THIS IS MY ROAD
I’m gonna take you on a shortcut through my life
how I got where I am today and what the goal is for 2025-2030.
So buckle up!
IT ALL STARTED…
In a small village up north for 23 years ago, in my hometown, Beetsterzwaag, my childhood, the place I called my home. Growing up with 3 sisters, a stepfather and my biological mother.
Although my life was pretty good, it wasn’t always butterflies and rainbows.
Bully was a serious problem in my life back then. Scared of going to school, never knowing what was gonna happen that day. Bullies choose me because I was and still am a super sensitive person, which was the jackpot for them.
ON THE MOVE
My mom was all about horses, did competitions and won a lot too, and she also got my youngest step sister into horse riding. When that happened, we traveled more than we already did with my mom’s horse riding. And of course, I was dragged along with all of it, even though I did not like it at all, but I was still pretty young so I wasn’t allowed to stay at home at that age, which is understandable.
My stepdad was one of the main photographers for these competitions. Which is funny because it never interested me back then. I remember struggling to take a photo and not finding it interesting at all.
These competitions took about 2-5 days, depending on the scale.
I had some ways to keep myself occupied. I secretly took my laptop along with me to play Minecraft, and I played golf with some random kids there :)
choices
From my 12th to my 18th I went through loads of different phases. Things were happening around me that I couldn’t handle because I was in a huge personality crisis with myself.
Struggling at school, my exams were a pain in my ass.
My graduation wasn’t rolling on smooth wheels at all, but luckily I made it. Then I had to choose what I wanted to study. I was clueless, eventually I chose Game Artist, the reason why, is because I’m creative minded, and honestly, I liked it for a while, better even, I loved gaming and my best friend at that time, sat next to me in class. So I thought to myself, why not, let’s give it a shot.
Within a month or so, I realised this wasn’t for me, I wanted to do something with my hands, I got bored staring at a screen the whole day designing game characters. So if I knew that this wasn’t it, what was? To get an answer to this question I started my first traject. This traject was designed to get closer to myself, and by doing that, getting a better idea of what I was passionate about. After 8 weeks, I finished it, and noticed myself experimenting with mobile photography. And from that moment on, I knew that this was it for me. Now writing this, i’m happy I stuck with it :)
THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
So after being stuck in my hometown for long enough I decided to switch schools because I wanted to live somewhere more central. And I made it happen, I’ve got myself a room in the middle of the country, Everything sorted, the first day on my new school started. And there she was, instantly catching my eye, wondering, who’s that?
She was walking into the classroom with 2 of her classmates, and she started noticing me, wondering, who’s that? Am I in the right classroom?
I didn’t knew it back then, but that girl, now my girlfriend, is now the love of my life. Writing this story almost feels like a fairy tail.
I happened to be looking for a new camera back at the time, and I started asking around the class “who’s she? What’s her name?”. Then when I got home, I couldn’t get her out of my mind, wondering, so I decided to go looking for her on instagram, and there she was. She looked like a really smart person, which she is, so I the first question that started all this was, Hey Joëlle, would you happen to know a good camera bag? i’m looking for one. And from that moment on, without even realising it we started to grow together like two pieces of carton board limed together with the strongest super lime.
Soon we became inseparable, after a long talk through instagram, we added each other on snapchat. We talked and we talked and we talked, everyday, and still do. We became closer and than ever. And became best friends within weeks.
After about a year, I started to really care for her on a different level, something I never really felt, so it was confusing back then. Laying on her lap on a Saturday evening, watching a movie together, I asked her if she would like to become my girlfriend, And she told me she’d like to sleep on it for a night, and that was okay with me. So the next morning, when everyone had gone to church, we sat down together and she asked me a couple of questions, which I replied. The clock was hitting 11:50, and that’s when love of my life became my girlfriend. After a while I started doubting a long while, because I had never felt such a thing like honest love in my life before, so I really needed to get my head straight, all that time, she was waiting for me on the other side waited. Then I caught myself thinking some night right before I fell asleep, she’s the girl for me, and I cannot wait want to spend the rest of my life with her, growing old together, travel the world, and have kids. Ever since we’ve complement each other in so many amazing ways. And I cannot be more thankful for her to be in my life. So if you’re reading this baby, I love you.
THE BIG GOAL
2025-2030
If there’s one things that’s for sure, it’s that our goals match. We want to get the same thing in life.
Now you might be wondering, what do these goals look like?
To start off with the main one, and yet the hardest one, it’s to travel the world, in our future 4 wheel converted mercedes sprinter home. That’s a lot of words for a home, I know.
Second, it’s for us both to be the bosses of our own companies as well as something that we do together, which we did for a small part already. As we have a serious lack of time and money, we are not really able to go on free feet to pursue it. I’m talking about the travel Vlogs we’ve made on our YouTube channel. We’re not able YET to make our dreams come true unfortunately, though we are both working on our dream companies right now with the little time we have left to spend. Joëlle, has always dreamed of starting her own design company, I hope i’m using the correct terms. I’m also making things happen in the background such as POV video’s, also super busy setting up my prints online.
So all with all, I can say the first steps our of our bigger picture has been made, but still, to get somewhat close to buy a new, most likely second hand mercedes, is a big obstacle with money, which is really hard.
It can get really depressing really fast when you want to live normal, being able to what you like, to spend time together, going on dates, maybe a trip as a break. It doesn’t sound that long, but to work 12 months straight, without doing to much that’s fun, is really hard, and we are both really sensitive persons, especially to feel down and depressed. It’s gonna be a hard, long battle, which to be honest it already is. And I’m kind of scared that there’s gonna be a loads of roadblocks on this journey, but I also think that every roadblock will get us a little bit closer to our endgoal, and if that is what has to be done in order to achieve it? So be it.
Aside from the fact that we live to travel, we both don’t really feel comfortable staying in the same spot for a longer period of time, especially in the Netherlands, because we don’t like the Netherlands at all, we both don’t see a future here. So this journey comes with lots of negatives but it’s also an amazing thing that we found each other in this big world with 8 billion people having the same dreams and goals in life.
So to get things straight, the basic plan for now, is to save up as much money as possible, by selling prints, getting more attraction through social media, in the hope that some people who’ve always dreamed of doing something like this, will be willing to support us in our journey and to avoid a depressing life :)
