Originally published on LinkedIn (reformatted for zahradnik.io / Medium)
Most of us experience a moment when life splits in two directions — a fork that defines the next decade.
For me, that moment appeared in 2006, during my final year of high school.
I’ve always had an artistic soul and an engineering mind.
For eight years I played the accordion — long enough, and well enough, to consider a conservatory.
At the same time, I was obsessed with transmission towers, antennas, and geosynchronous satellites beaming signals across continents.
Even though I later became a software engineer, it wasn’t “programming” that drew me in.
It was the beauty of broadcasting — invisible waves, antennas, and the quiet hum of electricity connecting people across distance.
And so I made a pragmatic decision.
If I chose the artist’s path, the chances of making a living were slim.
The engineering path promised stability — and a different kind of creativity.
That choice shaped everything that followed.
Even today, long after leaving telecommunications, I still pause to admire every satellite dish I see.
(Proof: scroll through my early posts — there’s one of me proudly standing beside one.)
Sometimes I wonder: what if I’d taken the other road?
Maybe I’d be someone like Lucio Corsi — an outlier artist with a small but devoted following.
Instead, I became an engineer who discovered art inside technology — what Paul Graham called a hacker and a painter.
Over time, that blend became my signature.
My artistic side is happy now.
I’m not building a soulless company — I’m shaping something artistic through engineering itself.
Because in the end, creation is creation — whether you use brushes or code.
Follow my story.
