 I'm happy to be here, actually. It was always my ambition to do a keynote like this. And the original idea was sparked exactly a year ago at this very event, just around the corner in the speaker room. I was noticing how other keynote speakers were preparing, and I thought, this is something I want to do. And that was my screw it, I'll do it moment. And I submitted an idea that's been on my mind for a couple of years, and now here we are. The idea is prefaced around the fact that you could set yourself up for success if you want to, based on positive mental attitude. And I also believe in the fact that you should be displaying and expressing the thing you are passionate about, because we're all passionate about something. I'm 100% sure of that. Now, unfortunately, a lot of cases, people attribute that success or that quest for success based on luck. Now, I'm here to tell you that luck is heavily overrated, and luck is often confused with another term, a term we call chance. Luck is within our control, more or less. Chance is completely beyond our control. It's completely random. Now, in order to be successful or in order to go for your quest for success, you need to control a set of variables. I'm using the metaphor of a juggler juggling pins here. These pins represent variables, aspects you need to control. The more variables you can control, the more you can control the outcome, your destiny, if you will. Now, what we call luck are just pins, are just variables we don't yet control. Maybe even ones we don't know exist. That's what this talk is about. Now, we all know the typical cliche in order to be successful or in order to have certain opportunities. You need to be at the right place, at the right time. We know this cliche right. But you could still be there when the action happens, where the action happens, and the opportunity could still slip away from you. And that's why I would like to add something. There's some space left on the slide. You have to be in the right place, right time, in the right mindset. That's important. And that mindset is based on a set of aspects. This is just a couple of things we're gonna talk about, about positivity, belief, skill, effort, all that kind of stuff. That being said, hi, I'm Taze. Good to see you here. I really enjoy being here. I've spoken at many PHP conference. I've attended many PHP UK conferences. It's always cool to be in the UK. I mean that. I'm just saying here because I stand here. I'm a technical evangelist at a Belgian web hosting company called Combelle. And you can reach me on social media if you want that on these different channels. Now there's a danger to it, I know. Because by putting it out there and saying that you can, I'm looking at the front rows, you can hackle me, you can banter me, you can even criticize me. Previous time I've done this talk, people actually did criticize me and I learned a lot from that. So by all means do so. If you're fair, I'm willing to be fair as well. I do have to acknowledge something. I have to acknowledge that I'm gonna talk about going for success and achieving your goals. It's easy, relatively easy for me. I will admit and I will use it as a disclaimer that I could speak here from a position of relative privilege. I don't come from an underrepresented group. I've come from a safe area. I've had good upbringing. I don't suffer from mental health issues. So you could say, well, it's kind of easy for you. But I accept that and I wanna acknowledge that. What I would also like to mention is that for any individual, every individual, everyone has its own challenges, its own obstacles, its own things that are going wrong. And they might seem really tiny in the grand scheme of things and very relative, but to each individual it is very much real. So I just wanna put that out there that you see this from this perspective. A perspective from someone who didn't have too many challenges in the grand scheme of things, but still one driver for me that was the reason why I'm doing whatever I'm doing. And it was the fact that when I was in school, people told me I wouldn't belong here. And I'm not talking about, I'm gonna stand right in the middle, in this room, this stage, but this very industry, people told me I did not belong here. My counselors told me, Tess, you suck at maths, which I do for that matter, suck at maths. I'm not that good at logical reasoning. Everything scientific is tricky for me. And I like languages. I study languages, I study French, Dutch, English, German, Latin, all that stuff. And they told me no taste based on that skill set and the limitations you have, you will not make it. Who needs communication skills in IT anyway? 1999, who needs that anyway? And you know what I did? I disregarded that advice and I said, you know what, I'm gonna tune out of this conversation because I'm really passionate about computers. I'm not the typical profile of a lot of developers here, but I still wanna be in this industry and I wanna use the skills I have and acknowledge the limitations that I have. And I disregarded it, I studied IT, I graduated and I did have some issues with maths in school. But regardless of that, I did an exchange program and I went to Finland for three months and that's where I got most of my inspiration to get things done. I quickly realized there that the world is a lot bigger than the small town, Dixmerde, where I come from in Belgium. So it's a lot bigger, there's an international aspect to it. My project that I had to do on that exchange program was based upon PHP, a language I didn't know until that point. Little did I know, it would bring me here with you lovely people. So that was an indirect consequence. And I also realized that I didn't wanna continue studying because if I would pursue a master's degree, it would require lots of maths, logical reasoning, algorithmic stuff, not really my cup of tea. So it was then and there that I decided to apply for a job, apply for a job at a Belgian web hosting company called Combelle. We're really small back then, we're a bit bigger now, we were five or seven people and I saw this job opening for support job, tech support. So that was the ideal way to combine skills that I wasn't supposed to have, right? Communication skills, problem solving skills, helping people and using tech for that. And it went great, it was awesome. But the irony of everything, and that was a huge one for me, is the exact reason I got hired is because I could speak French. I'm not a native French speaker, I could speak French in Belgium, a bilingual country, that's important. I could also write PHP. And wasn't that the ultimate middle finger to people who say I wouldn't amount to anything in IT that I should stay clear of this industry? That was a good one and that's important because you shouldn't take advice from people who say you cannot do something. Of course you have to take criticism, but if someone says to you you can't do something just for the sake of it and you really feel you're passionate about it, maybe you should look the other way. Because I do not believe in demand holding you down, I do not believe in our industry at least, there's systems in place to keep us down, but I do believe in individuals projecting their own frustrations, their own limitations, their own lack of ambitions. So whenever you see that step away and try to do you whatever you means. That's a bit cliche, right? Saying that you can do whatever you want and the world is yours. I'm not sure if that's the case, but if you are passionate enough about something and it could be something ridiculous, but everyone has a passion, everyone has a path and you should just pursue it. And if you don't know what that means or what that means specifically to you, just try to be inspired by people surrounding you. And if you're not in an environment where there's too many inspiring people, just go where the action is. And let's make it very tangible here in our little setting. We are in the PHP community. A lot of the inspiration I got to do, what I wanted to do came from people in this very community, some even sitting in this very room. So my advice would be if you are not fully embedded in the PHP community, why not take a look? And I'm talking about the typical community kumbaya that we're hearing in a lot of cases. I'm talking about real help, real inspiration and real plans and a lot of it came from it because my main source of inspiration in the PHP community was by attending my very first conference back in 2007 in Germany, international PHP conference. And it was right there, right then that I, A, knew I wanted to be in this community and B, I knew eventually I would like to be a speaker. But back in the day, no one would give me a shot. But when I started out in my job, I took inspiration from our leadership, from our management, really top people. And one of the main things they taught me, and you will not like this, you will absolutely not like this, the thing I was taught in a good way is to be commercial. Now, if I look at you, and I will do that right now, I'm gonna scan the room, you don't seem too enthusiastic about being commercial. If I would tell you that one of your priorities is to be commercial, you'd be like, yeah, whatever. We're not salespeople, we're developers, we're SIS admins, we're project managers, whatever. Now I have to tell you in all walks of life, in every aspect of life, you need to be a bit commercial. And being commercial is not being the sneaky salesperson that grabs money from people's pockets. I'm talking about, there's a sales aspect, a transactional aspect to some items in life, but also a marketing and a branding and a PR aspect. You have to sell yourself, you have to display your passion. Like, if you're passionate about something, good for you, but show the world that you're passionate about something and then things will change. And I also believe that a lot of it has to do with my upbringing. And it's actually the same upbringing as my CEO. Apparently both our mothers run a sort of small mom and pop shop in terms of organic food. So my mom has an organic food store, my CEO's mom has an organic food store, and we're discussing this, like how we were raised in this kind of environment. And I'm gonna show you a little video. This is Little Town in Dixmerda, where I grew up. This is how you enter my mom's store. This is also the pathway to the house. So if you enter, you turn the corner and there's the door to the living room. And whenever I would have to enter, like there's a person coming in, my mom says, hi, this is my mom. Whenever I would pass, I would say hi to the people as well. That would be my job. I was raised as a three-year-old boy. Whenever someone would walk in the store to say hi and represent the brand, that brand was my mom's store, but in whatever you do, you're gonna have to rep your brand as well. And I'm saying that you should be the main ambassador for the company you work for, but whatever brand you wanna represent, primarily your own brand, your personal brand. I was also taught that when my mom wouldn't be available to pick up the phone, I would pick up the phone and represent the brand and welcome the people. And it's actually all about that honest, one-to-one relationship. When we're in business, we talk about business to customer, business to business. I'm just talking about human to human. In all aspects of what you're doing, you're gonna have to interact with humans and you're gonna have to convince them that you are trustworthy and that you can provide value. So yes, you're probably gonna have to be commercial in a way, but it's beneficial to yourself. So think about what you're passionate about, think about an opportunity that another person can give you, figure out what they honestly need and try to build up an honest, long-term relationship and that will benefit you. That's one of these aspects. Another one is this picture. It's a story about belief. I took a city trip to this very city in 2014. Who can guess the city? It is not San Francisco. This bridge is not the Golden Gate Bridge. Close enough to Eric. Lisbon, indeed. This is Lisbon. And I took a trip there with my wife and a couple that we're friends with and we're about to travel to Lisbon. Just have a nice time out. And the day before I left, I saw this on my Facebook timeline. Apparently Rolling Stones are one of my favorite bands. It's the first concert I saw when I was 11 years old. My dad took me and I noticed that they would be playing that same day I would be there. So I'm like, yes, okay, this needs to happen. I need tickets for this concert. So I contacted my friend Daniel in Lisbon and asked Daniel, can you fix me tickets for this lovely concert I need to be there? He's like, whoa, hold it. This concert has been sold out for months. There's no way you can get in. This is the concert of the year. You will not get tickets. I said, okay, fine. And we did our city tripping thing the first day. The ladies were dead tired. They went to bed early and I took my friend Cedric and I said, you know what? Let's be adventurous. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose. We could just go there and try to buy tickets and try to get in. Knowing that the concert is sold out. So normally you would say, let's not give it a shot because it will not succeed. We went there and indeed it was sold out and we didn't, in the beginning, find a way to get in. And we used the variables that were available. One of the variables was that we saw some young people trying to buy and sell tickets. Buying for 20, selling for 100, 200, whatever. Also knew that the retail price for this concert was 78 euros. So we made sure we had 78 euros in our pocket and we decided not to go over that budget. And we started running around, talking to people and our main enemy and our main friend was the factured time. As long, if we waited a long time, our chances of getting tickets would reduce. But as time progressed, people selling tickets were in risk as well because those would be worthless. 15 minutes before showtime we saw a couple trying to sell us or trying to get rid of tickets at a ridiculous rate and we approached them and were very aggressive. That was the only way time was running out. I said, you know what? Sell us these tickets, we're gonna get it. No, no, no, you're too aggressive. We're not selling them to you. We're gonna be selling them to those kids. I said, I hate to break a tea, but they only have 20 euros in their pocket and they're gonna sell it for 100. I took the money from my pocket, my friend too. We showed them the money and said, you know what, sell us these tickets. Because if you don't, in the next 15 minutes, this nice ticket you have will be nothing more than a sheet of paper that you can wipe your ass with. I put it like that and then they did. And yeah, sorry, yeah. There's a bit of profanity right there. And we went into the show and we went and there was a big surprise for me. Bruce Springsteen was even there. It was like, how can you figure that out in advance? It was one of the best concerts I've ever attended. And it was based on the fact that I believed I would get in there in a sold out concert. Is this the biggest accomplishment of my life? By far not. But it's a great story I will keep telling. And it's a story about believing that things will happen. And you know what? If it didn't happen, I wouldn't have not lost anything. It would have been a great story trying to get in the concert. But I tried and that was a good one. So if you see an opportunity and you believe against better judgment or advice, just go for it. You'll see what happens. Okay, next variable is empathy. You should deploy it as much as you can. I, for that matter, used to have a hard time being empathetic towards other people. I used to be thinking that everyone, every single individual was mentally wired the same way. And I became more empathetic not by realizing that I should be, but by learning it the hard way. I've organized events where I made sure things were arranged in a certain way and people did not like it. And I thought they just didn't like it, but they felt anxiety over certain situations or they weren't comfortable. And I quickly learned aid that I should deploy as much empathy as I can. It will help me diffuse certain situations. But what is equally important is that you should not expect that it comes back to you. You should not expect that people will have empathy for you, because if you do in all circumstances and all situations, you'll get rather disappointed. So what I would say is be nice to people, respect them, see where they're coming from, but don't expect it to come back at you. And when it doesn't come back, this is a controversial one. Please don't complain. Complaining is the worst thing you can do in these situations. And people usually don't listen to other people who complain. I know this is controversial, but I need to put it in the right context. Standing up for what you believe, coming out of an unjust situation and trying to correct that, is not complaining. Complaining is just sitting there and saying, this opportunity didn't come to me and it was my turn and this sense of entitlement. Please do not complain. There's three ways you could deal with these kinds of situations. So there's a situation you do not like. Either you change the situation, or if you feel that it doesn't require too much effort or you're fine with the situation as is or you don't wanna put too much mental energy in it, just leave it as is. And otherwise, door number three is just to circumvent and adapt yourself. Some things you will not change. Please don't complain about them. Find another way or accept it. Don't complain. And if you complain about opportunities not coming your way, you should realize what had happened. And here's another controversial one. Is maybe you did not work hard enough for it. Why is this controversial? Because people think, you're promoting 16 hour workdays and you're not considering burnout and mental health issues. I am, but I'm just putting it out there that everything you will probably do is based on your talent and executing that talent and putting in the hard work. There's no denying it. There's no other way. I know that talent is an accelerator. Talent can accelerate the process, but still you have to put in the work. Now again, I'm not saying you should put in 16 hour workdays and I'm not promoting reaching a point of burnout. What I am saying is that it's just sort of total sum of parts, a tally. The more you add on it, the more it takes a certain shape and the more it turns into something you can wheel and use to your advantage. I'm not a person who's willing to work 16 hours a day. I have a family. I like picking up my kids from school. I like playing with my kids. I like going out to football games with my mates. I like hanging out with my wife. I like to do all those things. But whenever something happens and it didn't come my way, I just look at myself and I know, hey, I didn't work hard enough. And the only thing you can have then in that situation is more patience. If you don't want to work that hard, just be more patient. And I'm willing to be more patient. Back in the day, I wasn't that patient and I saw things passing by. I thought, yes, now it's my time. And it just passes by and I didn't get it. And at first I was a bit frustrated and I started complaining, but I knew no one was listening. Why would anyone listen to someone's complaining without having valid arguments? And I knew I didn't work hard enough and I was absolutely fine. And that's an important message. It can be absolutely fine as long as you have the patience. And I know in some circumstances, you look to the right, you see your laptop, it's like, okay, we can do a project there. You look to the left, you see your couch, a bag of crisps in your PlayStation. And it's up to you to choose. And in many, many instances, I went for the bag of crisps, the couch and the PlayStation. Did I regret it? No, but I did realize that, hey, I'm gonna have to be more patient until something comes. Just a reality. Another reason why probably opportunities didn't come your way is because you lacked a bit of self-awareness. Let's go back to my case. I suck at maths. I'm not that good at logical reasoning. In say, I'm not really a good developer, right? You would think that that would suit me. And in the context I was working at as a support engineer, eventually I got promoted to be the manager of that department and I had to do other things. I have to do people management. I have to take care of the planning and all that kind of stuff. And I noticed that I wasn't too good at that. And I knew I was doing my job all right but the clients were happy but I saw an increasing sense of frustration with my coworkers who said, yeah, okay, the clients are happy but we're not all too happy. And the natural reaction would be, I need to improve those skills. But if you look down deep inside, I knew I was never gonna reach a level where that would be acceptable. And I noticed that some of these skills were present in my team. So I talked to management and actually stepped down and did something else. And someone from my team got promoted and led the team and did it fine. I wanted to help people. I wanted to use my communication skills and I wanted to embed tech. And instead of doing this on this one-to-one basis, I had the fortune enough. Also, a lot of credit goes to the community because I was inspired by PHP communities while I was working as the manager for our support department. I was already hanging around in the community and I was already doing a tiny bit of speaking. So I sat down with management and they said, you know what, instead of being a support engineer, why don't you just become an evangelist? We need someone who carries out the message. It's the same deal. Use communication skills, you use tech skills, help people, but in a broader way. And that I did. So if you're in a position you're not comfortable in and you wanna improve, just think, can I genuinely improve those weaknesses? And if you can't, just think about what you're passionate about, think about what you're good at and try to find a way to do that. That would be one major point of advice. And if you're doing that and you're feeling sure, because there's this thing called the imposter syndrome, you all know this, right? Everyone has that. I had that like 20 minutes ago. Like, am I good here? Can I stand up on this stage? Can I address you? It is very real. But what I also learned is that you should always act like you belong there at every single point. You should have the confidence to stand there. And if you don't, you know what will help you? And it sure helped me. Last year, I was there behind the corner of the speaker's room. And the keynote speakers for last year's edition were sitting there. And there are people that I highly respect, that I consider friends and that I know will do an excellent job. And they were still stressing out. And I was trying to have small talk with them and I said, no, no, not right now. I need to prep this. I'm not sure if this will work. And that was my moment like, okay, when these people are nervous and I consider them, put them in high regard, you know, I'll be fine. And I use that as a mindset like whenever I walk into a situation, I realize that the people who are pulling the strings or running the show might be just as nervous as you are. So just act like you belong there. You'll be fine. I'm not saying fake it till you make it because that's also an angle of this, but you're good at what you do. You should believe in yourself because if you're passionate about something and you've spent a lot of time working your skill, you'll be fine. There's a lot of talkers out there. I'm a talker, but there's doers in there as well. And you just have to show a bit more confidence. And I'm 100% sure that you will be fine. Now, there's also some elements you need to be comfortable with and that you need to respect. It was always my hope to become a speaker. And in the beginning, people didn't really care about me. They didn't know me. I never got selected for any PHP conferences. And maybe there's organizers in the room who sent me the Dear John letters saying, well, it always starts like that. We had an incredible amount of submissions and you know, we're not selected. We had so many, like, no, you're not. I just, I stop reading, just delete. Okay, I'm not part of it. And it led to a bit of frustration. But by working it hard, I managed to get my first shot and then took that one to the next level and the next level and just built on that. And just grind it out, hard work. Not working 16 hours a day, but just a long period of time being patient. It will happen. It will happen. Work it, work it, work it. And I grasped onto that single opportunity and as time progressed, I got invited to more events. And then I realized there's the thing called the process and you should always keep your eyes on that target, the process is the most important thing. What is it that I like? I like speaking. So what do I do? I speak. This size rooms, small rooms. It does not matter. You also have the outcome. The outcome is like, my initial outcome was, I want to do a keynote. Here I am. Is this the outcome? Not really. I like it. I'm really like, if I look in the room, I'm really happy that all these people took the time out of their really busy schedules to be here. But that's not the outcome. You have to push the boundaries because what was okay and what was cool yesterday will probably be just as normal tomorrow. So you'll evolve, you'll level up, but don't put these things as the outcome because otherwise you'll maybe end up bored. But what is more important is to acknowledge certain things that happen as side effects. As you become more successful, I'm not saying you'll become a diva, but some things you experience as normal. If I would experience this size room as normal, I would be disappointed if it was only 50% capacity. And that's important. You have to think about what your process is. My process is speaking. So if there was only one person in this room, if it's only James in this room, I'd be perfectly fine because that's what I do. I speak, that's all I do. And I work hard and everything that happens, I consider as a side effect and as a bonus. And if you respect that, you'll be fine. And you could just have to grind it out. Do lots of it. I think this is my, I've done more than 200 presentations in 15 countries over a period of a decade. And at first I never thought I would be on this stage. I never thought anyone would be interested. My main concern was what I'm gonna say, what I'm gonna talk about, what will be interesting to people. I had no clue. But you know what, I ignored that and I did the meetup scene and the on-conference scene and eventually it came. Now apply that to your own life. Maybe you don't wanna be a speaker, maybe you have something else in life that you wanna achieve. But still, go for it. Now we're almost reaching the end here and I have this weird piece of advice. Check this out. Once you leave this building, every time an opportunity presents itself, no matter what it is, you will say yes. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Sometimes you just have to say yes to some really weird opportunities. Opportunities that make no sense maybe from a financial point of view, from a career point of view, from a content point of view. But they just make you feel happy or it sounds crazy and you wanna give it a go. I've had some of these and they turn out really well. This is a place in Poland called Mohocice Kapitunie, apparently. As you can see in the middle of nowhere and that is where a couple of years ago PHPCon Poland was hosted. Now I was at another developer event in Poland and after my talk, a guy came up to me, Darius, I still see him every now and then and he presented himself and asked me for my details. I gave him a business card and he said, you know what, you should speak at my event. I'm like, yeah, whatever. And time went by and a couple of months later I received an email from him saying, all right, we want you to speak at our event. And if you agree, you have to fly to Krakow. A guy will be there in a car. Yeah, they really thick Eastern European accent. He said, a guy will be there in car. No disrespect, no stereotypes. But someone would be there to pick me up and would drive me three hours in the months middle of nowhere. Like what could go wrong, right? What could possibly go wrong? I said, you know what, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take you up on that. I flew to Krakow and guy was there with car. There's actually three guys in a car and they drove me down the countryside and three hours, wonderful. We even had pancakes in a restaurant that had midi music and dinosaurs outside. Really weird from the get go. But it was actually a really good event and it was very secluded. When I was looking, this is the hotel as well. When I was looking, there was nothing around me. There was no distractions. There were only those people. And at the best time. And you know what, I got to know a person there. Another speaker called Jeffrey A. McGuire, Jam as we call him, he's a big deal in the Drupal scene. And because of that event, I got to know him. And he helped me get into the Drupal scene because that was a place where I also wanted to evangelize. And I never got to shop. I never got the opportunity. But weirdly enough by saying yes to this, I became friends with him. And also because of this, I could tell the story right here right now. So that's also a plus. But I just said yes to something and it turned out all right. I have another thing I said yes to. I'm also a football fan. I'm a season ticket holder at a Belgian football team called Klu Brugge. And with a bunch of friends we've been going for years. And because of YouTube vlogs and especially Casey Neistad, the guy I love watching, I said maybe we should vlog in football game. And my friends said, ah, that won't work. And we started doing it. We named our brand FCB Support. And we just started. And I know you will probably be watching this or whatever you're saying you probably won't listen to. But still, we started taking our cam to the football games and tried to do an honest representation. We are fans. We represent the world of the fans. Not the highly produced, very sterile content that the team itself produces, but something honest. This is me with my son and this is all honest content. And I noticed that in the beginning, not a lot of the people were watching it. But after a while, a couple of hundreds started watching it. A couple of thousands started watching it. And I noticed the immediate impact while I was in the stadium. Every time I go to the stadium now and I go every two weeks, people approach me, people talk to me. I got a couple of messages. My team is playing in a way game in Salzburg tonight. Are you coming, Tess? No, I'm in London, I can't. So all of a sudden we created something that people like. And we're not rock stars in any shape or form. We're very approachable and we like to put it low threshold, it's about the people. But what we know is that stuff makes me happy. That stuff makes the people happy. And you know what, I'm gonna keep doing it. And is this success? Does this qualify as success? In my book it does. Do I get financial gains from it? No, it costs me more money, more time, and more frustration from my wife the more I do it. But you know what, it feels right and eventually something will happen. And what did happen is that I managed to get in touch with the team and the team acknowledged that we were doing a good job and we could interview players every now and then. We had these nice settings here and every now and then we end up in the newspaper. Is this the process and the outcome? No, this is a side effect. Because eventually it's all about the people. And that's the focus, talking to people, getting the high fives, people seeing the camera coming up to us to put in a statement, knowing that it's honest content. And I feel very happy about this. Is this the biggest accomplishment in my life? No, is this success? I guess so. What does the future hold? About to wrap it up here. With my channel I have no clue. I'll just keep grinding it out. Professionally I'll probably do the same thing. And a couple of months ago I would say I would just grind it out. But things have changed in the last couple of months for me. Things I didn't anticipate. I'm a big fan of technology called Varnish. I do a lot of presentations. A lot of it has been grinding it out, talking about caching. And a couple of years ago I got invited by the company behind the software to write a book, which was insane. I didn't see that one coming. And it was solely built on just grinding it out, being out there, making videos. And a couple of months ago they asked me to join them. And that was the big change as of March 4th, which is two weeks, I guess. I'll be a tech evangelist at Varnish. And after 15 years of loyal service I'll be leaving Combo in a way. I'll still be attached. So that's the next step. Is this luck? Well, I don't really think so. It's just, will I be great at this job? I don't know. I'll probably be fine. But it's just the build up. And it's been coming. I've been working with Varnish for a decade now. Just piece by piece by piece. Don't project the outcome. The outcome is uncertain. But the process is cool and everything that happens is a side effect. Is this the outcome? No, it's probably a side effect. That being said, thank you. Go for it by all means. If you are passionate about something, do whatever you need to do. I hope, I'm not sure. I don't have the arrogance of saying that I will probably inspire you. That's probably not the case. But just listen to what I'm saying here. If you're passionate about something, in your professional life, in your career, family life, friendships, hobbies, sports, whatever you're doing, just go for it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.