Why I used to aspire a professional sports career and why I now don't.

As it is my first post, a proper introduction would suffice. So, who am I again ? My name is Haroen and I'm currently pursuing a Marine Engineering major. I'll be uploading these glorified zero's and one's based from the Netherlands.

Some of my hobbies are sports and coding. I'm just getting into this coding stuff, so I'll probably write about that topic as well. It'd be cool to keep track of my progress and showcase it to the world. But I guess right now I'm just digressing from the title, or aren't I ?

I used to train intensively on a daily basis to become an elite level boxer, while simultaneously attending college. I even won some matches, could you imagine ? However, I thought about what I wanted in life, and it certainly wasn't going to be getting hammered in the head for little to no money. From here on I made the decision to pursue my academic career. The boxing industry seems to be all about money and glam right now. Though the sport is becoming more and more lucrative, the major payouts are only meant for topdogs or athletes with a proper fanbase. Most of the boxer even have jobs next to training.

Eventually I stood, with in one hand the possibility to pursue knowledge academic wise, and in the other something quite risky. So I chose. And I'm glad I did! The moment you CHOOSE to fight, you have to be in phenomenal shape. And getting in phenomenal shape requires heaps of effort, otherwise you're simply putting your life at risk. Because people do DIE from fighting. Whilst battling in the ring or because of the tremendous amount of (accumulated) damage. Furthermore, chances to obtain punch drunk syndrom (brain damage and consequences) where also a grand incentive. I can assure you that this path of war isn't paved for the majority of people, myself included.

With that said, I have huge amounts of respect for people who give it their all in the ring or elsewhere, to provide for themselves and their families. And don't get me wrong, I'm still infatuated by the art of boxing!

Sooooo, right now I'm quite interested in cyber security/hacking/coding etc. I'm making the switch from my current major to computer science somewhere in the near future. At the moment I'm just living the life of a student whilst being an autodidact in the field of computer science (still quite an amateur however). I also enjoy my occassional video game, I'm quite the geek after all ;). I guess I'm dragging this on way too long, LOL!

PS: Here's a fancy pic from a fight: