Sjoerd Gerritsen

The thing everybody secretly wants

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:00:03 +0000

I’ve been back from my travels for about 3 weeks now and I’ve run into something that I think is pretty interesting. People seem to envy me. And not for my good looks and charm but for the fact that I’m a bartender right now.

Let me tell you, I didn’t become a bartender just because I was desperate for a job and some money. Far from it actually! To summarize my entrepreneurial life since I started out about 6,5 years ago comes down to this:

- I’ve worked my ass off ever since I started - Didn’t want to do it anymore - Started to travel the world - Came back to realize I wanted a simpler life

Now I’m back and I’m living the life I need right now. Nice and easy going. Whenever I talk about my past with my new – still ...

Now what?

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:03:53 +0000

I’ve met people in my past who had traveled to remote parts of the world, came back home and had lost their inner peace they had found. I always thought to myself, when I travel the world I’ll come back and hold on to whatever I found.

I’ve been home for 3 nights and I’ve moved my stuff into a new place, I found a new job (not client, not business, not project, but an actual job) and have no fucking clue what I’m doing…

To shed some light onto how this came to be is an short story. I’ve worked for myself since I was 17 and worked my ass off ever since. I wanted a break and went to travel to figure out ‘my next step’. Because I found a lot of peace of mind in living a minimalist and ...

The girl in South Korea

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:14:14 +0000

Thanks to Hollywood we as mere viewers have started to believe in this thing called ‘love at first sight’. I actually have a good friend of mine who is of the believe that you should know on the first date if you would want to fully commit to your date or not. I never thought that made a lick of sense until now.

Over the last years of my life but especially the last couple of months I’ve experienced a lot of different shades of love. From intense love between friends to slowly falling in love. However, I’m now a believer in Hollywood love.

We met briefly on Friday night and I simply thought she was insanely cute and her English was good enough to have a nice night, so I asked her out. After she said yes she realized her schedule ...

Gotta love Canadians

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:53:42 +0000

Two nights ago I hung out with some Canadians. Since I’ve been to Canada, I thought I kind of knew their culture. But apparently I missed out on some true openness. One of the Canadians was a 23 year old guy who lives in Busan. Like a lot of foreigners who come to Korea he teaches English to little kids.

At some point our conversation took a bit of an odd turn. He decided to tell the world he loves to watch the Harry Potter movies. Good for him! Our conversation became even more interesting when we started talking about skydiving and bungee jumping. Both of which I’ve done, both of which were awesome!

He however says that he is scared shitless of doing those things. It makes a lot of sense, it’s not really a natural thing to jump off ...

Don’t show emotion if you want to live harmoniously

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:30:55 +0000

So, you might think I lost my marbles… I didn’t, I did however have a lot of conversations with Japanese people about emotion, the conversations went from confusing to even more confusing.

We all know that most Japanese people try and hide there emotions. I however never took the time to actually ask anyone (until now) the crazy and o so intruding question of why??

Apparently you can’t show emotion because it effects the other person. I didn’t really get why this was a problem. But it’s because effecting other people is impolite.

You’ve got to imagine I used to be the king of hiding my emotions not too many years ago. If I would’ve moved to Japan back then, I would’ve been loved by all! Now I was merely accepted, at times…

Anyways, I didn’t get why you can’t just talk about ...

I’ve underestimated gratefulness

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:56:57 +0000

A couple of nights ago I went out in Kyoto with a friend who spoke English and some of her friends. It was a very fun and linguistically challenging night.

However there was a moment when we were talking about traveling when their English went from broken to intensely clear.

One of the girls I the group said: “I’m glad I saw Europe before I will die.” Since I didn’t really know how to respond to this seemingly morbid but endearing remark I simply responded with a classic: “Why?”

She went on to say that no one knows when we will die. Which is obviously very true, but at that time it had been a while since I looked at death in such a conscious way and I was kind of surprised by the level of intensity she had going on for ...

Harvard boy says life isn’t about happiness

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 05:22:52 +0000

About a week ago when I was in Tokyo I bumped into a guy who studies at Harvard. We got talking about how hard it is to get into Harvard, how smart the people over there are, purpose of college/life and a whole bunch of random things.

We ended up talking about happiness for about an hour. The reason this guy kept me hooked was because his reasoning about why we’re on this beautiful earth was so calculated it actually lacked a little thing called humanity. I thought it was interesting and wanted to see how deep the rabbit hole went.

He was of the believe that life isn’t about happiness, passion or any of that. Life is about power and greatness, and going to Harvard is one way to attain those things.

He continued on by saying that power is and end ...

When in doubt, add bacon

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 03:04:11 +0000

It’s been a while since my last blog. I’ve been so busy lately exploring San Francisco, drinking wine in Napa and Sonoma, flying to Tokyo. I know, my life could use some more excitement..

But ever since I got to Japan a couple of days ago I’ve been wanting to write about the craziness of bacon in the the States. I didn’t feel it was safe writing about it when I was there, you understand, right??

So the story is simple, everyone absolutely, undoubtably, freakin loves bacon! And it’s easy to understand why, it’s delicious. However, imagine every dish on the menu having bacon, eating bacon at breakfast, lunch and dinner, having a choice of American or Canadian bacon, knowing the animal it came from had a good life, a happy life, a joyful life..

To me, at first I was ecstatic, bacon ...

Four guys and a kitten

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:08:39 +0000

When I was in New Orleans I stayed in a house where these four amazing guys lived who all had a goal that was far from ‘normal’. It was the house that would inspire any teenager to become an entrepreneur.

There was a pretty boy who was an actor (modern Sinatra), knew how to fly planes and was gonna work at a bank. I know it sounds really random, but the randomness allowed him to just pursue whatever he felt was right at that moment.

I want to call the second guy fired up, but that might be underselling him a bit. He was also an actor, who had a day job as a bartender (amazing breakfast cocktails) and had the goal of starting a brewery.

The last two guys were coffee guys. There was a man who wanted his own coffee shop ...

Life one chapter at a time

Sjoerd Gerritsen — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 06:18:51 +0000

Imagine meeting someone who you think you could fall for but you know you will have to leave. Will you go for it and know you will be hurt at the end, or play it safe and let it go?

I went for it, she went for it, we jumped, we fell hard, fast and it was amazing. It felt like Shakespeare wrote our story. That unfortunately included the painful goodbye.

No one knows what the future will bring (not even the gypsies in New Orleans), and not thinking about it can result to be a painful experience. However, not living fully now can result in a life of regret.

At this moment our story has one chapter. But is life about experiencing chapters or novels? What would you do?