What a journey - a psychedelic shaman in a capitalist world

Dear @Wisecrack
sorry for the 1,5 year cliffhanger... but i hope you still intrested :)

So, i'm currently 32 years old, Senior Solution Architect and Technical Ambassador.

Whatever that means... :D

But it was a loooong-long rollercoaster ride to get here, but i can ensure anyone, all the ups-and-downs were worth it!

Let's start with my vision... Back in 2019 i was in a pretty bad shape, phisically and mentally too...

Wrong life choices with my ex took me to the bottom... i was working all day and night, i had 3 months(!!!) extra work time in 1 year... + 20 days holidays which i couldn't use... and i lived in an old, sketchy apartment where rats were fighting on the indoor gang...

Every day after i arrived home, i started drinking... whiskey... i was drinking 2-3 liters in a week... and got back to work...

It was pretty bad...

At one point - when my mentor left our company - went out for "just one beer...", but we drank out the pub's most expensive whiskey...

It was fun, but this was the very first time of my life, when i had hangover... my worst hangover ever... it took me 4 days to recover...

Before 27, it was nothing to have a hangover... But it was no fun anymore...

I tried to drink after that night 1-2 times, but i had hangovers again...

That time i finally got a new connection, who could help me some more intresting stuff :)

Which helped me realise, alcohol is killing me softly... and i should leave it... (currently 5+ years sober)

So, i started my psychedelic journey from the very bottom...

During university i used these things to find out what should i do in my life...

Shrooms and LSD tought me that i should start working as a programmer, and made me a clear path to my professional life.

So, i thought it could help me out once again... and ohh man... it turned out magical

First I had a fucking big relevation about my life, and i understood my skills, and limitations...

My high school hobby was volunteering... i was organising events for kids, and was an animator on festivals.

And ohh man, i learned A LOT soft skills back then... wich is pretty unique in the programmer scene...

But i knew, i locked my social life into a cage, during university, so i could get much more time into programming...

So a big relevation showed me i should use these skills again... but it also taught me that i can speak... but i can't talk...

So I started to work on my communication skills, and tried to define myself... lvl 27-30... you know, it's never too late... :D

I started to listen a LOT hungarian undergroun hip-hop rap music. It was the best thing man...

My dictionary grow so fucking much, that now i can finally TALK, at least in hungarian language! :D

I know it sounds silly, but it helped me sooo much to build connections with my colleges

And if you are a clown just like me... you try to mockup the rappers... you know, try to sing with them, which helped much more in talking...

Nowadays i'm one of the best speach man at our 100 employee company. (Yeah they are still programmers, and not the average human beings... but anyways i'm one of the bests... :D )

Back than, one trip hit me so hard, i had a dream about that all my childhood friends are working at my company, and we are making fucking big moneys, while having a lot of fun with friends...

I loved that dream so much, i frequently started thiking about it... over and over again...

At some point, a started to prepare a speach to my managements, how i imagine the companys transition from 50-to-150 employee...

But that was the point, when covid kicked in... which killed my biggest point in the speach, which was to take my managers to a festival, which i was organised back in the days...

this is a one week holiday for 150 kids / festival, where they have a lot of cultural programs and games... it is for their smile and having fun...

But the magic part is that it is organised by high school students!

They are not old enought to take legal moves, or buy boose, but they organise a festival every year with no money...

And these 12-18 year old fellas make it happen. They teach each other, and inherits the role positions in a small, non-profit living organisation, full of volunteers.

But yeah... covid finished off these festivals, and my dream was boxed and went under my bed with a label "maybe one day..."

During covid lockdown i had the best years of my life, i had a lot of things to enjoy (psychedelic stuffs) and i learned that during lockdown i could skateboard all the main roads in our city, which felt so cool man... :D

It gave me a second life...

I lived up the hip-hop underground lifestyle, and understood about the culture, and what makes an artist special in the UG scene, and i started to implement UG patterns on my programmers gang. The gang was so sick, our client currently working on to outsource ALL of its IT developments to my company... so i can ensure you once again... it worked fine :D

During that my career was on track, and i was jumping 2-3 steps on my professional life, much faster than anyone in the company.

The programmers who got on my project started to improve too, so team lead position started to blinking on me, and i was down for it!

My client - who i work for - ordered me only for "30 work days... make 2 PDF in java, and done"...

Yeah, that was 6 years ago... and i still fork for them :'DDD (love and hate story... but yeah my very first rants was all about this company...)

Fast forward, cause it's soooo boring...

So when i was 30 i finally finished my last "want to achive" thing from university... "Be an architect at 30" - so big money comes early, and not in my 40s...

Of course, it was pretty hard, but it was worth it. I was wasting so much time during university, that i wanted to caught up in my carreer.

And it worked! I achived Solution Architect title, and finally i could afford better rented apartment without rats...

I finally finished my university thesis (after 10 year i started the school...) and i got flying colours... i was staggered, how all the other thesis were so bad. The presenters could not speak... (yeah it hit me... maybe i'm not as bad as i was thinking...)

After that i had some free time, and i could extend my psychedelic experiences... So i went to Ozora festival 2023.

That was not the best, but it was good enough to plant some seeds. The seeds of my IT Shaman persona...

You know, after i was once in the bottom, i started to search the signs of burnouts... not on myself, but my colleges...

And i started to help them out, even when they didn't know they needed my help.

A stayed in the shadows, and started to work under the radar of my superior.

I started to have 1-on-1-s with the most overwhelmed and frustrated colleges.

I started to dug deeper and deeper in their frustrations, and after i found the root causes of the problems, i tried to give them small stories about "how i did come over" some similar situations, which gave them so much power, they started to climb out of the hole they dug for them selfs.

And this was the tipping point in my career.

I finally understood how can i feel more valuable, and how could i transform my day-to-day work to profession.

After 1 year of these un-ortodox sessions all my 3 mentees gave me the feedback: i saved them from leaving the company. (they still here)

Man that was the biggest feedbacks in my career... it felt so powerful and i'm still having goose bumps if i think about it.

I know, i got my ground... my hard work finally starts to pay off... so i started harvesting :)

and all i harvested, i invested back in the company... more and more...

Fast forward again... years were passing by, and my growing still rocks...

In 2024, i got a new superior, the second man of the company... man, that was a fucking awesome achievement!

I did nothing extra to earn it, but the leader specifically wanted me, which is such a great honor.

After i had a big fucking 3 hours long future planning meeting with him, where i gave him so much feedback about the company, and how i do my magic...

He started to work on a new role in the company, specifically for me! Fuck yeah!

You see, guys?! Hard work always pays of, IF YOU CAN SELL IT! Other ways its fucked up...

so to all my programmer friends: learn to sell! it will help so much to achieve!

So after that, and a half year of "management thinking about the new role"... this years august i finally got the "Technical Ambassador" role, with 3 other team leads. FUCK YEAH :D

The new role totally organised around my skillsets, and it is about to enhance connections between separate working teams, and optimise the company workflows.

Yeah 3-4 months not much, but we managed to start an "AI Challenges" workshops for learning AI tools, started "Architect DOJO" to train ourselfs for new architectural concepts, and learn from each others, and we just finished our first inside-company big event "Hackathon 2024".

It was fun, and i finally started to have more influence over my colleges.

They even started to open up to me... in the last 3 months i didn't even had to advertise my services... they come to me directly for some advices, or problems, which again such a great honor... i feel their respect and it empowers me...

Now it feels like that, my new role did not come from my superior... rather than my colleges started to respect me, and they singled out among themselves. And man, i never felt more appreciated than this. I know, i'm just as strong as my weakest college, but together... we can achieve ANYTHING.

And why i say all these to you Wisecrack?!

Because your passion motivated me so much on this long road, and somehow you always commented on me here on devrant, when i was down... and you always lifted me up, so i could not be more thankful for YOU!

Even if we never met in life (yet), i know you saved me too... so i hope You feel my respect, and i owe you! :)

I'm so damn sure, you was one of the most important cog which helped keep going through this year, so thank you Wisecrack!

And i hope this "letter" finds you well my friend, and hope you will smile on me :)

Happy holidays to my favourite crazy mathematician, @Wisecrack

And have a wise line of whatever you like on me ;)

wat about if ur bullied and sabotaged and not appreciated

strangely I felt angry reading that

@jestdotty than i will call it Karma… 😀
Basically my role is to support their worklife, so i trust them, if they want to backstab, i won’t turn against them.
Kingdoms come and go… one day i will have to go too

Damn... Bro has no enemies.
I'm happy for you!

@figoore support them in their self sabotage. aight I dig

@jestdotty been there, done that...

in that case i can offer them my worst-lifestyle advices to achieve their goal as quick as possible... just like me :'D

Nicely written. Wisecrack is here around once every 3 days on average, or twice per week.