The alarm clock wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It was the absolute, soul-crushing predictability of the thing that did the damage: Beep. 7:00 AM. Every damn weekday. My hand slapped the snooze button, a rather pathetic act of rebellion, really. That five-minute delay wasn't going to save me from the inevitable, which was: Wake up. Go to school. Come home. Manga. Sleep. Repeat.
"The Cycle." I'd named it that in my head around sophomore year. It sounded grand, like something from a philosophy textbook, but in reality, it was just the grinding banality of a third-year university student who was financially strained and utterly unmotivated.
I peeled myself off the mattress, and onto the floorboards of my tiny rental apartment, which creaked in protest—a sound far more familiar to me than my own mother's voice. Everything about this life was temporary, shaky, and rented, including, I often felt, my own ambition.
I threw on that same faded hoodie and jeans combo. Why bother with variety? I was going to a lecture hall to sit among fifty other ghosts, equally terrified of the "real world" sprinting towards us.
The real monster under the bed was the financial pressure. My student loans were building up like poorly played Jenga blocks. And the job market? A joke. I wasn't studying medicine or engineering. I was studying... well, let's just call it "Existential Arts." You know, the degree that guarantees you a spot serving lattes to people who actually had careers.
"Find a stable job," my aunt had advised during the last painfully awkward family dinner. "Don't take risks. Be realistic."
Realistic. God, how I hated that word. Realistic meant debt. Realistic meant forty years of quiet despair. Realistic meant becoming the kind of person who sighs when they look at a calendar.
I picked up my backpack—weighted down with textbooks I rarely opened and a re-read three times over manga volume. Once outside the door, I was overcome by the familiar dread—not the fear of the day, but the fear of the absence of day. It all remained the same. A loop. A trap.
The Burst Point
It happened right in the middle of Professor Eldridge's lecture about macroeconomic theory—something so dry, it could absorb the humidity of a rainforest. I was doodling a chaotic spiral in my notebook, my mind a thousand miles away, when he said something that wasn't particularly profound, yet struck me like a lightning bolt anyway.
"In a perfectly optimized system," he droned on, adjusting his glasses, "every variable functions to serve the whole. Deviance is eliminated."
Deviance is eliminated.
My pen stopped moving.
I looked around the lecture hall. Everyone was taking notes, heads bowed, functioning perfectly in the system. They were the variables: school, exams, grades, job interviews, retirement plans. The whole damn machine had been optimized to eliminate my kind of 'deviance'—the urge to quit, the restlessness, the feeling that I was meant for something sharper than this predictable edge.
And suddenly, I felt the burst. Not a slow leak, but a violent, irreversible rupture.
I closed my notebook quietly. The scrape of my chair against the linoleum floor was as loud as a gunshot in the sterile silence. Professor Eldridge paused, peering straight at me over the top of his spectacles. Fifty pairs of eyes followed his lead.
I stood up.
My heart was hammering against my ribs, yet some strange, icy calm was washing over me. This wasn't planned. This wasn't logical. This was pure instinct.
"Mr. Alex?," asked the professor, clearly annoyed. "Do you have a question?"
I looked at the notes on my desk—the useless, predictable notes; at the fifty faces—all waiting for me to sit down, conform, and continue the cycle.
I picked up my backpack.
"No, Professor," I replied, my voice amazingly steady. I cleared my throat a little. "I just realized. I'm a faulty variable. And I quit the system."
I didn't wait for his response. I walked out.
The First Step
The air outside seemed ridiculously fresh. Maybe it was the contrast to the stale, recycled air of the lecture hall, but it felt like the first clean breath I'd taken in years.
I didn't head toward the bus stop. I didn't head toward my apartment. I simply started walking.
My hands were trembling slightly, an adrenaline residue from the sheer audacity of what I'd just done: I'd walked away from a degree, from security, from the only path society offered me.
And then this wild, thrilling thought entered my head and almost shouted, as if to confirm my midnight writings and mental debates: It's done. The cycle is finally broken.
But now what? Breaking the cycle had been the easy part. Building the new one? That was the mountain.
I pulled out my phone. Not to call anyone, there was no one to call. But to look at the one thing which had kept the deviation alive in my head: The Grid.
The Grid wasn't a business plan; it was a manifesto. A complex, interconnected series of personal challenges I'd been designing for months. Each challenge was designed to test a single core ability - patience, negotiation, resilience, risk assessment, pure confidence. Fail a challenge, and the debt clock ticked faster. Succeed, and I earned the next, more dangerous level.
The final objective wasn't money. It was independence.
I stopped and rested my weight against a concrete pillar, the midday sun warm on my face. My heart had slowed, replaced by a focused, terrifying clarity.
"I need a clear mind," I muttered to myself. "And I need a rulebook."
I opened the note titled "IBOM: The Rules."
Rule 1: No safety nets. No help. Failure means total loss.
Rule 2: Every challenge has to be self-imposed, self-funded and executed. Only my skill matters.
Rule 3: Every single decision from this moment forward needs to be a result of the only truth left: I Bet on Myself.