Here Goes Nothing

One year ago today, I got off a plane in Hamburg, sat down at my desk, and wrote a rambling entry about a museum in Oman, a body of water nobody can agree on the name of, and a man who turned a country into a miracle.

Two days later, I published an empty webpage with a Google Maps screenshot and two blocks of lorem ipsum and called it a project.

I was so proud of that empty page.

I want to tell you what happened between then and now. Because it was not the straight line I imagined.

After the first two entries, I kept thinking. I was sketching ideas, reading about infrastructure, looking at maps. I had this growing folder of half-baked concepts. It was all in my head, slowly taking shape.

Then June came.

The 12-day war between Israel and the regime in Iran. You probably remember it. I certainly do. I sat in Hamburg watching the news, watching the region I was dreaming about burn. One night, the night before the ceasefire, I was at my lowest. Depressed, hopeless, furious. The distance between the dream and reality felt infinite.

So I did what I always do when reality gets unbearable. I dive deep into daydreaming.

A rough sketch of eight countries unified around the Gulf with my overly wishful labels. I posted it on my Instagram with the caption: “Roughest sketch of a dream.”

That was the second brick. The first was the empty webpage. The second was the sketch that came out of the worst night.

Then came the fog.

The war ended but nothing changed. The regime in Iran got more brutal. Things were not great in my personal life either. For months, the project lived mostly in my head. I designed a couple of flags. Wrote one article. But the energy to actually launch this thing, to put it properly out into the world, I could not find it.

Then January 2026 happened. The massacre of civilians by the regime in the first days of the new year. I am not going to describe it here. If you know, you know. If you do not, I envy you.

But I dove back in. Hard. Every time the situation gets dire, the dream is where I go. That is how I survive. Not by ignoring reality, but by imagining something worth building on the other side of it.

And here we are. March 1, 2026. Exactly one year to the day. And guess what! The Americans and the Israelis just blew up the so-called Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, literally last night. The war that one whole nation was afraid of for half a century is finally here.

One year ago, I landed in Hamburg with a head full of fire. Today I am sitting at the same desk, in the same apartment, looking at the same grey sky, and I have: a map. An atlas with eight countries outlined and clickable. The Perso-Arabian Ring drawn as a dashed line around the Gulf. Flags. A newsletter. A subreddit. A vision that is no longer just in my head but on a screen that anyone in the world can see.

Is it finished? No. Not even close. It is still lorem ipsum in places. It is still rough and raw and held together with the digital equivalent of duct tape and hope.

But it exists.

Here is what I have learned in one year of spooning yogurt into the sea:

The first brick is the hardest and the easiest. It is hard because you feel ridiculous. It is easy because it costs nothing but courage.

Nobody cares about your dream until you show them the first proof that you are serious about it. The proof does not need to be perfect. It needs to be real.

Depression and hope are not opposites. The worst nights of this year produced the best work. That sketch drawn the night before the ceasefire is still, to this day, the most honest thing I have made.

And: you do not need a budget, a team, or a plan. You need a weird metaphor and a willingness to look foolish.

So here goes nothing.