After few months on Steemit I realised I never made a proper introduction of myself.
I am Diego, born in Rieti, a small town near Rome, within the mountains, where there is not much but beautiful villages and landscapes.
My family is composed by me, my mother and my sister. My father died at work when I was only 3 years old.
He left a huge hole in my soul that I could never fill. No memories, not even a single word or gesture I may remember from him and this is something I will never forgive destiny for. Losing a father when you are that young and the only male in the family is not easy thing to live with, but was also my biggest strength, my biggest motivation to do something meaningful in my life.
I Was And I Am An Artist (Inside)
I started studying piano when I was only 8 years old and I remember the teacher telling to my mother I would have never been able to play an instrument. It was just not for me.
The school fired the teacher few weeks later and I became the best pianist of my class. I studied piano for almost 10 years.
I also studied violin and drums for quite some time.
...But I Wanted To Be An Actor
When I was 13 I introduced myself to a theatre company of my town and worked with them for 5 years. I left my own town and moved to Rome where I attended some professional acting academies for 3 years and also participated to one of the most popular Italian TV series, i Cesaroni 3. Was funny to sign autographs, I must admit that.
I left acting after this experience once I realised the ideal world I had in my mind, was actually really different.
Another Self Taught Developer
Luckily enough, when I was 18, I had in mind to create a database for actors, since none existed at that time in Italy, but I did not want to pay a developer for that. I started looking into a CMS named Boonex Dolphin and tried to make some changes by myself, without actually ever reading a single line of coding tutorial or book.
Trial and errors, trial and errors and eventually after few months of playing with the code up to 18 hours a day, I was able to do some coding myself.
After I left my acting career, becoming a professional developer seemed to be the most reasonable choice, was also the right one.
First Steps As An Entrepreneur
I opened my first personal company when I was 19 and earned good money just by making applications and enhancements to existing web softwares. I kept doing that for 3 years when I decided was time for me to setup a business and make the big money.
I opened a company and I was able to generate a bare minimum of 15K Euros revenue a month by providing IT services to companies and professionals.
The company failed when I had a bad personal time.
I was really flying high, earning 15K Euros per month at only 22 years old and already imagining myself driving a Lambo few years later.
In reality I had no friends, no social life. Was just me, my ex girlfriend and my work. When my ex left, all the rest broke down and the only remaining things I had were debts to pay for the losses made in the last months before closing the company.
I was working up to 14 hours a day for more than 2 years, sometimes also sleeping in the office...but.. it did not work.
EUR 30K Debts..Yeah!
I moved from Rome to Milan and for the first time in my life I started working as an employee for a web agency. I was 24. I was already able to speak and write fluent english and to code in few different programming languages.
It took 2 years to cover all the debts and I almost had a nervous breakdown. I was working up to 12 hours a day just to pay my rent and to cover the debts.
I did it! Once I paid the last cent of my debts I left the job, took some rest and met my current girlfriend, after more than 3 years alone.
My Little Treasure
Once I left the job in Milan I came back to Rieti. I was in front of a bar with some friends. I was a bit drunk.
I met Francesca and I clearly remember the first thing she told me was "What kind of drugs do you take"?
She asked that because I have a tattoo on my heart that is composed by the initials of my family in chronological order and she was making fun of that.
- E - Enrico, my father.
- L - Luigina, my mother.
- E - Erika, my sister.
- A - Alessio, my sister's first son.
- R - Riccardo, my sister's last son.
ELEAR. Now you know where my username @elear comes from.
She was young and so funny and natural, I felt in love immediately.
We have spent more than 2 years together now and travelled most of Europe.
She gave me the strength I lost in the past and thanks to her I found the courage to open again a personal company and restarted my career from scratch.
I worked for few months in Italy when I got a call from Germany and worked there for almost another year, with a very good salary. I left Germany when I found out about Steem.
A Small Mention - My Mother
My mother is not an easy person. She is very rigid and sometimes it is hard to communicate with her. BUT SHE IS MY HERO.
Her husband died leaving her with two kids, I was 3, my sister was 11. Her husband died in one of the most tragical ways I could imagine. She found the strength to go on. She made us grown up. She went through every possible issue in life. SHE IS THE STRONGEST PERSON I KNOW.
Thanks for being what you are...Thanks mom.
I Am Utopian!
While the idea of Utopian started to flow in my mind 5-7 years ago, the concept behind is way older.
I am an entrepreneur by nature, but one of that kind who hates how money work, who just cannot live with the fact this system is wrong.
I actually HATE working as the society has imposed us to do.
I worked for multi-million euros companies where I was the only one to let them survive on the software side and having just a misery in exchange for that. I remember one time not sleeping for 3 days in a raw because their servers were down.
My father died at work, in a giant enterprise, because they were saving money on safety...A boiler exploded while my father was there. He was alive for one week and then died. The enterprise also tried to pay the minimum insurance possible. Thanks to my mother, that did not happen.
I never had a reason to work. Once the enterprise paid the insurance for the death of my father I could have lived by that for many years, but instead I started immediately and made working-for-a-mission my biggest obsession.
Who possibly hates working more than me?
That's where Utopian comes from. The necessity to create a fair economical system.
The Dream Behind Utopian
I was in Germany when I found out about Steem. Thanks @jerrybanfield for that.
Utopian was an idea I had in mind and experimented the concept already few years back, but I did not have a practical way to achieve the mission, until I found Steem.
Once I realised the potential, I left the very well paid job in Germany and gave myself 100% to Utopian.
- I do really want to change something with Utopian.
- I do really want to create a new, decentralised, meritocratic economy from which everyone can benefit immediately.
- I do really want to change the way we think about working and I imagine a society where people work for their own will and not for necessity.
- I do really want to create an economy where professionals are rewarded for the real value they bring and not for the position they have.
- I do really want to create a platform to fast forward the creation of Open Source softwares, fundamental technologies for the evolution of the entire humanity.
What Do I Want To Get From Utopian?
PROFITS. Yes, I am not the new Jesus Christ and would be dishonest if I'd say Utopian is a project just to change the World and I am not looking for anything back.
I am a developer, I could build the next shitty e-commerce and have a decent income just by doing that, but I am not interested.
I always wanted to deserve my profits and to be proud of them. Utopian is the way. Utopian is my opportunity to try to make a change, to put my fingerprint in this World and to live by that. IT IS WORTH TRYING!
What Do I Want To Do With The Utopian Profits?
Well...buying a Lamborghini is a dream I have from a long time ;p ...but there is something else in my mind, that I will have to achieve before or later.
I want to tear down the symbol of that enterprise that killed my father.. It is still there, in my town and I see it every single day.
VISCOSA
SNIA Viscosa is not just the enterprise were my father died, it is the perfect symbol of how wrong the society we live in is.
It is still there. I can see it every single day. It reminds me I need to do something.
The entire place is abandoned since many years, but it is still there. An entire polluted field no one wants to buy.
I want to buy it.
I want to tear it down.
I want to make that thing explode!
And I want to build a park and an organisation to help kids who lost their parents tragically.
The cost of that shit is 5 Million Euros and I promised myself I will have them soon enough to make my dream, a reality.
Thanks for reading.