Welcome

Welcome reader, glad you found your way here. As a first post, I want to explain what this personal homepage (how cliché) is all about. The bar is officially open!

Why I have a website now

The launch of this website is related to me becoming an independent (aka freelancer aka solo entrepreneur) as of January 2022. I followed my urges to increasingly go my own way.

I do have a LinkedIn account and a Twitter profile, two platforms of choice I plan to be more active on (maybe I will add Medium or another writing platform to that list), but I also want to have a fully individualized platform that I can tweak however I can. This site can be seen on the one hand as a digital portrayal of the journey I am on, balancing the universes of work and life, money and fun, and on the other hand a place where I present some more content-heavy articles. Often, the stories will be personal, and maybe uninteresting for many, but hopefully not for everyone. As a minimum, the writings will serve as a public library of mine that I enjoy creating, and through which I will refine my writing style and skills.

Writing is not a newfound interest. I love to adapt music lyrics into stories that involve my friends, I once wrote a tongue-in-cheek manifest for polygamy when I came out of high school, I submitted an erotic short story to a competition not so long ago, moderated a story forum about a cycling strategy game at the age of 16, and liked writing the many research proposals and papers during my PhD. My French teacher even told me that I might become a reputed economic journalist one day. Despite this, my website is the first time that I really come forward with my writings, but it is a natural step.

This site is different from the desirdata.com website, which is purely focused on my products and services as an independent. They are of course interconnected, because I am the man behind the man and the man behind the company. This website is the most “free-floating” of the two.

What you will find here

There are two main pages on the website: the Home page, and the Writings page. On the former, there’s an overview of things I did and what I am interested in. The most dynamic section is going to be the Writings section. I have committed myself to write more, and will put most of it on here. I will be writing about data-related topics, about music, about sports, and about the “world” as I see it.

I am not going to fix myself to do or not do certain things, but I will try to keep a minimum level of consistency concerning what and how frequently I update. Most of my writings will not be sharpened to death for the sake of spontaneity and the inevitable fluctuations of my thoughts. I would like to be as open as possible, about good and bad things. I will occasionally post articles written in Dutch, but the majority of my writings will be in English.

Beware, I tend to be more negative than positive in my messages. Criticizing what’s wrong, and trying to think it through is a more instinctive inclination to me. To be fair, I am probably better at writing than I am at doing, and I am not even sure how good I am at writing. “Do as I say, not as I do” applies to a certain extent.

What you will hopefully do

There are grosso modo three things you can do:

• • 🙄 You can be a one-time visitor and hate what you see, therefore never come back.
  • 🧐 You can be a silent visitor, regularly enjoying what you find here.
  • 😍 You can reach out to me, so we can discuss about whatever it is we have a mutual interest in.

The last option is my preferred one and is hopefully what you will do, but only when it counts. Getting in touch with people sharing my interests and willing to discuss similarities and differences is eventually what I am looking for. I am not here to scream the truth, but to find connection. These days, this is called finding your tribe. I am sure I belong to other people’s tribes and some people belong to mine, but we are simply not aware yet. I want to avoid becoming overly romantic, but let this website help us find each other.

Note that I sometimes inject my writing with obscure musical or cultural references. Bonus points if you spot them.