Today I Signed a Banknote
No, it's not a joke.
Today, I signed a ten-euro banknote.
I did not have a five-hundred-euro note on hand, so I had to settle for that one.
Authors sign their books. Actors autograph their posters. Musicians dedicate their albums.
And the others?
We all need, in one way or another, to materialize what we do. To prove that we have advanced. Some frame a diploma. Others keep a first bill, a photo, an object, or a message.
I signed a banknote.
I had just concluded a small agreement with my neighbor. In exchange for a flat fee, he could use my Wi-Fi network.
It wasn't a big commercial operation. It wasn't even really a business.
But it was money that I had earned by proposing something myself.
My first dollar, in a way.
Creating an activity requires a lot of energy. At the beginning, there is often nothing very spectacular. Some ideas, a lot of doubts, and attempts that don't yet look like much.
So I taped this banknote to the wall.
Not because it was worth ten euros.
Because it represented the moment when I started to believe that I could build something myself.
It had to be there in the morning, visible, perhaps a little ridiculous, but concrete.
A simple reminder: I had started.
Money was not the end goal. It was only the physical proof that an idea could come out of my head, meet someone, and produce something real.
Deep down, this banknote was just a piece of paper.
But at that moment, it counted a lot.
Note of 2026
Reading this again today, the writing is clumsy, but I understand the gesture. The banknote was not about wealth. It was a marker, a way of saying: “I started something crazy today.”