Enev 2First things first: I consider myself a professional amateur.

But what, besides the obvious attempt at a pun, is the sense of a statement like this?

Well, a professional amateur is a person, who, not just for personal reasons, has chosen a life of constant experiment and change. This is somebody who doesn't believe in (and is unable to fulfill) piecemeal improvements in a chosen path of career; a person who is constantly being accused of wasting his energy on thousand things, whereas his mission in life is... (Here follow the personal preferences of an assemble of well-meaning friends).

His only profession is the constant search for the New (the Holy Land, the Grail). From time to time he manages to impress people with some achievement they might find kind of extraordinary, but in general these are exactly the moments when his inner voice starts telling him that it’s time to get on horseback, again. He’s been rich, he’s been poor. He’s a dearly loving father (and occasional tender lover), but he is pathologically unable to pursue anything but his own dream. His is an eternal life of new things (the smaller ones – constantly; the bigger ones – approximately every ten years). He’s been busy like a bee, all of his life. He’s produced a number of different things (books, mostly, not just his own), but he keeps being horrified by the idea of boredom, exactly the same way it used to terrify him in his childhood. He is well aware of the fact that this is probably depriving him of the possibility to break it really big, but, hey, the ones who know for sure are all dead, so…

“And so it goes”, as used to say that other professional amateur, Kurt.

But enough of this. Here are the facts, for those of you who prefer facts to dreams.

Born in Preslav, Bulgaria, in 1961. Studied philosophy at the Sofia University, Sofia, Bulgaria, in the eighties. Learned several languages, got a PhD in 1989. Left for Berlin, Germany, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Started a family and a professional life (in a previously completely unknown field, book design and modern publishing technologies). Built from scratch, and completely on his own, the production line of a small publishing house, specialized in science. Left the firm to start his own business in 1995. Started earning real good money but soon got bored, tried a myriad things in search of “something”. Became a good chess player. At the peak of personal and professional boredom started realizing the half-forgotten dream of his life, being a writer. Wrote three (beautiful) books aimed at both children and grownups. Got different prizes, but little attention outside of his native land. Lost most of his money on the stock market bubble at the beginning of the new millennium. Lost the family, but kept the children, shortly afterwards. Kept writing, started an electronic magazine, “Liberal Review” (www.librev.com), which currently is considered the leading intellectual publication in the Bulgarian Net. Published three more books, rather critical of his native land and its idiosyncrasies, which made him well known, but not dearly loved, in his own country.

Keeps going…

Berlin, in February 2012