I was born as one of a set of triplets in Israel, where I was the odd one out.
childhood
As a child, I dabbled in various arts.
I mailed the most famous children’s author in Israel books with fan-fiction that I wrote.
I created a theatre show that I performed every year from kindergarten to middle school.
I played the piano for six years.
I was in the school choir, and opened the graduation show with a solo.
I painted every week and created costumes.
But I never fit in, nor knew how to.
adolescence
Everything changed in middle school, where I was bullied and alone. Constant peer pressure and homophobia led to depression. I quit my hobbies, studied Japanese, and started to hide my thoughts and emotions.
Coming out in high school to my close friends didn’t help. I focused on homework, and gave up on the idea of finding love. To my confusion, I also became bisexual. I started writing my first novel, inspired by my self-harm.
university
After ignoring everyone’s career advice, I graduated summa cum laude in a multidisciplinary degree course in Humanities and Arts from Tel-Aviv University.
It made me clinically depressed at first, and ended as one of the most fun and eye-opening things I’ve experienced.
I worked for a few years as a quality assurance engineer, and then graduated with merit from the UK’s most prestigious creative writing master’s program. It also triggered an existential crisis, followed by cutthroat fun.
I was about to start a PhD and stay in the UK for good, when COVID, Brexit, and money thwarted it.
big trip
I returned to Israel with my dream crushed. Nothing I tried bore fruit. I was stuck in an environment that suppressed my identity, and didn’t leave room for growth.
As I taught business English and freelanced in ghostwriting, I also rewrote my own stories. They were the only thing that kept me going. Ten years of dedicating my free time to literature, alone in my room; of sacrificing my youth and social life, while my twins and peers were out exploring.
I only cared about becoming an author. But it didn’t happen.
After two and a half years, I lost the will to live. I decided that I deserved to be happy, and started to take down the walls I had built in middle school.
When Japan reopened to tourists, I travelled there for three months. This extended into fourteen months across East Asia, as the war in Israel turned me into a refugee. I stayed with locals, volunteered in various places, and documented each day of my trip on this website.
My travel blog helped me open up and share my shy, private self. I literally came out of my shell by posting my childhood journals.
I became a new person – confident, adventurous, extroverted. A mature evolution of my childhood self. I explored everything I could, as if I was going through a second puberty. This also transformed my writing, and solved the problems that had persisted in my stories.
At the same time, I experienced love again, and again, and again. A misfit robot had left Israel, and ended a sociable romantic in Asia.
present
Relocating to Tokyo was the next step for me. I attended a Japanese language school for a year, and interned as a journalist.
Nowadays, I navigate corporate slavery, while branching into music and comedy. Writing will come after.
I have worked in tech, education, and sales. But none of these industries were as brutal as publishing. In today’s digital age, I must build a platform first.
