About me
A Daydreamer’s Tale
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
This image of me in Ethiopia sums up my personality pretty well:
- I’m totally unprepared for the task I set myself to do (“has anybody seen my shoes?”);
- I still go for it, constantly walking on the edge of failure (“is this really the right path?“);
- Being rewarded with beautiful things when something still works out (“told you I could do it! Now don’t mention the 9 other things I didn’t finish…”)
My hobbies and interests change faster than the seasons, but somehow, maps have always remained a core passion of me. As a child, I’d stare in atlases for hours and redraw maps of cool places. I studied geography (spatial sciences) and wrote stories which always ended up being no more than a few pages, because I spent more time on the map that came along with it than on the story itself.

Now wouldn’t that be a nice place to put on a fantasy map?
My first ever digital map, made in MS Powerpoint. In my head, I visited these lands countless times.
When I close my eyes, stories play out in my head
Some people say I’m a daydreamer. I myself, prefer to think of it as a traveler. When I look absent-minded and stare into the void, I’m traveling to places beyond this world. Who is to tell me which reality is fake and which is real? Why are the things in my head less real than the things outside of it?
I love the beauty of our planet and wish I could see every little bit of it. That doesn’t mean however, that I limit myself to the only planet I know about. Inside my head, there’s so much more to explore, so much more to discover.
And every now and then, a little bit of those explorations and discoveries escape my head and make it into maps, stories and games.
Don’t get used to something as extraordinary as living
“Our lives are part of a unique adventure… Nevertheless, most of us think the world is ‘normal’ and are constantly hunting for something abnormal–like angels or Martians. But that is just because we don’t realize the world is a mystery. As for myself, I felt completely different. I saw the world as an amazing dream. I was hunting for some kind of explanation of how everything fit together.”
This quote from Jostein Gaarder’s book The Solitary Mystery describes both what drives me and what holds me back. Reading this book, made me realize I might just be a joker, who’s placed in the same pack as the other cards, but doesn’t really belong there.
“If we are particles in a sea of distance, exploded from an original whole, then there is a science to our solitude. We are lonely in proportion to our years.”
My second map ever made in Wonderdraft. While making a map, stories follow automatically by just looking at what I just created.
Being the Captain of my Soul
I want to create, to invent, to design, to inspire and to be inspired. I want to learn, to ask questions, to be curious and to discover.
All these things, I couldn’t find in the jobs that I tried. Doing the same work 40 hours a week simply doesn’t work for me. Therefore, I decided to do only things that I love doing, no matter what other people think of it and no matter how much ‘lower’ my living standards become when there’s no regular paycheck coming in.
Life’s too short to waste it on things you don’t like doing.
Go to ‘Map commissions’ to read about my satisfaction-based price list and my goals of what to do with the money I make from creating maps.
What else?
Besides mapmaking, I also design board games and escape games. Some of that you can find scattered around this website, but most of it is not yet public to the world…