About our old VHS-camera, and how nothing is random.
You did not lose it. Let's find it back and give it a stage.
Nobody could have predicted this path. Including me. And still, looking back, it was always there.
When I look at everything I did as a child and in my working life, and everything I do now, it all ties together. Nothing is random.
Not the final destination
I spent years working with animals, living out a dream I had carried since I was a child. And it was everything I hoped it would be. But it also turned out not to be my final destination, not the full expression of everything I have to offer. The love for animals never went away. It's part of the story, just not the whole of it.
Then somewhere along the way I ended up in a coaching training, even though I never wanted to be a coach. Then social media became a full-time job on top of everything else. Then a course on how to build an online platform, then an international training in marketing and sales. I roll from one thing into the next, with a kind of hunger and urgency that sometimes surprises even me.
None of it is random, because the signs were there early. My love for animals. The way I used to play witch as a kid. My dreams, my fascinations, my visions. The way I talk, the way I connect with people without even trying, my love for selling something: the trade, the deal.
And the VHS camera. That's a whole other thing.
The VHS camera
In the eighties, when I was a child, we had one of those gigantic home video cameras, and we used it for everything. We recreated popular TV shows, we acted, we made trick videos. We built entire little worlds in our living room and filmed them with total seriousness, absolute joy and endless creativity.
That vibe is what I'm trying to find again and hold onto, while I also put something important into the world.
Not following the rules
People look at me and see someone writing her heart out, making her own content, doing her own thing. Not chasing virality, not following the rules. It might go a bit slower than for someone who uses the same boring hooks to stop the scroll, the same boring format, the same AI-generated language, the same, same, same.
It might totally make you cringe, too.
Too bad for you, because I'm just getting started ;-)
I hope you can feel the playful energy all of this leans on. I actually LIKE doing it, and I guard the energy behind it like a dragon guarding its hoard of gold.
The goal is not for me as a person to be seen or liked. The goal is bringing something I feel is very important into the world. You get to watch me practise what I preach in real time, with total conviction and determination. And enjoying it.
A solid foundation
That works because my foundation is solid. I know what I'm good at, I know what makes me happy, and I know what I'm working toward. All these separate pieces probably won't ever land me a corporate job (thank god! But too bad for them!), but they make me the human being I am. They define the game I'm going to play out in this life, level by level.
And that is precisely why I built SPINE. As a foundation. As a way to make those discoveries, and to find out what your equivalent of the VHS camera is: the thing that was always there, that you maybe forgot about somewhere along the way, and that is still waiting to be played out.
Still in there
That child playing with the camcorder, making witchy concoctions in the garden, is still in there. Everything is already there. The curiosity, the hunger, the sense that life is supposed to feel passionate and fun. That maybe you can still make it as a world-famous singer, or that your art might end up in a museum. Whatever it is!
You did not lose it. Let's find it back and give it a stage.
If this stirred something, however small and vague, follow that feeling. SPINE is the first step to start the journey.
Love, Annemarijn
PS: If someone came to mind while you were reading this, share it with them. That person may have been waiting for exactly this, and they just don't know it yet.
My big delusional dream
Let's make this a quiet, unstoppable kind of movement. One person at a time, remembering who they are. And from there, changing everything around them.
It all starts with you.