The Manifesto

When I started writing it was literally almost 2 years ago, sometime towards the end of June 2024.

I just got fired, travelled to Kenya and then when I came back I was sitting on the beach in Dubai very early in the morning and I don't know got into me, but I remembered the app "Medium" I opened it and I started writing, without thinking about it my ideas started flowing, one after the other, the storytelling, the jokes…all of it!

And before I knew it, I finished a full article, I hit publish and I was in disbelief, I reread it again…still in disbelief! how on earth someone like me who has never been a writer, never learned "proper English" can write like this?

I wrote another one, and another one, still wasn't capable of believing that what I'm reading is coming out of me!

I started posting links to what I wrote on social media, and some friends that I haven't spoken to in years and years, reached out very touched with my stories (especially the bully one) as that was the first and deepest story I've written at that time, it covered all of my childhood traumas, who I was, and how did that shape me into the person I became today.

My stories started with superficial things, funny encounters and it transformed into my life story, my deepest traumas, my heartbreaks…all of it.

It became the outlet to release all of my anger, frustrations and the words that were suffocating me for so long…I've let it all out, without a care about who's reading and what would they think about me, they didn't matter…I mattered!

The healing that I felt while writing, is what kept me coming back to write more and more.

From around November 2024 to October 2025 I went through the deepest and darkest time that I've ever lived, I deactivated my medium early 2025 as I joined a shithole of a company, and I didn't want to talk with anyone, literally other than the bare minimum that my work requires, I had zero interest in anyone knowing me or getting to know anyone, and I just didn't want to be Googled and then they'd see who I really am, I wanted to be a nobody.

So for close to a one year, I didn't write at all…not in public and not in private, I wasn't running away from facing what I was going through, I just didn't want to confirm it, if I write what I was living, then it becomes part of my story, my history…I didn't want to even exist, let alone to have a story.

Whenever I get asked how did I get out of depression, I had no valid response, nothing I can teach, nothing I can help those who suffer like I suffered, all I can say is….divine intervention, and while that raises a lot of eyebrows and skepticism, but it's true…I woke up one day in October, 2025 and I remember it exactly, I don't remember the date but I remember on that day I was out of office for a Google event (which I was dreading attending days before as the last thing I want in life is networking and acting interested in something that drains my soul).

But that day it's like a light switch flipped inside of me, I woke up without the sense of dread…it was so odd to wake up without sense of absolute dread of existing, really odd after a year of waking up with it every single day, that it became my default setting.

But that day felt different and I thought yeah whatever I'll probably feel the dread again in a bit once I make it to the event.

I went to the even with my colleague, who I actually liked more than anyone in the office, but even though he was supposed to be the one I talk to the most because I'm his manager, I was actually avoiding him ever since he was hired, because I can't lie!

There was absolutely no need to hire him, there was absolutely no need to hire me as well btw, so to divide my already useless, irrelevant job in two? How would we do that?

What work should I give him when I literally spend my day staring at my screen,scrolling aimlessly acting like I'm doing work…I can't lie, I can't fake it to him and sit there and be a proper manager to him, to bullshit him…that's not who I am, and I always knew that I am a horrible manager, really I am!

Because there's a difference between a leader and a manager, I knew it since the beginning of my career. I am an excellent leader, but I'm a horrible manager.

Because leaders take the fall for you, teach you, inspire you, lead from front, lead by example, go in the trenches with you, but managers are just useless humans who made it to that rank just because they have enough years of experience to backup them up, who need to ask what are you working on, and what did you deliver, and where did you spend your time and to approve your time off (disgusting), I cannot do to others what I don't accept being done to me.

So I avoided him because when I gave the green light for him to be hired, honestly I did it just because I knew he lost his previous job, and he was out of work for months and months (I knew how shitty that feels and he is a father of two). So why would I care if there's enough work for him or not?

It's not like it's my fathers company, I hated that place and I didn't give a shit about them, let them pay salaries for more humans to sit behind screens and be like me…useless.

They already have been doing that ever since the conception of that organization, honestly I've never been surrounded with such useless, demotivated, toxic and lack any purpose humans until I worked there.

Anyways, back to the Google event, I wasn't Leen the manager who barely talks unless specifically asked, I was miraculously my old self.

Leen who loves to learn, to share knowledge, to ask and to answer, so I found myself actually enjoying the event quite a lot. I found myself having the energy to answer my colleagues' questions (as I should because I'm his manager) and even he was surprised, like where did this come from?

Who is this woman in front of me that actually laughs and talks and chitchat and ACTUALLY KNOWS WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT…yeah I haven't been that for almost a year, so not only it was a surprise for him, but also for me.

And as the day finished, I thought for sure that was a glitch and the next day I'd wake up with my default depressed setting, but again miraculously I didn't!

Wait a minute, what's going on? I went to the office and I was very chatty (so unlike the character I portrayed for the full year) hours passed and the evening came and I still felt actually really good!

It was so shocking that I absolutely forgot that I can feel this way.

Immediately I reached out to my closest friends, the ones I was avoiding for months and months and months at a time, and I went out to meet each one of them in the upcoming days that came, and I kept on apologizing for disappearing, but also I was very suspicious of my sudden shift…it's like I didn't trust myself to not fall back to darkness where I was, as I can't even figure out how did I get out of it in the first place.

So I kept on giving them a disclaimer, like hey the moment that I felt better I reached out to you, but I don't know if my current state is lasting or not…but lets pray it does.

And it lasted (told you divine intervention) and my path was being redirected again to where it should've been.

Something super silly happened at work, not even worth me having an arguement let alone to resign, but that silly thing intensified in a way that I was like fuck it! I quit, and I did it on the same day, without a plan, without anything.

At that time my sister was asking me if I'm interested in going over the period of the National holiday on a family trip with the kids, mind you I haven't travelled since Kenya which was mid 2024, and this is close to December 2025, and it's sooo unlike me to not travel for that long, but as I said I had zero interest in living, let alone to do anything else…

So when she suggested that idea, it actually retriggered my love for travel. I got excited again whenever a travel plan comes to mind, I started researching again, planning, budgeting….and suddenly "Nepal" came to me.

I messaged my sister and said, listen I know we were discussing a family trip, but something inside of me is pushing me so hard to travel to Nepal solo again…I can't explain it, but I really need to go.

She said: well just go then :)

And I did! Aimlessly, with no plan just like the first time I travelled to Nepal, and it was one of the most eventful trips, airport drama, bed bugs, stuck in a bus for over 20 hours, getting kicked out of an ashram, spending time in the remotest village on the edge of Nepal, joining another Osho ashram, it was a crazy trip!! I never had a boring day and it was the reset that I needed after that tough year that I lived, so I stayed there for a month and came back at the beginning of January 2026.

From January to April 2026, life tried to test me again, I was thrown into battles right and left, I lost friends, actually lost is the wrong word, I've "shed" people from my life that don't align anymore with who I was becoming.

It shook me when I saw the reality of those around me, turns out when I was at my lowest it was so easy to be my friend, as I don't trigger their insecurities, I'm not a threat, there isn't a competition (and my entire twenties were mostly in my lowest).

I started seeing the energy shift in those who are closest, I started seeing how their faces change when I'm so happy and filled with life, how I broke out of chains that were tying me up for years and years and years, and while it was heartbreaking for sure, as from my end it was never a competition, never had an ill intention, I actually thought the world of them, just like I do for majority of the people who come into my life (naively) but I honestly focus on the best in people and not their faults, especially those who I truly love/loved.

So I felt again that everything around me is starting to pull me back into darkness, or maybe that chapter needed to end in such a dramatic way, I call it "The Purge" before I set off into my new life.

And btw I started writing again when I travelled to Nepal, I've already left that shit hole company,

So I didn't care if they googled me and what they read about me, and during that time while I did shed off so much dead weight that I was carrying for others, I also healed quite a lot!

I healed on so many aspects that it was actually mind blowing how much life can change this fast (this time to the positive side) and I found peace. I think I never knew what peace is ever since I was a young adult, maybe I did feel some "moments" of peace in my 20's but I was never in a "peaceful state", literally ever!

But I found it now at 33, and when I found peace, I started fighting hard against anything that tries to take it away from me, whether that's people, things, corporations or the environment around me.

I knew inside of me that I can no longer stay in the city where I was living, there are some things that once you start seeing…you'll be unable to unsee it, it started looking like I'm living inside the Truman show, nothing around me aligns with my true nature or who I am as a human.

So I packed up my life and left in April 2026, and I kept on writing and writing as I was starting my new life, I actually wrote so much within those months of the purge and the new beginning, partly as a closure and partly because I was so happy with where I am at my life currently that I wanted to shout about it as much as I can.

April was magical! my time at the monastery, the people I met, my new home…everything was just magical.

It was like God was compensating me for all the years of pain and darkness that I lived, with a really happy, magical and peaceful beginning, but it was also a transitional phase.

So many things were going on, so many new beginnings, new places, new faces…a new reality basically.

So I got so caught up with being busy with my new life that I did what I do best, get myself insanely consumed with anything and everything…literally not a dull moment in my life (whether it's good or bad), but there was always action going on.

However, after a month and a half of the chaos of my new life, everything started settling in, the chaos, the novelty was wearing off, and I found myself sitting again, in silence reflecting.

I realised that during that chaos, so many heavy emotions/feelings kept on coming back, but I kept on pushing them away because I don't have time for such nonsense (or that's what I told myself)..but by now I know myself so well to know when I'm making up excuses, and when I'm being honest with myself…and I was surely making up excuses :)

So as I've let those emotions creep up again, because clearly I haven't dealt with them before enough, I found myself going on social media more and more just to distract myself, and always ending up feeling worse than I felt before opening the apps, I found myself writing just for the sake of writing to say anything and everything whether its meaningful or not, just to release all the noise that was coming back to my head, or to numb it.

I found myself losing my peace, the peace that I fought so hard to find and to keep....so I took a pause.

I went out of town for few days, I was surrounded by beautiful nature, I had the best sleep in my life, falling asleep and waking up to the sounds of nature.

I literally spent full days just existing and not doing anything, on my bed next to that window overlooking the valley, zero interest in going on the hikes that I said I wanted to go on, zero interest to go to the street up next to my hotel which people come from all around Nepal to visit it, I mean I had to when I wanted to eat, but it was tooooo touristy and I realised that nothing irritates me more than the noise, both in real life and online.

I found myself getting uneasy until I went back to my room, to the quietness of my surroundings and to the peacefulness of nature around me. I realised how much I hated the noise,

I always hated it, it's nothing new, but now the noise overwhelms me…

in a world where we are exposed to noise 24/7, literally our phones are the tools of the devil, 24/7 noise, information overload, we get to know about anything and everything that is going on instantly, mostly negative things, harmful things, inhumane things, things that are made to make us purposely lose our peace.

And while it is an addiction, one that is so hard to fight in a world where everywhere you go and wherever you look, you'd find humans looking down on their devices.

But I found myself getting sucked into the algorithms again, feeling low again due to the kind of content that I'm bombarded with, and my focus shifted from having all the energy in the world to work on my dreams (which I was), to just sitting there staring at my screen wondering if it's even worth it?

Like what am I building this for? What am I hustling for? Everything that I see online makes me absolutely disgusted by the state of humanity we reached.

I started feeling like I'm losing my interest in "creating", the algorithm sucked me back into being a useless consumer, scrolling and scrolling and before I knew it…I could start feeling the impact on my mental wellbeing.

But I've been reading enough, and educating myself enough to know that what I'm feeling is exactly what probably 90% of humans feel, we are all slaves to our devices, to the cheap dopamine rush, to scroll more and more and more endlessly, to be overloaded by information, way more than our brains were created to consume.

So what I'm feeling is a guaranteed symptom of being "a slave to the system".

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "fear" is the emotional state that they lock us in so they can control us, and the algorithms do its best to fearmonger, showing us everything that is going wrong in the world.

Death right and left, Hundred of thousands of layoffs due to AI, yet organizations pushing more and more for AI dominance, investing billions into Data centers that their environmental impact is already proven before even the existence in those centers.

Draught, polluted waters, oil crisis intensifies, people cannot even afford bread and yet the disgusting ruling families talk about their beautiful Island resorts which they are building….

Nothing makes sense, nothing to look forward to….

And they got me! They got me back into the "fear" state, fear of tomorrow, fear of making plans, fear of building, fear of "what if" and even the fear of falling in love again…

Because I look around me and I see a disgusting world, a world that there's no point in trying to do anything in it, corporations enforcing systems so strong that there's no point in trying to fight, uncertainty so persistent that there's no point in trying to expect a better outcome.

Or…maybe that's exactly what they want me to feel?

Well, I simply refuse to feel this way, I refuse to be a slave to their narratives, I refuse to let disgusting humans dictate how I should live my life or to even allow them to impact it.

I mean surely they can, as at the end of a day we are all part of the same matrix, but the way we lead our lives is based on our own choices, and yes circumstances do dictate on us to an extent, but even when we are faced with a hardship, we are always in control of how we choose to deal with it.

So I believe in the power of us "Humans" and I fully believe that we are in control of our own destiny, but they don't want us to remember that.

So I've wrote for 2 years now on and off, and I think I've reached around 120 articles or so, and while I do love writing and I enjoy it quite alot, but I became more aware of the dangers of having all of that data about me out in the open, fucking hell man the things that I've learned.

I saw what social engineering can be done based on information about me, to do some very messed up shit…it's madness!

And I don't want to wait for it to happen, when I already now have the awareness of "what can" happen. I don't want to feed their systems with data about me, I don't want my entire life to be out in the open for anyone just to ask any free AI and it would tell you everything they gather from reading and analyzing my stories, it feels so weird to go ask google about my name and to see what it comes up with.

I was always a person that loves my space and my privacy is sacred, which is ironic right? Seeing that I've literally written stories that almost covers my entire life.

But the thing is, there is something beautiful in writing your story and knowing that only those who bother will read it, but it's so different when you can get a full on personality analysis and life biography about me in seconds using AI.

But that's the morbid reality, and I simply don't want to be part of it.

Which means this will not be a break, this is the end of my blogging journey.

If I'm dying to write then I can write somewhere anonymously on the web, I don't need to have my own blog to prove to others that oh wow I'm so cool and I can write and I had such an interesting life story, that's all useless noise.

Matter of fact, it takes away from the magic of having to tell my own story personally when I meet someone who's worthy of hearing it.

So that's it y'all! It was a fun ride, I've learned alot about myself while writing, I laughed alot, I cried alot too…I basically lived through the words written on those articles.

But now, it's time to actually go live in the real world, in the vast universe that was created for us to enjoy.

I want to lead a slower pace of life, I want to work on my dreams, I want to read more physical books and less biased online narratives, I want to go to museums and wander at how magnificent each piece or art is and not be bombarded by AI generated slop online, I want to hear real music and feel it, and not hear yet another AI generated one (even though they are actually good).

Basically I want to truly live life on my own terms, I don't want to be rushed, I don't want my story to be narrated and dictated, I don't want algorithms to choose how I feel.

I want to create more, to experience more, and to try and regain as much of my freedom as I can.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

Peace out!

Leen