Life Is a Game. You Decide Who You Become.

I’ll be honest with you, because I don’t know how to start this any other way.

This began as a way to survive. It is turning into something I didn’t expect.

I.The Job That Let Me Go

I got laid off, and overnight the thing that gave my days a shape was gone.

I needed to survive, and more than that, I needed a direction.

So I started making things. Not to sell anything, I didn’t even know what I would sell. I needed something that was mine, and I wanted to see who I became while I built it.

For the record: I never earned a peso from any of this. I never tried to.

II.The Question Everyone Kept Asking

Then the questions started. Are you making money yet? Are you still doing that thing? Why isn’t it making money?

I felt that pressure, the pull to turn this into a number fast, the way I had been trained to turn everything into a number.

And the irony isn’t lost on me. I can sell a company’s product all day and feel nothing, because it isn’t me on the line, it’s the thing. Put me in front of a camera to sell myself and something locks up.

The pressure made the work worse. I was performing for an outcome instead of building something I believed in. There’s a quiet fear that posting about what you do makes you an impostor, and what I keep relearning is the opposite: you earn the knowledge by doing the work, and it would be a little selfish to keep the lessons to myself once I have them.

III.The Day I Realized It Was About You

The more I made, the more obvious it got.

The value was you.

The viewer. The person who reads to the end and replies, who sits with an idea for a minute before scrolling on.

Once I saw that, the money chase felt small next to the thing that was actually happening: a conversation.

So the question changed. What would I actually say to you, if it were just us and I had nothing to sell?

IV.So I Decided to Film the World I Know

Here is what I landed on. I film the world I know.

The places I’ve lived, the people who shaped me, the systems I build, the weird little obsessions I can’t turn off.

And the challenge I’m giving myself, the real one, is to show it without knowing the how. I am Argentino, with a bit of German precision and a lot of Latin passion, and I think that mix is the lens I see through.

I don’t have it all mapped out. I’m figuring out the how in front of you, on purpose, because I’d rather build in the open than wait until it’s polished enough to feel safe.

Safe is just slow with better lighting.

V.Maybe the Whole Point Was Knowing Myself

Maybe the goal, after all of this, was knowing myself a little more.

I used to think I had to prove I was valuable, or interesting, or worth your time. That pressure turned everything I shared into an audition.

Lately I feel different. I think the best things I can give you are the ones I built for myself first: the cool stuff, the weird ideas, the systems I made because I needed them and nobody was going to hand them to me.

If they helped me, maybe they help you too. That feels more honest than performing usefulness, and it’s the only version of this I can see myself doing for years.

Funny, for someone with a marketing degree: I think the thing people actually want gets built by going inward, not by running a survey. The product might just be the one I would make for myself anyway.

Life is a game. The one real move is deciding who you become while you play it.

VI.Slower, On Purpose

Somewhere in here, this stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like a vocation. Maybe a career. Maybe a company, if it wants to become one. I’ve stopped being shy about that part.

This was never a course on making money, and it won’t become one. What I can offer is to make better things, share what I learn while I make them, and let the right people come closer if they want to. If it’s ever worth paying for, I’ll let you pay for it, and I’ll feel good about that.

I’m doing it from a strange kind of calm, because I already feel rich in the ways that count. Money can follow the work. It was never the reason I showed up. I spent years where commission was the only thing that moved me, and I’m not building this from that place.

So I’m betting on the opposite of the rush. The slower I go and the calmer I stay, the more at peace my nervous system feels, and the work gets better, not worse. There’s a part of me that wants everything at the highest standard, which is its own cliché now, because I think we’re all overachievers pretending it’s a virtue. I’d rather make peace with the pace.

Lately I feel in tune. With myself, with something larger than me, with God, with light.

Call it completion. Call it evolution. I’m taking it slower and being more intentional, improving my systems one at a time, and sharing the things I used to keep to myself because I assumed nobody needed them.

VII.This Is Me Walking the Walk

So here is me trying again, the way I always have.

No matter how muddy the walk gets, I will never stop walking.

This is me walking the walk.

Thank you for reading, human. I’ll see you next week, back inside my universe.

Welcome to the Lobby.

— Ivan

become the director of your own universe.

Hit reply and tell me one thing you’re building for yourself right now. I read these.

Want the longer version of where my head’s at? incentiv.lat