◉ 056 | What's your dream?

I moved cities

for education.

My uncle,

a well-known sculptor,

financed me

for the first two years.

He believed in me

because I had

pretty good grades

in secondary school.

But I was struggling.

Big time.

I didn’t like

electrical engineering.

I didn’t belong there.

I couldn’t see myself

being an engineer.

But I didn’t know that

back then.

It felt like swallowing

a whole sausage

wrapped in cellophane

tied with a velvet ribbon.

“You have to finish

what you started,”

he said.

It took me nine years

to graduate

from a four-and-a-half-year

degree.

I doubled it.

And I graduated

at the worst possible time.

The recession.

2009.

I took the first job I got.

A research assistant

at a commercial TV station.

It had nothing

to do with engineering.

But I needed a job.

A few years later

I moved cities again.

Continents.

Hemispheres.

For a better life

this time.

Soon after,

I started

a photography business.

That was

a dream of mine

for a long time.

I was on the phone

with my uncle.

“But last time

you promised me

you’d search

for an engineering job,”

he said.

I was desperate

to get his permission.

He was an artist himself.

The only one

in the family.

“I would love

more than anything

for you to be

the next

Helmut Newton Jadrijević,”

he said.

That cut me

deep.

It never

healed.