Davide Di Pumpo

Looking from up here, it's as if each flame were a small dream, for each person. They're like... a bonfire of dreams. But, there's no flame for me here. I'm just... a temporary visitor, taking comfort from the flame.

I started reading Berserk at 15. Now, imagine reading something like that, right in the middle of your psychological growth, about Griffith, the most charismatic villain ever to come out of a mangaka's mind. That stuff marks you, for real. If you don't know what I'm talking about, leave my blog for a moment and go catch up on it. You'll thank me later.

Back? Good. Now that we've got it firmly in our heads what we're talking about, let's move on. Adolescence is a peculiar time, as everyone knows, even without having read Berserk. It's the age when you realize your parents don't know everything about life. The flame that kept you warm until then starts to feel tight, and you look for other bonfires, whether they belong to people you know or are kept in the pages of someone born and raised on the other side of the globe.

But the fire that dwells in us, like it or not, is fed at its base and contained by hearths and firewood that someone built for us, someone who nurtured our spark. And even if we became devastating wildfires, those flames would still originate from those places. Well, for years I was forged in the fire of a thousand battles by the idea of being chosen.

I want to be chosen

From childhood they repeat one specific thing to us: study and you'll get a good job.

You don't study to become someone, to learn something, to grow as a person. You study for a profession. And not even one you really want to do. Nobody starts from "I want to find the cure for cancer" or "I like to create websites". You start from "if you study, you'll find a good job". Like "dress well and you'll find a good match". You do things because you're a product on the market, and a product has to be chosen by someone else.

At fifteen I had no idea that work could be created. You could become a teacher, a bank clerk, maybe a surveyor at the town hall. But that was it. And your profession was so culturally important that on the Italian ID card your job got a whole line of its own.

The only option I had been given was to become, forever, a flame feeding a fire that wasn't mine.

The job, the dream & the great nightmare

But let's finally give this nightmare a name, the place where our souls mingle for eternity and lose their humanity: the posto fisso, the permanent job.

It's so present in our everyday lives that the italian comedian Checco Zalone built a good chunk of the first half of his career mocking exactly this mindset. If you're not Italian, go watch Quo vado?: I think it's emblematic of how an Italian's head works when it comes to work.

But the permanent job isn't just a matter of contracts. It's a matter of identity.

Now, I know that after that intro you were expecting the Guts version of the panda. Instead, tough luck: here's my avatar as Checco Zalone.

I don't do, I am

Even as adults, we define ourselves by what we do. I don't work as a doctor, I am a doctor. I don't work as a designer, I am a designer. And we could go on forever.

It's to escape this social inheritance that in my online bios I also write that I'm a father, that I go to the gym, that I read comics, that I like certain video games. That describes who I am. My job is only part of who I am... also because my job keeps changing.

It really keeps changing.

My first permanent job was at Feltrinelli.

I was a freelancer with a partita IVA, the Italian VAT number you need to work on your own, and by my standards back then I was earning pretty decently. Several clients: the main one was Feltrinelli, then a few odd jobs here and there to make the most of it. Looking back, it was one of the times I felt freest in my career. Like now, actually. And it's from those years that I took inspiration for my current Business plan.

And yet, the day after I received the fixed-term offer, I felt like I'd made it. And I went straight to close my VAT number.

(It must be said that in Italy having a partita IVA is a bloodbath. The bureaucracy is devastating and the State doesn't encourage you to have one. It encourages you to squeeze yourself into a permanent job.)

But that's not the point.

A forged signature and a public competition

And here we are at the anecdote. I know, I know, it's all you were waiting for.

I was born in the South of Italy and grew up with two parents who dreamed of a permanent job for me. Preferably in the public sector. The best there is. So, I'd just been offered the long-awaited permanent job. Despite that, my mother signed me up for a concorso, the public competition you have to pass to get a state job, for a school administrative assistant position near my home in Milan.

Without my knowledge.

Forging my signature.

With copies of my documents that, of course, she had.

She only told me when the results came out: "Go check if they took you at these schools." Why? I already had a well-paid job, a cool job I'd studied for. But a permanent job in the public sector was the dream. The Real Deal! Once you were in, you had nothing left to worry about.

People who weren't their job

I internalized this for a long time. What made me question it was Milan, or rather the people I met there: people who weren't their job. Who had, maybe, created their job themselves.

Entrepreneurs. People passionate about the most absurd things. People in love with factoring, just to give you an idea.

And me? I was there warming myself at a bonfire. At a permanent job. And I was fine with it. Except that at some point I ran into something: staying in one place didn't satisfy me.

I wanted to see more

I'd seen so little of the world. Feltrinelli was my second full-time job, odd jobs aside. Was that really all there was? I was passionate about the web and technology. Out there people were using AngularJS to build websites, we were at the dawn of mobile development, people were starting to make apps. But Feltrinelli is a publishing house, and it couldn't show me any of that. The experimenter of the group was me.

I wanted to see more.

So I did something crazy, at least for my parents: I left the permanent job. I'll leave you to imagine the phone call that happened that Sunday...

I moved to a consulting firm and discovered the banking world. So many things I learned, so many people I met. Phenomenal. I even spent some months in England. Then I did it again and ended up at a product company. That's where I found out what building a product means. Not working only for someone else's dream, but making something productive, solving a real problem for people. Work wasn't something you took off along with your tie. I was surrounded by passionate people.

That's where I fell in love with finance. Most of what I know about it comes from that period and the ones after.

The permanent job that wasn't permanent

Then something else incredible happened: the permanent job I had wasn't so permanent anymore. I'd sniffed out early that the project wasn't going to continue, and a year before the company was officially sold, I moved on. Then came an offer from a big, really big shipping-and-parcels brand. And there I decided, for the last time (for now, you never know in life), to work for someone else.

And then what happened, dear readers?

The layoffs came (which, unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to get, 'cause I really wanted to start my own gig...)

And nothing was left of the permanent job.

Free lance

I love the word freelance. A free lance.

It takes me back to Guts again. A free sword, a free lance.

Pros and cons, of course. The pro is that you're free.

The con is that you're alone. More exposed to bandit attacks, to a thousand problems. You have to learn to cook for yourself, mend for yourself, find your own clients. In a brigade, in a troop, you don't have to worry about any of that.

But what happens when the dream you're warming yourself at no longer represents you? Or worse, when that flame goes out? Or when it actually horrifies you? Let's avoid spoilers and just say the word eclipse.

You're left alone, with nowhere to go. You throw away a devastating amount of knowledge: dynamics, strategies, ways of doing things you'd studied. And no, I'm not talking about Berserk anymore. I'm talking about life. How many SOPs I memorized are now wastepaper (virtual, in my brain)?

Many human relationships fade like tears in rain. And you find yourself there, alone, in the cold. Because the whole we're one big family line? I won't even bother commenting.

Take the leap (but with supplies)

So, what am I trying to say with all this rambling?

I don't look down on the permanent job, on warming yourself at someone else's flame. On the contrary, it's absolutely awesome if you find someone who shares your dream, or a dream that excites you. It's also perfectly fine if you find a fire that keeps your flame alive, because maybe your dream, the real and intimate one, burns outside of work.

But it's not for everyone.

And if you really want to do something, especially if you have the chance, take the leap.

Many say you have to be young. I did it young, yes: at 27. And I did it again at 41, with two kids on my shoulders.

The difference is that I had supplies. Financial stability that let me say: ok, I've got two years to try, let's try. I don't know how it'll go, but those supplies give me a certain freedom. And I'd also built skills and a network that let me move with a certain agility.

That freedom also comes from knowledge. Financial knowledge too, mind you.

It's fine to be chosen. It's fine to stay in your comfort zone. But finding your own path out there, especially in a world as dynamic as today's, is a choice you should at least consider.

I'm not saying you have to take it. I'm saying that if what I've written so far resonates, even a little, if at least once you've heard a voice say "This is what I want to do in life. I can do it", try listening to it and see whether you can afford the luxury of letting that flame blaze.

And if you have questions about how it's done, write to me. Maybe it turns into a chat, a beer, a friendship.

It is my perception... that a true friend never relies on another's dream. A person with the potential to be my true friend must be able to find his reason for life without my help. And he would have to put his heart and soul into protecting his dream. He would never hesitate to fight for his dream, even against me. For me, a true friend is one who stands equal on those terms.