Bouée Bougez

Three summers ago, two friends and a surfclub put a tent on the beach of Oostduinkerke. Two hundred locals danced barefoot in the sand. It was intimate, simple, real.

The next year, six hundred came. I was volunteering as security, watching it grow. But I also saw the cracks. The festival depended entirely on ticket sales. There was no legal entity, so no subsidies. The founders were polar opposites — one purely practical, the other purely creative. Opposites can be powerful, but only if they respect the tension. Here, most people felt that the friction grew faster than the crowd.

After the second edition, over a thank-you dinner, one founder asked me to join. I had no job yet, was moving to Brussels, and had no idea what I was getting into. I said yes. Partly because I'd always wanted to create something. Partly to learn and love music.

What I didn't anticipate was that, by the time the next edition came around, I'd also be working at a fast-moving startup. Startup life is already a festival of its own: unpredictable, exhausting, and all-consuming. Balancing the two was like running two sprints at the same time, on different tracks, in different shoes.

We turned it into a five-person non-profit. I learned a lot:

• How different personalities shape the work — creatives bring vision, practical minds bring execution, both need the other, but both resist the other.
• Time management isn't about hours worked — it's about mental load. This was always in my head, even when I wasn't working on it.
• Marketing matters more than magic.
• Small revenue tweaks matter — running the bar ourselves changed the numbers.
• Contracts, invoices, and legal structure are unsexy, but without them, you're gambling.

I also learned what I didn't like:

• Spending disproportionate time for a small return.
• Doing more than expected because no one else would.
• Working with friends can blur the line between honesty and harmony.

Now, a week after the last edition, I'm deciding whether to continue. My hesitation isn't about the work — it's about the trade-offs. Time is finite. Startup life already eats more of it than I expected.

Every "yes" is a "no" to something else.

I joined to keep the festival alive. If I leave, I fear it might stop. That feels egoistic, but maybe it's just honest — I became the middleman between the founders and I think I did a lot to help. Still, I have other things I want to learn and build.

The question is simple: Is this the highest return on my time, energy, and growth?