The year I took the pen back

The first chapter of my story (how 2023 became my Year of Awakening).

For years, I lived on autopilot.
I went to school, came home, opened my PC, and disappeared into games for hours.

Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months. Nothing changed.

Then one day, I realized something terrifying: I wasn’t living. I was just existing.

That moment started everything.

2023 became my Year of Awakening. The year I became conscious, picked up the pen, and started writing my own story.

Here’s how it all began.

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Lost on the internet

Before 2023, there wasn’t much worth telling.

When COVID hit, life moved online, and I never came back out. At 11, I got hooked: games, YouTube, endless scrolling. My world shrank to the screens of my phone and laptop.

I was always online, but completely disconnected from life.

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The first spark: fitness and discipline

I was built like a chopstick.
And one day, I just got tired of it.

I started how everybody else does: downloaded a “Get abs in 30 days“ app and started doing 10-minute home workouts.

I missed days. I wasn’t consistent.
But it was different: one of the first times I chose future me instead of comfort.

By mid-2023, I wasn’t big or strong, but I was proud. I could do 20 push-ups, being almost the best in my class. This small win meant everything: it proved I can change.

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Code and curiosity

My earliest obsession was coding.

I started at age 10 with Scratch, a colorful drag-and-drop game engine made for kids. I quit out of frustration, then came back later. This time, I stuck with it.

Once I understood the basics — variables, logic — I was hooked. Soon, I was watching HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tutorials, building tiny projects that barely worked. I didn’t have big results, but I loved the process.

My first-ever business idea was a course about Scratch, teaching kids to think like programmers. It wasn’t really about money. It was about passing on the feeling of understanding how things work.

This was the earliest sign of my long-term vision: changing how people learn.

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Rewriting myself

Through all this, I was still “the weird nerd“. Good grades, quiet, helpful — the guy people asked for homework, not friendship.

When I changed schools in September, I decided to change myself too.

Nobody knew me there. So I experimented: spoke more, acted more confidently, stopped being a nerd. It wasn’t easy, but it was the first time I consciously rewrote my identity.

That’s also when I found my school’s tiny gym. My first real workout is a vivid memory: I didn’t know how to use the equipment, couldn’t lift big weights, and I was just trying to figure it out.

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The first plan

On November 12, 2023, at exactly 20:23, I created a blank Word document.

I didn’t know it then, but this file became the core of everything that’s happening now.

Inside it, I started planning my life — breaking it into categories: personal growth, fitness, career, relationships, and money. It was ambitious, messy, and unfinished. But it was the first proof that I was awake.

The next day, I made another version. I didn’t finish that either. But I still have these documents: the written records of the moments that mark the true start of my life.

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The Year of Awakening

2023 wasn’t the year I changed everything.
It was the year I realized I could.

From the outside, you couldn’t have really noticed big changes. But inside, everything shifted: I became a completely different person.

That’s why I call it my Year of Awakening: the moment I became conscious of the fact that I’m the one holding the pen. And everything you see from me now — this story, this business, this journey — started right here.

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Roots (Chapter 1)

I’m Zoli, 17, building a business from scratch, documenting every step of the journey.

This post is the first episode of a new series called Roots, where I tell how it all began, everything before this journey, which I document from zero.

See you in Chapter 2.

- Zoli