First and foremost I am a citizen of the world, and at the same time I am a Canadian, an immigrant, a person with a disability, a writer, the list goes on. But like for most people there are things about me that change over time, at least to a certain extent.
I was born and spent my childhood in Poland. Life during communism wasn’t easy (the line-ups, the product shortages).
In the mid-seventies I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a condition in which a person gradually loses muscle strength and eventually requires a ventilator to live. I try not to concern my self with this and live and enjoy my life.
By age six I could no longer walk, and It was not possible to get a proper wheelchair for me. This and other reasons (many to do with my health) prompted my parents to seriously consider emigrating, which was not easy in a communist country.
Finally, in the summer of 1981 and several months before martial law was imposed, we pretty much escaped from Poland (by claiming to be going on vacation) and drove continuously (other than sleep breaks) to Belgium. We ended up in the small town of Stavelot, where we had arranged a place to live. This was incidentally very close to the formula 1 racing circuit. The significance of this was that I was always obsessed with automobiles and here I was. The irony is that I was probably too young at the time to enjoy watching racing and I couldn’t afford to go to one. I did manage to attend the 1982 Brussels International Auto Show, which for me was like being in heaven.
In the summer of that year we emigrated to Canada, which my parents decided was the best place for us (I agree).
My family and I in a 1982 Vancouver Sun newspaper soon after our arrival in Canada
In 2005 I went to the hospital to get a tracheotomy done to help with my breathing. Right after returning home I hired a new care attendant. I was quite weak and vulnerable for a few weeks and she took very good care of me. This probably explains why I was soon in love with her.
The first time I gave her a gift I included a love poem I wrote for her. This became a habit and soon I was writing all kinds of poetry. A few years and several poems later I began reciting them at various local venues. In 2017 I self-published a book of poetry (see here for more info).
Here I am reciting poetry at the Vancouver Poetry Slam in 2013. Doing spoken word in public had a very positive effect on my confidence levels. This is one poem of mine that was short-listed in a contest.
I wrote my last poem in 2014, the same year I got into the day trading of stocks. That didn’t work out too well for me (except that it taught me to be more decisive and less apt to give up) so in 2017 I switched to investing in stocks and cryptocurrencies. See here for a more detailed story of how I got into stocks, and here for cryptocurrencies. Recently I also got interested in derivatives.
Writing is something I’ve been doing on and off for most of my life (I even attempted to write a novel), I hope to post a lot more on Steemit.
Thank you for reading this.