We fell in love in the last year of our student life, in an international big city. We were young and full of fun, we shared lots of adventures, and we made so many international friends in that short year. When our study finished around autumn, he started his first job and I had my first serious internship, both far from the city we were living before. We decided to move together despite the long distance between our work places. So we chose a middle point which is a fairly small town and there we had our first home! The commuting time was still quite long, we had no friend in the new city. But meanwhile, we started a career and a life together with the love of our life. Excited and full of hope, we took a dive into the corporate life.
However, though both flexible and humorous as we were, together with the winter, came the depression.
The politics and the big words from the huge companies we worked for have shaped a dangerous new world. The strategy, the vision, the ‘strive for excellence and value’ were all not very clear for us. In the end, we were engineers and familiar with numbers and figures, not ‘stakeholder buy-in’ and ‘low-hanging fruits’. Not only the meaning were unspoken, but the interpretation was also extremely delicate and could sometimes create harmful misunderstandings. We were both stressed, worried if we said anything wrong during the day, feared if we were being used, or worse, not used. Every evening, we went back to the home we once treasured so much, and we saw the tiredness on the face of the person who once made us laugh so loud, there was nothing but silence. The love wasn’t enough for us to fight against the frustration, in fact, maybe we even couldn’t feel the love anymore. And we had no one to talk to.
One evening after some pasta, we didn’t know what to do. We were so exhausted that nothing could cheer us up. I wished that I could make my baby smile again, but only tears came down from his eyes. I thought, ‘F**k this’, and I took a pen and on the white board, I drew a dinosaur holding a pan, with a steak in it.
'This is a steak holder,’ I said, ‘and he works in the restaurant. His boss manages some Steakholders.’
My baby laughed and added ‘This is not a dinosaur but a Dinasour, he is sour because he holds too many steaks.’
I still remember that magic moment, when we finally got relaxed after so many dark days. When we found the love again for each other. That was the reason we started Dinasour, so we can make jokes of all these slightly stressful or ‘not worth mentioning’ situations in the office, to tell all the people who didn’t feel completely comfortable with how things go, ‘it is OK to feel a bit pissed. You are not alone. Let’s laugh about it and move on.’
Dinasour comics gave us the courage to take tricky things lighthearted, and release the unspeakable pressure that build up when we hear things like ‘Could you quickly finish this work? It will just take you 2min.’
I hope it does the same thing to you too.
