I am alone.
Growing up, I've always felt alone, and it's rare for me to find people I genuinely want to see on a consistent basis for a long period of time. Even with some of my closest friends, I don't think I could go on a vacation with them because I'd simply get bored.
I’ll literally go to parties where a fair amount of people recognize me. I don't like going anywhere where I am not personally invited to or without going with a group. I’ll mingle, make the rounds, but before long, I’m just over it. I’ll end up cleaning up instead of talking to people, like I'm trying to escape from it all. And it’s not even my party. I mean, why the hell am I cleaning up someone else’s mess? It’s like I'd rather be the guy in the corner with a trash bag than make small talk with people who don't get me.
I’ve met a ton of people, and it feels like most of them don’t share the same interests or goals as me. Sure, they might talk about dreams, ambitions, and success, but it’s always surface-level. The entrepreneurs I meet, for example, are often just in it for the money or that vague idea of "financial freedom." But me? I want to build something that actually changes the world, something that has real value. Something I can proudly pass on to my future kids or a great operator to continue on. And maybe that makes me a bit of an outcast, but it also makes me realize how I don't fit in.
I used to think that being alone was a bad thing because I was bullied a lot before entering community college. In fact, I even learned some Armenian since I grew up in an area with a predominantly Armenian population, just so I could understand what was being said when kids were picking on me.
Bian Lian (變臉)
In Chinese culture, there's an art called face-changing (bian lian), where an actor changes their face into 30 different masks very quickly. This is a life skill I ended up mastering myself. I learned to adapt quickly and understand how to navigate different groups of people or what normies call "being fake." This made meeting people easier, and I ended up knowing way more people than most people my age. But the more people I meet, the more alone I feel.
There's a saying, "We are like our friends," but anyone who knows me and the people I spend time with would probably have a hard time comparing me to them. Most people I meet, I can quickly see why they hang out with each other. But for me, I’ve realized that being alone means I'm different.
I used to think this was all bad, that I was the problem for being different. But I’ve learned it’s actually not a bad thing—it’s normal for entrepreneurs and "disruptors." It's just the way our brains are wired, and the way we value things is something most people don’t bother to comprehend. The way we see the world is different.
There are people like us, but finding them is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
This is why I'm on this path of content creation, sharing my thoughts and passions. I hope to leverage this platform to hopefully find people who genuinely think like me.
There are 8 billion of us—there's no way we can’t find others who think the same way we do.