If I had everything that I ever dreamed of, what would I be doing? If I were a billionaire with private jets, a mansion with marble floors, and custom-tailored suits stitched in Milan, what would I do on a day-to-day basis? If I were living on a beach with not a dime to my name, barefoot on a quiet shoreline with nothing but the ocean and my thoughts to keep me company, how would I pass the time? 

In Russian culture, there’s a tradition of putting out a variety of objects when a child turns one and letting them crawl to whichever they’re drawn to. I crawled to a mini piano. And when I was two, I started playing the piano by pressing random notes.

At three, I was playing even more, naturally gravitating toward my handy keyboard any chance I could get, and by four, I wanted to start taking piano lessons more than anything in the world. My sister was in a piano class, and I wanted to learn to play well, too.

When my father asked the instructor if I could join the class, the instructor told him I’d have to wait until I was five. That had always been the rule. No children under five accepted under any circumstance.

Yet when I wandered over to one of the pianos and started playing – with two years of experience already under my belt, and a genuine love for it that ran deeper than my age could explain – the teacher saw the passion I possessed and accepted me on the spot.

The first thing I ever wanted to be was a conductor. I was obsessed with classical music as a kid, and I’ve been composing songs since I can remember. I became known for playing my compositions during school events – and I’ll never forget the time one of my classmates called me a genius because I could hear melodies just once and play them exactly the way I’d heard them.

Back then, I wasn’t much of a singer. I almost exclusively focused on writing and composing, but people told me I had a good voice, and I was always pulled toward the front during school choir. I could even do whistle notes when I really wanted to!

But none of those things are what led me to realize that music was the thing I wanted to pursue seriously and throw myself into fully. That it’s the one thing I’ve never felt pressured about. That it’s the one thing no one’s ever told me to do or demanded excellence from. That it’s the only thing I’ve ever chosen completely for myself. That it’s my true passion in life.

Instead, it was those three questions that finally helped me come to that conclusion.

If I had everything that I ever dreamed of, what would I be doing? If I were a billionaire with every materialistic item a person could possibly want, what would I do every day? If I were living on a beach with nowhere else to go, how would I pass the time? 

Music. The answer is that I would want to do music. In any scenario – whether I was drowning in luxury with a private jet waiting for me on the runway or counting my last dollar with nowhere permanent to call home – I’d like to be able to pick up my guitar or keyboard and compose a song.

Music is my refuge. It’s my form of meditation, and the only place where my mind goes quiet.

It’s been here for me since I was a child, feeling as if the ground beneath my feet was slowly cracking, threatening to crumble and take me with it as I watched my parents separate with lawyers and custody papers deciding where I’d get to sleep at night. It stayed with me through the day I sat at my father’s funeral and pressed my fingers into piano keys to keep my grief from consuming me entirely. It followed me to Germany, where the loneliness was unbearable despite the suffocating relationship I was in. And it carried me into brighter days, too.

Into the tiny apartment in Barcelona, where I met a vocal coach who helped me repair my voice and a producer who taught me how to produce from scratch. Into the Swiss mountains, where I isolated myself for three weeks to produce dozens of songs, some of which would go on to become my very first releases. And into London, where I met the woman who would eventually become my wife and felt something steady replace the chaos I had grown accustomed to.

Music has become my home – my sanctuary – and that’s why I’ve become obsessed with being an artist.

I want to release my first album and dedicate it to my dad. I want to make him proud. And not only that, but I want to prove to the man he once considered his best friend – who abandoned him after he went broke and hardly showed a care when he passed away – that his son carries his name with pride, and that the name he thought had lost its weight will carry further than anyone ever could’ve expected.

I want to perform my songs in front of thousands of people and hear them screaming my lyrics back at me. I want to open the doors to the world my music has built, invite my fans to step fully inside it, and watch them lose themselves in it the way I did.

But even though I have those goals, I’m not just going to stop at being a successful artist because the deeper I get into music, the more I realize it isn’t only about me. There’s also a sense of moral urgency that I can’t ignore. Something that makes my career goals feel very small in comparison.

People might expect me to say that the biggest goal I have for my music career is fame, money, awards, or streams. And sure, I do want those things, but that isn’t what’s most important to me, and I can’t pretend it is.

My goal isn’t just to succeed in music. My goal is to create enough weight in the world to move something with it. What I care about is having influence – and not because I want attention, but because influence is leverage. And leverage can be used for something that actually matters.

My biggest goal in life is to end animal cruelty and put a stop to the animal industry, which kills billions of animals daily. I want to use my art as a vehicle that’ll drive me toward completing that goal.

It’s a very hearty goal, I know, and I’m not oblivious to how delusional some people may think I am – not only for assuming I can even make it far enough to become an accomplished artist in the first place, but also for thinking I could possibly do anything to change a multi-trillion dollar industry.

But I don’t care what anyone thinks when I, myself, know I can accomplish both of these things.

I always say that my superpower is my ability to make myself believe in something. No matter what kind of goal I have, if it’s something important to me, I believe it’s something I can genuinely achieve, and there’s no doubt in my mind about it.

That’s why I believe in my success with complete certainty.

Not 80 percent.

Never “hopefully,” or “if things go well.” 

Always 100 percent certainty that things will work out the way I want them to in the end.

I live with this almost stubborn conviction that I can become what I see in my mind, even when the reality doesn’t match yet. There’s not a single version of my reality that exists inside my head where I don’t become what I see myself becoming.

People sometimes talk about belief as if it’s an emotion – something you either have or don’t have on a given day. But for me, belief is much closer to discipline. Something that I’ve taught myself to stick with no matter what. Not just when it feels easy. Not just when I’m inspired. But especially when I’m tired, uncertain, and questioning everything.

That discipline shows up in ways that look small from the outside but mean everything to me. Like my quiet refusal to let my desire for comfort dictate my future. My decision to choose the harder option when it helps me align with the person I say I want to become. Me winning the small arguments inside my own head before they can turn into excuses – even during moments when no one else is watching. The moments where I could easily choose comfort, and nobody would know the difference except me.

It’s like when the thought of taking a cold shower randomly enters my mind, and I take it even though I don’t necessarily want to, just to be able to show myself that I can do it. It’s one of the small ways in which I consciously decide not to let my mind win over me, and it may seem insignificant to some people, but I know how important it is to do what I say I’m going to do – especially when I don’t feel like it – and be able to look back on those moments as evidence that I can follow through and I can do whatever I set my mind to.

It gives me something solid to stand on when I’m about to take a bigger leap, when I’m doubting, and when I’m stepping into something uncertain. Because if I can trust myself in the small things, I can trust myself in the big ones.

And trust turns fear into motion.

And belief gives that motion direction.

Belief is oftentimes the only thing that can remain stable even when the outside world feels totally unpredictable. There have been plenty of seasons where I had nothing but my belief and the internal compass that always tells me to keep going. And I do keep going because that compass always guides me forward. It’s how I’m able to keep looking ahead, even when the present doesn’t look so good.

It’s how I survived my father’s passing without letting grief swallow the future he believed in for me whole. It’s how I managed to leave a relationship that was crushing me, and pull myself out of the major slump that living in Germany left me in. And it’s how I’ve started stepping into studios – and other big rooms with big names inside them – with nothing but the conviction that I belong there just as much as anybody else.

But fierce belief like that doesn’t form when things are easy. I’ve always had a certain level of belief in myself, but my certainty was mainly strengthened during periods when I didn’t have control over much else. It developed during the darkest times in my life.

My past has deeply shaped who I am. But I don’t live in it. I don’t replay my losses constantly or carry pain as my identity. I’ve lived a life that does hold grief, but it doesn’t end there, and I’ve experienced difficult circumstances, but I’m not going to fall apart because of them. The difficult things I’ve gone through in my life have never weakened my ambition; they’ve fueled it. They’ve sharpened me, energized me, and made me feel even more certain that my success is inevitable. They’ve made my belief in myself a thousand times stronger.

So, I don’t want to linger in my past, whine about it, and gain sympathy from it. What I want is to use it to gain momentum, growth, and impact – and that’s going to lead me to seeing all the success in the world in my music career, and in my goal to save as many animals as I can.

Optimism can sound naïve to some people, and confidence can sound arrogant to others, but I still choose to believe in myself wholeheartedly and unabashedly because I’ve seen what happens when I do.

I’ve seen how belief carries me through rooms I’m not ready for yet. I’ve seen how it steadies me when everything around me feels unstable. I’ve seen how it turns my losses into discipline and my doubts into direction.

Belief is survival for me now, and it’s what allows me to move through each day knowing that I’m going to do everything I say I’m going to do, even when I don’t have proof.

No matter how complicated my path may look, I know I’m becoming exactly who I said I would be: A successful artist who’s gaining influence and using it to have a major, meaningful impact on the world.

That’s why I want to tell my truth through these stories.

There are parts of my past that are heavy. Most of them are deeply personal. Some of them are defined by loss. Some of them are shaped by feeling misunderstood, by loneliness, by moments where everything felt like it was shifting beneath my feet.

But those moments are the turning points that have led me to the stage of my life that I’m in right now, and that’s why it’s important to me that I share them. Because I want to take the time to reflect on everything I’ve experienced up to this point as I sprint fiercely into my next chapter.

This is the story of my life so far – and it isn’t going to move in a straight line because my life never did. When I look back, I don’t see neat chapters lined up in chronological order. I see seasons.

Seasons of loss. Seasons of love. Seasons of solitude. Seasons of ambition, hunger, and obsession. Seasons where my faith in myself was tested and strengthened. Seasons where my belief was the only thing I had left.

Instead of walking you through events in order, I’m inviting you into the rooms in which those seasons still live inside me. Each story is like stepping into a space inside my mind. A room that still holds the energy of what happened there. If you move through them slowly, you’ll start to see how they connect.

So, let’s start with the first room. The one where it all began.