I studied interior architecture. Then I started blogging about my observations. I was fascinated by the social web and its impact on our everyday lives. An agency picked up on my hobby and I got headhunted even before I handed in my final project. It was a huge relief to walk out of university knowing I have a full-time job.
Once I finished my master’s, I started working in various communications jobs. In a way, what I’m doing today still feels just like what I studied – I design spaces. The only difference is I’m not building brick and mortar spaces, I’m building virtual ones.

I’ve been freelancing for a couple of years and I love being able to decide how and where I’ll spend my days, and especially with whom. I pay a lot of attention to how I eat my breakfasts. I take time to read and write. I go to bed when I’m tired and I wake up when I feel like it. Having all that freedom and worshipping it as much as I do has made each day very special. I cannot say there is one moment that’s better than another. I really enjoy the days as a whole, whether I spend them working or taking time off.

I started writing and self-publishing books for and about freelancers. I have allowed myself to ask the questions I’m curious about, find the people who I’d like to hear the answers from and simply approach them. I spend hours and hours editing their words. Spending so much time with other people’s words is like therapy. I find inspiration in how they approach various situations and how they think about their own trials and errors. We don’t listen to people too closely very often, but if we did, we’d find absolutely everyone inspiring, in one way or another.

A friend once told me: ‘when things are good with you they are even better. But when things are bad with you they are much much worse.’ I replied that when things are good, I embrace every second. When things are bad, I make life even worse for myself in order to take action and change what’s bothering me as quickly as possible.

One of my friends once said I’m casually productive. I’d say I am a free-spirited connoisseur with a travel bug.

I love books and magazines that tell real stories; I love the magazine BrandEins. I’ve really enjoyed reading ‘The Journeyman’, ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’, ‘The Moneyless Man’ and my absolute favourite are James Herriot’s stories about his life as a veterinarian.

Wes Anderson’s movies. I always have to watch his movies a couple of times to get the full story – I’m too distracted by the beauty of his film sets. I remember walking out of Grand Budapest Hotel and my friend asked me what the movie was about. I couldn’t tell her. She was astonished and said: ‘So the movie wasn’t good?’ I of course had to disagree because I loved it. I had to go and see it again just to pay attention to the dialogue, because there was so much else going on.

Right now Derek Sivers. I spent four hours listening to his interviews with Tim Ferriss. I think we’d really get along. Or maybe also Florian Doc. Kapps, the founder of Supersense. I think we’d get out of the plane with a pretty clear plan of how we’d take over the world. You might want to tell an airline!

That’s a really hard question. I either love a place and could move there immediately or I feel like I don’t belong there at all. I could see myself living (in alphabetical order) in Amsterdam, Berlin, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, New York, Reykjavik, Utrecht and of course Vienna.

I guess I live by two aphorisms:
The first is Dan Harmon’s ‘Find your voice, shout it from the rooftops and keep doing it until the people who are looking for you find you’, which is how I use the internet.
The second, Winston Churchill’s ‘Success is going from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm,’ is how I approach life.

I have a really great, super light backpack in which I can fit everything I need to get by for three weeks or longer. I usually never check in my luggage, preferring to arrive in cities and immediately look as though I belong there.

All my bikes and plants have a name. Also, if you see me in a café, do come and say ‘Hi!’

‘Learning to understand that what you consider normal is probably not too normal elsewhere.’

what you make it!