My Journey as a Creator so far

Hello world!

So, let’s get to know each other a bit and tell you about how this journey, where it’s been and where it’s going. Grab some coffee and buckle up for one hell of a story. I’m a half British, half Greek 28-year-old Creator born in the UK and raised also in Greece and am now currently living in the woods of Austria for 3 years. (Well, Vienna for 2 of those years but irrelevant. )

My journey in creating started in 2013 when I released my first music album for a small project called ‘Nosophori’. During this time, I also took up photography to make artworks for my YouTube videos whenever I uploaded a new song. I found my muse for creating in 2017 when I lived in Wiltshire, England for a year on a Cyber Security internship with Airbus Defence & Space. I spent all my free time and holidays creating cinematic fantasy styled photographs until I had to move back to Southport, England where I suddenly lost all motivation and drive to create photographs or even music. (Environment plays the devil on a creative mind I’m telling you!)

Just before I left Wiltshire in December 2017, an idea came to me: What if I could make my work in photos somehow into video? What if I could one day make cinematic videos that look like they are from movies? My interest in videography had found its spark. But at the time, I was still a student with zero budget to invest in gear for this idea. All I had at that time was a Canon 600D and a GoPro Hero 4 Silver that I bought for a holiday (Don’t lie, you’ve done this too at some point in your life). Not exactly the right equipment for filming is it?

At this point in time, I had an upcoming Single release with no suitable artwork obtained for the Single. For this occasion, I wanted to think out of the box that I had made for myself in Wiltshire and go bigger and more in touch with the cinematic style I wanted to transition to. So I flew to Italy, travelled to Pienza in Tuscany where the ‘Elysium’ scene from ‘Gladiatior’ was filmed and made the Single artwork there as somewhat of an ode of my love for the film.

I returned to Southport once again, released the single but this would be the last musical release that I would make to date, at least at the time of writing (December 2021). I couldn’t help but notice this time around how much my creativity sparks when I am away from Southport and I then worked day and night submitting job applications to every company that would take one in Wiltshire so I could return but this unfortunately never worked. It was then time for Plan B: Leave England for good.

Since I had grown up for most of my life in England, I wanted to start a life completely out of my comfort zone and beyond the big box typically built for young adults who usually never move more than 50km away from where they grew up. I had to begin my search to find the perfect shooting environment for my videos and for composing music and I knew I wasn’t going to find this in England, no matter where I looked. So I jumped online and started looking for jobs across all of Europe. My ideal scenario was to start an IT job in Switzerland, either in Zürich or a town close-by enough to commute through the weekend and get to the Alpine mountains in my freetime. This never happened so I searched all over, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Sweden, but then I tried Austria.

At this point, it should be noted that while I was working on finding the right place for my creative projects, I was also keeping myself busy running a YouTube channel called ‘ALEXANDER’ in a hobby I took up called airsoft (a similar alternative to paintball). The videos weren’t anything I was feeling any fulfilment or joy from but it was a way of learning how to edit videos and that was good enough for me. This hobby in turn brought me to find a job in Vienna, Austria with an airsoft company (I won’t tell you who it is though) where I stayed for nearly 3 years until I decided it was finally time to leave. More on that later.

So in about the space of a week in May 2019, I dropped my whole life in England, jumped on a plane to Zürich and then on to Athens for a short break to accept that my life in England was finally over. Shortly after, I left Athens immediately for Vienna, full of enthusiasm to start my new life in a country I had never visited before nor did I know a word of the language. I spent a year building a budget for filming equipment while continuing to learn to edit but when the time finally came to start taking my creative pursuits to the next level and making an official business out of it all, the anonymous company informed me they actually prohibit people from being self-employed in addition to their employment at the company.
Absolute disaster. I couldn’t even start to fathom how on Earth that this was suddenly the reality of my situation, to have my art suppressed under someone else’s boot. After some time, I settled my thoughts and decided that I wouldn’t allow this to stop my journey. From that point I told myself and the company “They will either allow me or fire me” and I didn’t care which outcome came of it! Abandoning my creative journey for the happiness of my bosses was not an option.

During this time, while investing in cameras, lenses, microphones, lights, PC equipment, etc, and then the pandemic hit the world and this suddenly brought my airsoft channel to its end. I knew this was the point where I had to start returning to my old creative work but in addition to the self-employment problem, there was the matter of not knowing exactly where to start. Ever tried starting a new book and you stare at a blank page for hours not knowing how to begin? It was exactly that.
There was also the upcoming conscription duty I had in Greece which began in July 2021. Worst month of my life. No income, no cameras, no computer, no means to create anything.

One day, I was sent to the military hospital one day with very bad heat exhaustion and extreme stress that led to hives. Once I left the hospital, I was sent to Athens and received a discharge. I was suddenly free again, free to go home! So right back to Vienna I went, got fired almost immediately from ‘nameless company’ which meant now I was by all means free to continue my creative journey, and free to make a business out of it. So I ran to a Mediamarkt in Vienna, bought myself a DJI Air 2s, got my licenses for flying and moved out of Vienna to a small village in the woods of Lower Austria.

Very shortly after moving from the city of Vienna, I made 2 drone videos in the nearby forest. One filled with Autumn colours that reminded me somewhat of my early World of Warcraft days. The second was during a very heavy snowfall in Lower Austria which I just had to film. I was extremely nervous to fly considering the cold affecting batteries but all went well in the end and for a channel with only 56 subscribers, that video really blew up!

So that’s the story of my journey thus far at time of writing! I suspect I will add to this in the future as my story continues but if you made it this, thank you for reading and showing interest!! I hope to bring you more and more content very soon!