From studying law to co-founding a blockchain startup

Hi there everyone!

I am really excited to join the Steemit community and I want to share my story why I am here.

Since I was 7 if anyone asked me who I wanted to be, they expected me to say 'a princess', and I would respond 'I want to be an attorney, like my mummy'. And that made people laugh. But throughout the years this kind of stuck in my head. And as I was this kind of nerd, good at everything, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I tried to find out.

I chose a high school that allowed me to choose my majors a year later than any other. Just to buy some time. In my second year, next to picking History and Maths as my majors, I attended an evening drawing class because I thought that I could become a fashion designer. And for that I needed to pass drawing and painting exams at an art university. The dream kind of vanished into thin air when I started painting. Let's say I am more inspired my Miro and Kandinsky than Rembrandt or da Vinci.

Long story short I ended up in law school. I chose European Law at Maastricht University, which because of its broad curriculum, bought me some more ... time. During my studies, I tried to fall in love with law by getting involved in various activities but it didn't work out. Let's say it wasn't meant to be.

But thanks to being at Maastricht University I found out my true love. By choosing to write an extended thesis in the topic of Law & Pop Culture, I tried to answer a question whether when we reach singularity should AI have human rights. And I based my research on scifi films. So I actually ended up watching 20 scifi movies in the name of research, studying some philosophy and writing maybe 2 pages in the entire paper about law. Thanks prof. Smits for letting me do that. So that was part 1 of falling in love with technology.

Part 2 was becoming a volunteer at Maastricht Entrepreneurship Week which revealed the startup world to me (and actually explained the word 'startup' to me). And most importantly, I fell in love with the people in the community. Being curious and open to talk about ideas. Happy to share their knowledge. I knew I found my tribe.

2 years later, after having flirted with the corporate world a bit and working at a digital health startup, I co-founded Trivial - a blockchain based startup. Why? Because I need this bit of madness in my life. Ok, maybe more than an average person. And I think blockchain can enable those beautiful and crazy ideas come into life. And what we are doing is enabling users to find those ideas which are being developed on the Ethereum blockchain. So we are an Ethereum blockchain explorer/interface/browser - still figuring out how to call our baby.
Oh, and if you want to check it out, there you go => www.trivial.co

And this is where my heart and focus is at the moment. But I want to end up with another note. I believe I found my passion: shaping technologies that change the world. Because that excites me. However, I still don't know who I want to be or what I want to do in the future. And I came to terms with that. The exciting part about life is not knowing everything. And grasping the opportunities on the way.