Where it comes from

I’m an only child. Since I was very small, I used to go to the video store with my mum, and I watched a lot of films. Too many, probably. They were my company. I fell in love with the stories and the characters, and I got caught in that. I wanted to live my life like a film, with the same emotion and intensity they had. Every character was different. Every story was different.

At school I started to get obsessed with two words: freedom and success. I didn’t really know what they meant, and I still don’t. I just felt misunderstood. Most of what we studied didn’t feel like it had a purpose, or anything that represented me. I asked teachers and directors why I had to be there if I already knew I wasn’t going to do any of it. Nobody had a good answer. So I talked, I laughed, I listened to music. That was my favourite part of school. People.

I’ve always believed it’s easier to find out what you don’t like than what you do. And to find what you do like, you have to explore. Many things, many stories. You have to live different films and different characters in your own life.

I finished school at night. My dad told me I’d work with him in the mornings, so I spent my days doing deliveries with him around Buenos Aires in a little van, and at six I went to class. There were people of all ages in that room, and the teachers treated us like adults. I liked that. After that I studied film for a year, but working all day and studying all evening left no space for anything else, so I stopped.

During Covid I worked in a pharmacy. The first year was fine. The second year was always the same. And a thought started eating at me: if I stay here, I already know how my life goes. I could see the ceiling. I’d probably get a good position after some years, end up living in my grandmother’s house, fixing it up, maybe with a girl from the pharmacy. Knowing where I was going that early depressed me. I was always a bit like Walter Mitty, daydreaming about adventures. I think that’s what pushed me.

Then my dad asked me, why don’t you do the working holiday in Australia? I didn’t even think about it. Since I was a kid I’d been saying I wanted to travel the world and meet people from different cultures. Argentina felt small.

From the moment I landed, I stopped daydreaming. I was living it. New people all the time, and with each of them a different story. Different films, different characters, in my own life. So much happened that after a while it felt like years had passed. It hadn’t been years. It was that when you live new things with new people, you take in so much more in so little time.

After three years I moved to Denmark. It was different. No hostels, no working holiday. This time I was settling down, and with that comes routine. The same days, the same things. And for the first time, I felt like I was back in Argentina. Not exactly, because everything was still new. But in the long run, yes.

I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t want a date. I wanted to meet someone new and live a new experience with them. That’s where Mystery Match comes from. You don’t see a face. You hear a voice, and you don’t know where it goes.

The world is so big, and so full of things and possibilities, and life is so short. Why settle for living the same story, when we can live many?

I still don’t know exactly what freedom and success mean. They keep changing. But for now, I think it’s this.