen, by pure chance, found my farewell letter – basically saying that I’m an as…le and nobody „deserves“ me – and immediately took me to my psychiatrist who saved me once again. She just said that she either sends me straight into a closed clinic that I will likely never get out of again, or I promise her right there and then not to kill myself. I promised.

After months of sheer terror in my brain we finally found the right medication to relieve my anxiety attacks, albeit only after three unsuccessful tries that costed me my health, sports, love, and most of my trust in myself and others. I went into a mental health clinic again and – for the forth time – worked a lot on my „self“ and on comforting my hiding „inner child“. These five weeks in Berlin proved to be another turning point in my life, as I came out with new hope and energy to carry on. That was just over two years ago.

Subsequently, I fought my way back into life and learned again to focus on the many positive sides: My beautiful „kids“, who are so full of love, kind character, social skills and modesty that I finally started to feel really proud of having contributed to their development. I had read to them almost every evening when they were little, invented countless games, written poems for their birthdays, and always tried to keep at least some time for them on the weekends. Later, we spend a week hiking in the Alps together every summer and I’m quite sure that my passion for the mountains will live on in them.

I could also always and without any doubts rely on the unconditional support of my best friends, who were close when I needed them most. I had again found a beautiful apartment close to nature and Aachen city, and probably (still) more money than maybe 95% of the people in the world. I managed to get a new job with little responsibility, working for only 5 hours per day and re-entering at the „bottom of the pyramid“. Well, right now that is changing again because I seem to attract responsibility and tend to always question the way things are done and try to improve them.

I was once again really lucky in relying on my instincts and delegating this job hunt to others, as I’m basically overqualified for most standard jobs, let alone part-time ones. My decision to quit visibilty and responsibilty in favor of a stressless work place fully paid off and the situation is really cool now. I go home at 3pm and then often take a nap, after which I may or may not work. During my „break“ I had also established my own company, a web design and business development firm for small start-ups with a focus on migrants into Germany, which is what this website is for. So I can decide all by myself if, when and how much I work in my free time.

As unthinkable as it looked to me two years ago, I’ve become a really happy guy again within just one year. One very important reason for my inner peace also being that I no longer have my girlfriend around and therefore don’t have to deal with all the crap in a relationship any longer that grows to becoming unbearable if you can no longer communicate empathetically with each other. In the end, she had told me day by day that I’m „wrong“ in basically everything I’m doing, just like my father. Fuck, no! I still do believe in love and partnership, but I don’t need them anymore.

A few days ago I turned sixty (damn, life is short!), and since I’m not a birthday guy I was wondering what to do. People here spent tons of money to celebrate „round“ anniversaries, and I usually hate such stiff parties. I decided to take it the Mark Manson way and just don’t give a fuck. But the closer the day came, the more uncomfortable I felt with not celebrating it. So I messaged my kids, my sister with family and my best friends (some 15 people, so … cosy), reserved a few tables at one of my favorite pubs and told my guests not to worry about gifts as it was more important to come. Instead, I would raise money that evening to buy rain forest in Peru. I had „bought“ rain forest throughout my life as it’s my favorite place to be, well, second only to standing on a mountain peak with my boys or close friends.

I prepared a little speech to tell them my life story (of course not as long…) and why they are important to me. I basically said that I don’t want them to celebrate me, but I want to celebrate them as they all contributed a lot to making me who I am and helped me survive and not lose hope when I was down. It was one of the most beautiful evenings of my life. After the pub I was so buzzed that I felt the urge to let out that energy, so I went to a big techno party with one of my best friends and we danced like crazy until the morning.

Yet … I’m single and I do feel lonely from time to time. On the other hand, I love my peace and freedom. I can do whatever I want and nobody has to give a shit, and I don’t have to give much of a shit either. And who knows what’s next?

So the happy ending to what I today feel has been a very fulfilling life is: I still feel like I’m not at all done …  yet!

Post Scriptum

I am (I think) a pretty open fellow and that has been one of the pillars in my life that has helped me everywhere. I always try to tell the „truth“, when I talk to my kids, friends, partners, teams, and just like I did when I reported to CEOs or CTOs of world leading companies about what I consider will be successes or failures (well … who the fuck am I to tell?). So with this write-up I tried not to make anything up, just like I’m not seeking applause for anything. In fact, I think that humility is one of my key strengths. I have always tried to think of my kids, partners, family, friends and teams first, and as much as possible strived to highlight their contributions to our mutual success.

I feel eternally grateful that the inherent gap that still exists between my parents and me has pushed me to become a „better“ father. My children have now become more like best friends, and our relationship is open, trustful, forgiving and simply beautiful. Noel (25) is studying biology and still depends on me, while Nina (27), happily heading corporate design at an energy company in Cologne, and Jonas (30), a mechanical engineer and now supervising astronauts in experiments on the International Space Station (!), are finally living on their own budgets. So my stress level has also decreased significantly. It seems to me aging is not all bad.

The day before my birthday Noel connected with me on LinkedIn, the leading global business network. So I checked in there and lately realized that I hadn’t read many of the comments people had left for me since my departure from Ericsson in 2021. I read … and soon I was in tears. The values, passion, professionalism, respect and team spirit I had tried to represent all of my (job) life were actually reflected in many of the comments and recommendations. I was so overwhelmed that all the energy I had invested in giving my best was actually seen and appreciated – quite contrary to what my girlfriend and my father had managed to express. The concentrated recognition almost knocked me off my chair. So, should I ever write a book about what I learned from my life, it will simply focus on inspiring people to live the dreams and values they believe in.

You can find photos of me, my kids, friends, even my ex-girlfriend and ex-wife, and loads of nature shots on my photo page on Flickr (although only from 2006). Just click on „photo“ above or here… Should you need „proof“ for parts of above (his-)story,  you can find me and larger parts of my network at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreasfasbender.

(December 2024)