Every storyteller starts somewhere.

What Matters Is the Heart You Put Into It

I don’t believe in the word underdog.

Not when someone is chasing a vision that lives deep inside their heart.

To me, that word suggests someone is expected to lose. But when you are striving through the odds toward something you believe in, you are not an underdog—you are simply someone on a journey. That was me in the late 1990s.

When electricity was rare, candlelight became my editing suite and notebooks became my first studio. Every story I tell today began somewhere like this.

Back in Myanmar.

Electricity was rare where I lived. Daylight was precious because candles were expensive. Technology belonged to another world, one that required electricity we didn’t have.

So books and pencils became my companions.

I filled notebooks with words. Some of them became poems. Some became song lyrics. Some turned into stories.

And some… I had to burn.

There were times when people got into serious trouble because of what they wrote—even a simple note could become dangerous in the wrong hands. In those moments, burning words felt like losing pieces of yourself. But the ideas and dreams behind them stayed alive somewhere inside.

Even then, I carried a quiet dream.

I didn’t know what the title of that dream was. I didn’t know what profession it would become. I only knew that I wanted to tell stories. However, I never dreamed about fame or popularity. In fact, many of the photos I took and videos I produced were never attached to my name. Sometimes that distance was simply necessary to stay safe.

Fast forward nearly three decades.

Today I’m writing this from my home office. The only sounds around me are birds and nature, with faint traces of distant traffic reminding me that civilisation is not far away.

Sometimes I pause and imagine the younger version of myself—sitting in dim light, writing on paper because there was no other way.

And I realise something.

There are probably young people somewhere in the world right now living through what I lived through back then.

Maybe the odds feel stacked against them.

Maybe the path ahead looks uncertain.

Maybe the tools they need seem out of reach.

But if there is one thing my journey has taught me, it is this:

If you put your heart into what you love, the beginning doesn’t define the destination.

Yes, the road can be bumpy.

There will be moments of sweat and sacrifice. There may even be moments that feel like blood and tears. I wouldn’t wish the harder parts of that road on anyone.

But struggle doesn’t mean stop.

It simply means carry on.

Because every meaningful journey begins somewhere small.

And small does not mean insignificant.

I am still walking the path that began in those candlelit nights with notebooks and pencils. The dream that started there is still unfolding today.

And I still have large pieces of my heart left to give—to every story I am entrusted to tell.

Because stories deserve nothing less.