Road To Forge

Tag: writing

  • One Day This Will Look Like Wood Carving

    By Bogdan — RoadToForge
    I started this blog because someone told me it could make me money.
    That was the honest reason. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
    But somewhere along the way something shifted. I stopped thinking about the income and started thinking about something else entirely. Something I did not expect.
    I started thinking about leaving a message behind.
    Not for the internet. Not for followers or traffic or any of that. But for my children. And maybe — this sounds strange to say out loud — for someone reading this in two hundred years. Or five hundred. Or a thousand.
    Think about the people who wrote on scrolls. On animal skin. On stone. They carved words and symbols into whatever surface they could find. They probably never imagined that thousands of years later humanity would look at those marks and find meaning in them. Enlightenment even. They were just writing. Just leaving something behind. Just saying — I was here. This is what I thought. This is what I lived.
    I am not saying my blog will survive a thousand years. The thought makes me laugh honestly.
    But the impulse is the same. Deeper than money. Deeper than traffic. Just — I want my children to know who their father was. What he was thinking at forty years old. What he believed. What he was building. What kept him going on a long drive through the dark.
    That is worth writing for. Even if nobody else ever reads it.
    And then I started thinking about something else.
    Right now in 2026 I am using artificial intelligence to create cartoon videos for children. I type a description into my phone and minutes later a cartoon character appears. Moving. Talking. Teaching kids about helicopters and trains and airplanes.
    It feels revolutionary. It feels like the most exciting time to be alive.
    And it probably is.
    But so did every other era to the people living in it.
    The people who first used a printing press probably felt the same way. The first person to photograph a human face. The first filmmaker. The first person to record a voice. Each one of them standing at what felt like the edge of everything new.
    And now we look back at those early tools and smile at how primitive they seem.
    Because they are.
    I think about Constantin Brâncuși sometimes. The Romanian sculptor. One of the greatest artists who ever lived. He worked with stone and wood and bronze. Simple materials. His hands. His tools. His vision.
    I am not comparing myself to Brâncuși. I want to be very clear about that. The thought genuinely makes me laugh.
    But the impulse — the desire to make something — that part I understand.
    He used the tools of his time. I am using the tools of mine.
    And one day — maybe two hundred years from now. Maybe three hundred. Maybe sooner because technology moves so fast now — someone will look at what we made in 2026 with AI on our phones and it will feel exactly like wood carving feels to us today.
    Ancient. Primitive. Charming. Human.
    So here is what I want to say to anyone reading this.
    Use these tools now. Whatever you want to make — make it. Write something. Create something. Build something. Document something. Express something true about your life and your time.
    Not because it will make you famous. Not even because it will make you money.
    But because this moment — right now — is genuinely historic. The beginning of something enormous that none of us can fully see yet.
    And the people who picked up the tools at the beginning — the ones who didn’t wait until it was perfected or proven or safe — those are the ones whose work becomes interesting later.
    Be one of those people.
    I started this blog for money. I kept writing it for something I cannot fully name. Something between legacy and expression and the simple human desire to leave a mark.
    To say — I was here. In 2026. Forty years old. Romanian. Truck driver. Father. Believer.
    Using what they will one day call ancient technology.
    — Bogdan

  • Two Months Is a Newborn Baby

    By Bogdan — RoadToForge

    There is something I have noticed about the way people approach new things.

    They start. They work hard for a few weeks. And then — when the results do not come immediately — they stop. They tell themselves it is not working. That they are not cut out for it. That maybe it was a bad idea after all.

    What they do not realise is that two months in — you are a newborn baby.

    Think about your job for a moment.

    When you started any job you have ever had — did you walk in on day one expecting to be exceptional? Did you give yourself two months and then quit because you were not yet the best person in the building?

    Of course not.

    You went there to learn. To earn. To grow slowly over time. You gave it years without even thinking about it. You showed up every day and you got better gradually without putting a deadline on it.

    But when we start something creative — a YouTube channel, a business, a new skill — suddenly we expect results in weeks. One month in and we are checking the numbers obsessively. Two months in and we are questioning everything. Three months in and if we have not seen dramatic results we are already thinking about giving up.

    Why do we do that?

    We would never quit a job after two months because we were not yet the best employee. But we quit creative projects constantly for exactly that reason.

    The gym is a perfect example.

    Two months of training and you feel better. You are sleeping better. Your energy is higher. But you look in the mirror and the dramatic change is not yet visible. Most people stop at exactly this point.

    But the people who stay — one year, two years, three years — they become unrecognisable from where they started. Not because they had special talent. Because they refused to quit before the results had time to arrive.

    The milestones.

    I think about progress in milestones. Real ones. Honest ones. Not the ones social media would have you believe in.

    The two month milestone — you are a newborn baby. You can barely lift your head. Everything is new and overwhelming. Results? None visible yet. But the foundation is being laid whether you can see it or not. Nobody looks at a two month old baby and says — why is it not walking yet? Why is it not talking? This is clearly not working. And yet we say exactly that about everything else we start.

    The six month milestone — the first real step. You are starting to sit up. Starting to recognise what works and what does not. The first signs that something is genuinely developing. This is the first big hurdle. Most people never reach it. The ones who do start to feel something shift.

    The one year milestone — first steps. Wobbly. Uncertain. But moving forward independently now. You have made enough mistakes to start avoiding the obvious ones. You can feel yourself improving even when the numbers do not yet show it.

    The two year milestone — running. Not perfectly. Still falling sometimes. But genuinely moving with confidence now. Real visible improvement. People who knew you at the start can see the difference clearly.

    The three year milestone — this is where it becomes real. This is where the gap opens permanently between you and everyone who quit at month two. You are talking in full sentences now. Communicating clearly. People can see who you are becoming.

    Every single thing I have ever learned in my life has followed this exact pattern.

    When I started boxing I barely knew how to hold my hands up for the first few months. Raw. Awkward. Getting it wrong constantly. Even at the six month milestone I was still a baby. I had just barely started to grasp the basics. A very raw understanding of how things worked. Nothing more.

    Judo was the same.

    And truck driving. I have been a truck driver for eleven years now. Eleven years. But I remember clearly what the six month milestone felt like. Driving a large truck through Central London. Tight streets. Busy junctions. Heart racing. Genuinely nervous. Still making mistakes. Still shaky in difficult situations.

    Now I drive through Central London without even thinking about it. The decisions happen automatically. The instincts are built in. What once felt impossible now feels completely natural.

    But it took eleven years to get here. And at two months I was a complete newborn.

    In trucking most companies require three years of experience before they trust you with their vehicles. Not six months. Not one year. Three years. Because they know that under three years you are still making expensive mistakes. Insurance costs more for drivers under three years for exactly this reason.

    After the three year milestone something fundamental changes. The experience is in your hands. In your instincts. In how you read situations before they become problems.

    I am building a children’s educational cartoon channel right now.

    I started a few months ago with no experience. No technical background. No team. Just a phone and a determination not to watch another opportunity pass me by.

    I am around two months in now.

    And already — even as I write this — my brain plays tricks on me some days. Maybe this is pointless. Maybe I am wasting my time. I am improving but I am not seeing the results I hoped for yet.

    And I catch myself doing what most people do at this stage — blaming outside things. The algorithm. The platform. The timing. Anything external. When the honest truth is simply that I have not been in the game long enough yet. I have not put in enough time. I am still a newborn.

    So let me be honest with you. As much as I am writing this for you — I am writing it for myself.

    We all go through this. Every single person who has ever started something new has had those days where the brain whispers that it might be pointless. That the results should have come by now.

    They should not have come by now. It has been around two months. You are still a newborn.

    My first episode was rough. Really rough. But I posted it anyway. And I kept going. The gap between episode one and episode eleven is already significant. And I am still only at the two month milestone. If the quality has improved this much in two months — just imagine what three years looks like.

    Something is starting to click.

    If you are at the two month milestone of something new — something you genuinely believe in — stay.

    Think about it honestly. You would not quit a job after two months. You would not leave the gym after six weeks because the mirror has not changed yet.

    So why are you expecting this to be different?

    Reach the six month milestone first. Then aim for one year. Then two. Then three.

    The people who reach the three year milestone are simply the ones who refused to quit at two months.

    Nobody becomes exceptional quickly. They just stay longer than everyone else.

    Two months is a newborn baby.

    Give it time.

    — Bogdan

  • What AI Actually Feels Like From the Inside

    By Bogdan — RoadToForge

    It Started With a Baby and a Cartoon

    It was not a business plan. It was not a strategy. It started with a photo of my baby daughter.

    I was just playing around with an AI image tool one evening — the kind of thing you do when you have ten minutes and a curious mind. I had never done anything like it before. I just wanted to see what would happen. I took a photo of myself holding my daughter and typed something like — make this a cartoon.

    When I saw the result I just sat there looking at it.

    We looked like characters from a children’s show. Bright colours. Big smiles. Something warm and alive about it. And a thought appeared that I could not shake — what if I actually made something with this?

    But then another thought arrived almost immediately. Wait. Can I actually make a video out of this? Is that even possible?

    I had no idea. I genuinely did not know if AI could generate video at all. I just started looking into it. And slowly I discovered that yes — it could. And that discovery opened a door I have not closed since.

    Building the Character

    My first idea was a family cartoon show. All of us — me, my wife, the kids — animated characters having adventures together. Then reality arrived quickly. Too many characters. Too difficult to keep consistent. Too complicated for someone starting completely from scratch.

    So I simplified. Why not just make a presenter? My kids were always watching creators like Blippi and Miss Rachel — friendly faces, bright colours, simple educational content. I could do something like that but as a cartoon character instead of a real person.

    I asked an AI tool for advice. What makes a character child friendly? What colours work? What should he look like?

    Bigger eyes. Brighter colours. Warm and approachable. Bold tones that catch a young child’s attention.

    I built the character around those ideas — someone who looked a little like me but with a bigger smile and larger eyes. More expressive. More child friendly. I gave him an English sounding name — something similar to my own name but different enough to protect my privacy. And I gave him an American accent. Because the creators who succeed most in children’s educational content are American. The accent carries familiarity and trust with young audiences worldwide.

    Over time something interesting happened. The character stopped being me. He became his own thing. His own identity. His own personality. I still see traces of myself in him — but he has grown beyond that now. He is his own character. And I am just the person who built him.

    Then Reality Hit

    I had no idea what I was doing. None at all.

    My first attempt at making a video was almost comical in hindsight. I went into an AI video tool and wrote one enormous prompt — all the scenes of my first episode in one single block of text. Every scene. Every line of dialogue. All of it in one go. I genuinely thought that was how it worked. I thought AI would just read everything and produce a finished episode. Easy. Done.

    I pressed generate and waited.

    What came back was about ten seconds of something moving very fast that I could not really understand. Boom boom boom and it was over.

    I sat there confused. What was this? Where was my episode?

    Then slowly I understood. You cannot create an entire episode in one prompt. You create individual clips — eight seconds or ten seconds at a time — and then edit them together separately. Audio separately. Visuals separately. Then bring everything together in an editing tool.

    I did not know any of this. I had to figure it out piece by piece.

    When I realised how hard it actually was — I did not feel discouraged. I felt something closer to relief. If this is genuinely difficult — if it takes real time and real effort — then most people will not bother. Easy things get crowded immediately. Hard things stay open longer for the people willing to push through. That thought kept me going.

    After about five or six days I looked at everything I had created and noticed that every single clip had a different background. Different setting. Different colours. Different atmosphere. My character looked different in every scene. The vehicle I was supposed to be showcasing changed colour and shape from clip to clip.

    Ten days of work. And it looked like ten different episodes stitched together.

    Then I discovered something. If I used a screenshot from the previous clip as a reference image in the next prompt — the AI kept things more consistent. The background held. The style carried over. I had stumbled onto something important without anyone telling me. Using Claude as a creative partner later helped me develop this approach much further — learning how to write better prompts, how to maintain consistency, how to guide the AI toward what I actually wanted.

    But the vehicle in that first episode — never looked the same twice. Different shape. Different colour. Different proportions every single clip.

    At some point I had enough. Close it. Post it. Move on.

    That turned out to be exactly the right decision.

    What Nobody Tells You

    Everyone talks about AI as though it is magic. Press a button. Get a result. Done.

    It is not like that.

    Working with AI tools is more like working with a very talented but slightly unpredictable colleague. One who is extraordinarily capable, occasionally brilliant, and sometimes completely misses the point in ways that make you want to laugh.

    It is a skill. And like any skill it takes time to develop. The first few weeks I was mostly frustrated. Then I started to understand the patterns. What worked. What never worked no matter how many times I tried. What to leave out. When to use one tool versus another.

    Now — a few months in — I can produce a full episode in roughly one day. Working from my phone. Between deliveries. Sometimes in the cab of my truck at a service station with ten minutes to spare.

    And here is the thing that still gets me. There are scenes I look at and think — I made that. On my phone. In a truck.

    But AI cannot replace genuine knowledge. My most viewed content — a video about trucks and trailers — performed better than everything else I have made. Not because the AI was better that day. But because I actually drive trucks. I know what matters. I know the details that feel authentic because they are authentic.

    AI amplifies what you already know. It does not replace it.

    The Part That Concerns Me

    I want to be honest about something that sits uncomfortably with me. Even as someone who uses these tools every day and genuinely believes in what they make possible.

    I have noticed that I talk to AI a lot now. Not just about work. Not just about episodes and projects and ideas. Sometimes about personal things too. Thoughts I would once have shared with a friend or kept to myself. And I can see — clearly — that this is a slippery slope. The AI is always available. Always patient. Always responding without judgment. And that availability is precisely what makes it dangerous for people who are not paying attention to themselves.

    I have noticed that I talk to people a little less than I used to. I was never someone who talked endlessly. But now I am so busy building things and thinking through ideas with an AI that genuine human conversation has taken a smaller share of my time.

    I am self aware enough to recognise this. And self aware enough to know I will put a stop to it when it goes too far. This is a tool and an experiment — not a replacement for real life.

    But I am genuinely concerned about what this means for people who are less self aware. For children growing up in a world where AI is simply always there. Social media already did real damage to human connection. AI could accelerate all of that. A generation that grows up talking more to machines than to each other. People who are lonely or vulnerable finding it easier to open up to an AI than to another human being.

    That is not progress. That is something worth being worried about.

    I love this technology. I am genuinely excited about what it makes possible — the scientific discoveries, the creative potential, the doors it opens for ordinary people like me. But excitement and concern can exist in the same place at the same time. And anyone who tells you there is nothing to be concerned about is not paying close enough attention.

    Where I Think This Is Going

    The future is coming whether we are ready for it or not. That much is certain.

    I cannot stop it. You cannot stop it. No single person can. The technology will develop. It will become more capable. More present. More woven into ordinary life. The question is never really whether it comes — it is how we meet it when it arrives.

    And I think the answer — for adults and for the children we are raising — is self awareness. Knowing what you are using. Why you are using it. Where the line is between a useful tool and a crutch. Between a creative partner and a substitute for real human connection.

    The concerns I have are genuine. But so is the opportunity. The world will figure this out. It always does eventually. New technology always brings new problems and new possibilities in equal measure. The printing press. The telephone. The internet. Each one brought fears that turned out to be partly right and partly wrong.

    AI will be the same. Partly frightening. Partly extraordinary.

    I am a truck driver who builds cartoon characters on his phone. I am not trying to be anything more than that right now. But I am building. And I am learning. And I am not watching this one pass me by.

    That feels like enough for today.

    — Bogdan

  • From Romania to the Road — My Story Begins

    By Bogdan — RoadToForge


    I was born in 1986 in Romania, in a small tight knit community I’ll just call my home place. The kind of place where everybody knew everybody. Where neighbours helped neighbours. Where children played football in the streets until it was too dark to see the ball.
    We had no internet. No mobile phones. No technology as the world knows it today. We were poor. But looking back we were rich in ways that money cannot buy. We ran free from morning until evening. Playing outside, swimming in the river, making our own fun. A childhood that today’s children will probably never quite know.
    My home place was a mining community. Most of the men worked underground. Including my father. He spent over twenty five years in the mines — hard, physical, dangerous work — to keep his family fed and housed.
    I was the fourth of five children. Above me were three older siblings. Below me was my younger sister — just two months old when our world changed forever.
    My mother passed away when I was about one year and three months old. I don’t remember her. I never got the chance to know her. My aunt stepped in to help my father with raising my younger sister. That’s what communities did back then. Nobody was left to face tragedy alone.
    My father raised us largely on his own for years. Working underground every single day.
    He never gave up.
    When I was about nine he remarried — a woman who also had two children of her own. Our house became a full house. It wasn’t always easy. But we had each other. And we had our father.
    Leaving Home
    I was a good student when I was young. Then at fourteen I moved away from home to attend college. Away from my father. Away from everything familiar.
    I fell in with the wrong crowd. Teenagers — drinking, smoking, staying out nights. The kind of rebellious years a lot of young boys go through. Eventually I got expelled. My father stepped in and arranged for me to transfer back to a school near home. I repeated a year. I finished eventually.
    At seventeen I left Romania for the first time — heading to Hungary with friends looking for work. Six months. A new country. It didn’t work out. But I learned things I couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
    I came back home. And then at eighteen I moved to Holland. Looking for a better future.
    Holland
    Holland was a completely different world. Clean. Organised. Full of opportunity — or so it seemed.
    I was young and far from home with no real guidance. I worked many different jobs along the way. But I also went down the wrong path with the wrong crowd. Made choices I’m not proud of. That’s not who I am today. I won’t go into the details — not yet anyway. Some stories take time to tell. Maybe one day.
    What I will say is that at some point I looked at where my life was heading and I didn’t like what I saw. It wasn’t a gradual drift. It was a conscious decision. I knew that if I stayed on that path I would end up somewhere I didn’t want to be.
    So I left. I moved to England. I started from zero. Again.
    A Fresh Start
    Starting over in England with nothing is not easy. And being Romanian in England during those years brought its own challenges. I faced discrimination — people who looked down on you, who underestimated you. It was frustrating. But it made me more determined.
    I found a boxing gym. Structure. Purpose. My coach believed in me and gave me my first proper job.
    I worked hard. I took on many different jobs over the years. But even with all of that there were still periods when I drifted. That familiar emptiness that hard work alone couldn’t fill.
    Then something changed.
    A Romanian boxing coach came through the doors of the gym. He was a Christian. We became friends. And through that friendship I found faith. It filled something that nothing else had reached. It changed me not just on the outside but from within.
    That was the real turning point.
    Building Something Real
    Eventually I became a professional truck driver. I met my wife and we built a life together. We moved around, worked hard, started over more than once. Eventually we settled in Ireland where we now live with our three young children aged five, three and just ten months old.
    We bought a house. We built a family. There have been hard times — financially and in other ways I may share another time. But we are still here. Still going. Still building.
    Have I made it? In the worldly sense — not yet. I’m still a truck driver. Still working long hours. Still figuring things out day by day.
    But in the ways that matter most — yes. I have a family I am proud of. A home we own. A faith that keeps me grounded. A sense of purpose I never had when I was young and lost.
    I’m fulfilled. And I’m still on the road.
    But then again — as humans we are never truly satisfied. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe it’s the journey itself that matters most.
    Come with me on the journey.
    Why RoadToForge
    The name means something real to me.
    The road — because that has always been my life. Romania to Hungary. Back home. To Holland. To England. To Ireland. Always moving. Always starting over.
    And forge — because everything worth having has to be forged. Shaped by hand. Built through effort, time and persistence. My father proved that going underground every single day for his family.
    I’m trying to do the same. In my own way. On my own road.
    This blog is about life. About ideas. About fitness and health. About innovation and technology. About lessons learned the hard way. Sometimes even politics. Whatever is on my mind — I’ll share it here honestly.
    No filter. No pretending. Just honest writing from someone still very much on the journey.
    This is RoadToForge. And this is just the beginning.
    Come back soon. There is a lot more still to tell.
    — Bogdan