Hi Steemians,

Just before sunrise at the Cretan archipelago

My name is Michael Aligizakis and i ‘m 36 years old. I was born and raised in Athens, Greece, although both of my parents are from Crete island. The 3 things i love the most are technology, fitness and travelling so i guess that these are going to be the main focus of my posts.

I ‘m a computer and networks engineer who worked for 12 years as a support engineer in a data vendor company of the Athens Stock Exchange. Broker houses and banks were our main customers as well as individuals and other companies. Although the economic crisis in Greece made a terrible impact on the industry, and our sales were falling like an avalanche from the Alps, i still had the assurance that by the end of the month my pay check would be there waiting for me.

But there was something wrong inside me. I was doing something that i did not enjoy anymore and i realised that the only reason i was doing it was fear. Fear of chasing my dreams at these recession times. Fear of losing my salary. Fear of failing myself and the ones i love. I was miserable.

Fear my friends is a feeling that has the ability to save your life or destroy it.

Now let me tell you what i was afraid the most.. That one day i will regret the fact i didn’t even tried to do what i wanted. And more than a year ago, the day that i couldn’t take it anymore came. Once the decision was rationalised in my head there was no going back. I left.

What did i do next you might ask? Well, i always had a passion for coding, web development and web design. Stuff like that help me engage with my creativity and allow my visions to come to life. Right now i ‘m making my dream come true by being a freelancer web developer and WordPress site builder. It is definitely not an easy ride. One of the things that a programmer must get familiar with, is failure. If you don’t fail it means that you don’t try. Thus you won’t learn from your mistakes so you will never become better. I really try to fail a lot and i am succeeding wonderfully at it!

View from Meteora

Besides development, i am also very interested in content creation so when i discovered what steemit was all about i wanted to be part of it. Steemit will not only prove valuable to me as a content creation platform, since it is by itself a great motivation, but i strongly believe that it is the future of the Internet. Quality content, a characteristic of the steemit community, is the only thing that can turn the Internet, from the giant junkyard of censored content it is right now, to a tool for evolving ourselves and humanity to the right direction. This characteristic is what makes it so valuable and profitable. If we keep it free, original and creative then steemit is destined for success and we can be part of this success.