What It Means to Stand at an Icelandic Fjord and Think About Your Business

Every podcast was screaming: find your calling or die

There was this period. 2022 or 2023 — honestly, the year doesn't matter much now. What matters is that from every podcast, every motivational card, every LinkedIn post, the same message was blasting: find your purpose or your life will pass you by.

Honestly? Dying felt like a quiet option. At least it would be calm.

But first I had to see Iceland. So I went.

My therapist and the most hellish year

At that point I was in my first year of working with a therapist — Vikulichka. My love and guardian angel, if those exist in real life.

And this was exactly that moment — the most hellish one. The year when old patterns collapse and new foundations don't exist yet. You're suspended in mid-air. The old crutches are gone — correctly gone, they weren't working. But the new legs haven't grown yet. That feeling is worse than any external crisis. External crises at least have an explanation. This one doesn't.

Inner emptiness at the fjord

I flew to Iceland for a couple of days. And there, at the fjord — I arrived.

Not in a good sense of the word. In the sense that I collided. With my own inner emptiness. With a bruised and very broken ego. You stand at the water. Mountains with snow. Silence so deep you can hear something humming inside you. And that humming thing is a question: so what now?

I wanted to create something. That was clear. But where to move — completely unclear. As if I had a compass but the needle wouldn't stop.

The Sorting Hat stayed silent

All my friends by that point knew where they were going. Like the Sorting Hat from Harry Potter — it had sorted everyone long ago. Medicine. Design. Corporate. Family. Their own business — and they were thriving.

And I was still standing in front of the hat. It stayed silent. Or I wasn't listening. Or I heard it and was scared. Even then it wasn't clear which of the three.

I always had the ambition to build something of my own — that was certain. But there was no free energy for it. All of it was going towards holding up a rotting facade. Maintaining relationships with people who stopped being close a long time ago. Being who people expected. Pretending everything was understood and fine.

To get somewhere you have to walk

That's what I figured out at the fjord. Simple to the point of being obvious.

To get somewhere you have to walk. Even when you don't know where. Even when it feels like the whole world is against you — though it isn't, the world is mostly busy with itself.

But you have to move. Because standing at a fjord asking 'but where do I go?' can go on forever — the fjord won't answer. It's just very beautiful and very cold.

Bet everything on red

Here's what I think — this is what crystallised at the water.

We're not getting out of here alive. That's a fact. Medical and philosophical at the same time.

You can take that as grief. Or you can take it as a card to play.

The worst thing will happen anyway — we're not eternal. So maybe instead of mourning it, use it? Play your hand on the way out. For your few decades, bet everything on red. Maybe it pays off. And if it doesn't — you play again. The table is still there. We're still sitting at it.

I started building BossBot a year after that trip. I don't know if that was the Sorting Hat finally deciding — or just critical mass of 'I have to start walking'. Probably both.

But standing at an Icelandic fjord understanding nothing — that was part of the path. A necessary part. Sometimes you have to travel to the coldest, most beautiful place on earth to finally hear your own compass.