Benedikt St.
Stats:
– Born 1992
– 193cm tall (6.3f)
– Language: German, Swedish & English
- Can solve Rubiks cube in 1 minute
- Can count to 1023 with 2 hands
- Can juggle 3 balls at the same time
This webpage was to be my portfolio for graphic design, now it’s more “my little corner of the web and the things I do and create” kinda webpage. Bit messy but that’s more like me, I’d think.
If you’d describe me in one sentence, it be something like this: “Name is Benedikt, moved to Sweden 2004 and now do stuff on the internet.” How I came to be here and where I am today, probably started back when I got introduced into a “guinea-pig” style Media-class full with girls, 2 other guys and little me with my cool emo hair, sleeves and a broken version of Photoshop.
Resume will be coming up in the near future. Until then, enjoy a little tale
Journey across Sweden - the story so far
Boy have I been moving around in my lifetime. According to my own professional calculations, I’ve moved every 4th year since I was born and that didn’t stop in Sweden. From the big city of München we head to the woods north of Stockholm where the busses goes 5 times a day, then south to Stockholm in a minor outskirt city; after 4 years, guess again, back to the woods north of Stockholm.
No driver license and no jobs, I was kinda stuck in the woods playing Minecraft and already back then, like many others, started my first Youtube channel playing Minecraft (this was back when Yogscast was big and all). What finally brought me out of the woods was, not what you’d consider a “normal job” – it was my personal introduction to the world of television programs – welcome to the world of “Arga Restaurangen”.
The worst & best experience
When they told me “a camera team might be coming by”, my first though was like “yeah that’ ain’t happening, and they won’t be finding this place out here anyways”, bloodydamn I was never so wrong. Got the cast, got the interview and moved temporarily to Stockholm for shooting the show.
Brilliant people and an amazing experience to take part of, even if I almost broke my knuckles in the first show. If my memories serve me correct, I did take an internship at their tv-station as well for 2-3 months after the shooting of the show. My personal interest was always to take part of telling a story, so getting the privilege to experience being in front of the camera, and take part of things behind the camera was just amazing! And happy endings, I got a job at the restaurant afterwards – next challenge, find a place to stay, so moving around again.
Note to myself: never stop moving, but stop changing homes. As you can guess, having a job in Stockholm but living outside in the woods, isn’t quite so ideal of a situation. Solution, move around in the city. Room to room, living of the backpack in strangers apartment with rents higher than Burj Khalifa, that was my life for a couple of months while working at the restaurant. At the end, I shared a 24sqm 1 room apartment with whom I know call one of my closest friends and even dragged his gamer-buttox out of the chair and to the restaurant for some working hours. Happy times!
By then I already evolved my Adobe skillset quite some. Did some small freelance jobs, got into HTML and CSS for styling blogs and started to look for new adventures in life. It ended up being a 6 months position at a desk-job, starting of as a “supporter” on the phone but became quickly a more “web admin / content admin” job because of my personal interest and evolved skillsets. Time came and went, living in a small apartment with my roommate, the job started to reach it’s end of it’s cycle. Not by choice but, necessity. By this point, I’ve seen most of Stockholm, “done Stockholm” and was ready to move on and out. Gothenburg was my goal, but I was only 23 and had time to do things so, I applied for the Technology University of Jönköping, got accepted, got an apartment and moved back to the woods with a 2 weeks notice that “Hey, by the by I’m gonna move half across of Sweden to study.”
I am not a academic student.
Tried as I might, when it comes down to studying and memorizing things, I wasn’t the best at it. In it’s whole, I went roughly 2 years to the school and tried studying both hardware programming as well as network architecture – and both didn’t suit me at the end of the day. Since before I came, I knew what I wanted to do, to tell stories and create content around them. So trying to force myself into remembering how to convert IP addresses into network masks or how to write code that made a LED screen go blips and blops wasn’t my forte. I preferred doing things and learn from that. Do, fail, analyze and try again – repeat. That’s how I learned most of the things I do today and continue to learn.
But the time wasn’t wasted and the investment of moving from Stockholm to a whole new city, the best choice I’ve ever made – a true adventure. The people I’ve meet, the friendships that were made and the experiences together were just amazing.
Still until today, I’ve great friends from the time at the school and even had the pleasure to gain one more close friend, whom even showed me were I lived when I got my first own apartment; thanks buddy.
Now, the problem was, since I wasn’t studying anymore I couldn’t stay in the apartment so guess who’s moving. Getting a apartment was tough, so I had to expand my search areas and moved to Nässjö for about 6-9 months. It was.. interesting living there, least to say. Worked at a private business at the beginning, got my roommate back from Stockholm and lived like that for some months, working and figuring things out.
Back to back again - A shift in the wind
You can imagine, Nässjö wasn’t a town for me. More like a “big” trainstation, if anything. So as soon as I got the opportunity, I left and moved back to Jönköping where I got my third rental apartment. By this time, I started to work at the Intersport warehouse and quickly found a liking to the job. Amazing colleagues and a huge change in my life. I continued developing my own skillsets and while being there, lo-and-behold, opportunity strikes in – internal recruitment for assisting the photostudio. Criteria: Know photography and photoshop. Now, before this, I asked the IT guys how to work with them (ironically, seeing I ditched network school), and what was required to work with the robots. Super-user education for the robots, and IT didn’t need anybody. Then the photostudio position arrived and I was moved there after applying.
Working at the photostudio was amazing, the photographer less so, but I still enjoyed my experience there. Time went, got a new great photographer colleague and was even managing the studio myself from time to time. On the side, I also acquired the Super-user certification to work with the robots, wrote SQL queries to help colleagues with the masterdata (which they still use today) and acted as a german translator whenever a driver came in that couldn’t speak a single word swedish or english. All in all, an amazing time and experience that I’ll cherish.
Couple of months later, the wind started to change for me and, although I loved the job and colleagues, I found myself more and more so ready to seek out positions where I can use and further my self taught skillsets. Insert, crazy irish guy; a professor from the University.
I can’t remember how exactly we meet, but when we got in touch he got wind of me creating e-sport mascot logotypes, overlays and motion graphics. He had a contact that currently were looking for a graphic designer to aid on a project around gamification, well call me intrigued. I wasn’t 100% yet there with my self esteem and unsure, but I had a decision to make. At the same time this talk happened, the IT guys from Intersport started to notice me more, that I knew my stuff around SQL and databases, had a good understanding of basic programming (python) and knew some stuff around network architecture (thanks school <3). So, at the same time as I was considering taking the graphic designer job, I also got offered to move to Göteborg, my goal city to live in, and work at the Intersport HQ as an IT guy.
Life decision, love and changes
When you come to a crossroad, where you don’t know which way to go, how do you choose the path that might alter your life forever?
Is my desire to move to Gothenburg bigger than my wish to work in a creative field? Or do I take the challenge with low self esteem and stay in the city? No dramatic pause.. I stayed. Ever since the guinea-pig style Media class, I wanted to work in a creative field. Create cool stuff, make people laugh and with it all, tell stories. So when I got the opportunity, I took it. I wanted to challenge myself, show that I can use my self taught skillset and prove to myself that “I know my shit around this” (with lack of better phrases).
Was the job exactly what I thought it would be? Hell no, but boy has it so far been a rollercoaster of events. I joined a gamification project as a starter, designing the elements and shaping all visuals around it. Parallel to it, I somehow also got the responsibility to work on the companies webpage, take photos, make videos, learn 3D modelling and travel around. How it all came to be after almost 5 years now, is if anything a blur of events. But even if it was rough sometimes, even if I’d hit the wall because I didn’t quite understand things yet, and more than I can count wanted to give up, I never regret the decision over the alternative path, because staying also lead one hell of a brilliant relationship.
Life shakes things up, Gothenburg here I come!
Life was by then at the highpoint for me personally. Had a challenging and developing (in good and bad ways) job, a amazing relationship with a brilliant and smart woman which (I’ll admit, I wasn’t the best at compromising at times) and enjoyed the times as they were; happy.
And so time went on for a year or so with nothing much going on besides living.
“Shit, I was a little idiot. You would have hated me. I was comfortable and arrogant and selfish on my knees. I liked being blind to everything because I was in love. And I thought for some reason that living for love was the most valiant thing in all the worlds.” Darrow, from the book Morning Star by Pierce Brown.
As one might guess, when you get too comfortable, life might just shake you around a bit to get you moving again. The quote above is one I just recently re-read and it hit me hard, I got lazy and didn’t progress on my own interests. So life came and shook me quite hard, as one of my family members might quote “When shit goes to shit, you get flung in the dung and swim in it.”
Family went downhill, relationship fell apart, and I made a bad call which now forces me to live with a roommate again (not bad, just bad timing), all of it in the same month. Well I be damned if life doesn’t sometimes come with the big hammer to shake one up. So rest, rest and a lot of thinking was required now and I got reminded of my “wants”, where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. “If I stop making you smile, I’m not doing my job“. So it’s time to make myself smile, plan on going where I want to be and start doing what I enjoy doing the most – make content and make people laugh and smile.
So that’s were things are now. Let’s see what the new chapter will hold, what stuff can be created and what kind of people I’ll meet. Next stop, Gothenburg in early 2024, where the next chapter awaits and in one year from now (Sept 2023), a new section shall be added here.
To be continued.