After a live filled with images, without reality, people, community and communication, being amused to death and turned into a spectator, all that remains of me is emptiness, loneliness, rage, disbelief, sadness and despair. But: I can still switch to the old me, the football player. So I play 4 to 6 hours a day, seven days a week, improving my skills, all in vain, but at least then I'm alive, not a zombie.

Even if you never read a book, read ‘Amusing ourselves to death’ by Neil Postman and you'll understand why we have lost or are losing everything that makes us human, and have to deal with, to name only a few, a psychopath as president of the USA, right wing extremists in governments of more and more countries, children being destroyed by ‘social’ media, arms races in schools involving knifes and even guns, people unable to talk in complete sentences, kids unable to concentrate at school, bullshit jobs, lawyers and investigative journalists shot in broad daylight, ten percent of the population addicted, five percent of the population on anti-depressants. Because the screen, which is the cause of a radical change in culture, is omnipresent, you see the same problems in every developed country. 

If I could make a wish, it would be to live in a world without any screens, when there were still people, able to communicate, instead of empty vessels attached to mobile phones. And a world where it would be totally uncool to drink, use drugs and waste your life, and übercool to explore and use your talents. A world that is not an amusement park, but a world you can actually live in.

…this is not the story of a successful career in football or tennis. This is the sad story of someone who thought he was blessed, but didn't have a clue about what was going on, was subtly isolated from everyone, led a life hooked on television and ended up completely empty-handed. The story of a boy whose life disappeared into a black hole: the television. And who has been sitting on the bench the entire match. Being a spectator, instead of a participator.

With this website I want to show people, based on my life story, not in theory, what the traps are that can ruin your life - with the mobile phone as an even more dangerous trap then the television was for me. And at the same time, ironically, it is my final attempt to get rid of the computer - the deadliest human invention of all-time - as the tool to earn a living (I have been making websites since 1995). I hope to persuade you to donate some money, so I can earn a living without wasting any more time behind the computer and instead be a positive force in the community, with the experience of someone whose life broke down, although he had every talent you could possible wish for. I hope to create awareness by talking to people and disconnect people from their phones, lobby for a ban on alcohol advertising like we already did with tobacco - alcohol being far more dangerous, and changing the perspective on drug use: you should be regarded as a loser if you use cocaine or any drug, and not a ‘cool dude’. How cool is it to have the blood of Derk Wiersum and Peter R. de Vries (among hundreds of thousands of other victims of the drug trade) on your hands? How cool is it parents are afraid to let there kids play outside, because the drug maffia will try to recruit them for their ‘business’?

The potential traps I will write about are School, Screens, Addiction, Parents and Technology.

I will also write about stuff that can help you to avoid these traps, or that can get you out of one. For instance, in my case, I almost drank myself to death, having had no goal in life after school had destroyed me (more on that in the chapter Addiction). But after discovering I could sing and the enormous joy it gave me (music is my other passion, listening and now also performing), didn't need the alcohol to fill the empty hole anymore, because I wanted to learn by heart all the briljant songs composed by Schubert and Mahler, and so got rid of the emptiness by filling it with music. 

So, without the help of a clinic, a therapist or whatever, I switched from drinking 12 Duvel a night or a bottle of Single Malt whiskey to no alcohol at all. Best thing I ever did - too bad my father felt the need to ‘teach’ me how to drink. Did I ask for that? Did I need that? No, what I needed was a father that saw me for what I was: potentially a world class player. And act accordingly: stimulate me in sports, not in drinking. All I needed was a little encouragement. Unfortunately, he had an alcoholic as a father himself, who destroyed his own family (my father's brother and sister both drank themselves to death) and thus didn't provide an example to follow.