Feliks Karić
Bio
50+, still refusing to grow up. I write daily, record music no one listens to, and loiter on film sets. I cook & train like a pro, yet my belly remains a loyal fan. Seen a lot, learned little, just a kid with older knees and no plan.
Stories (9)
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Why I'm Using Secret Military Survival Rituals to Fix Burned-Out CEO's
The Frequency of Survival: Why I Don’t Care About Your Squat PR I’m an anti-talent for business. Let’s just start there. I don’t have a marketing funnel, my Instagram is a disaster, and for years, my "price list" was basically whatever my gut told me was right in the moment. If you’d told me thirty years ago, while I was clutching a rifle in a frozen Croatian trench, that I’d spend my fifties gently rubbing the forehead of some high-powered executive who’s on the verge of tears from exhaustion. I’d have thought you were shell-shocked.
By Feliks Karić7 days ago in Viva
The Scent of Empathy: What the Front Lines Taught Me About you Workout
The Battlefield You Don’t See You’d think that after being a member of the 1st Guards Brigade "Tigers" during the Croatian War of Independence, I’d be the kind of trainer who screams in your face until you puke. You’d expect a drill sergeant in camo pants, barking about "no pain, no gain" and "weakness leaving the body."
By Feliks Karić8 days ago in Longevity
The No-Exercise Cholesterol Hack: How I Ate My Way Out of a Medical Mess
I’ve spent most of my life as an athlete and a soldier, which means I’m used to treating my body like a machine. In that world, you don’t ask how the engine feels; you just put the fuel in and demand results. But hit fifty, throw in a few major surgeries, and suddenly that machine starts looking more like a rusty tractor.
By Feliks Karić11 days ago in Longevity
My Synth and My Friend, DJ Bruno
Why I’m not a musician, I’m just a guy trying to stay sane in a loud world I have a friend named Bruno. He’s an old sea wolf of the DJ world—the kind of guy who lived through the golden era of Italian House music when everything felt like a warm hug.
By Feliks Karić13 days ago in Confessions
The Friday Ritual
The routine was a loop, the same silent ceremony every Friday at 7:00 PM sharp. It had been going on for three long years. Marko would stand at the heavy oak table, his shoulders tight, and begin to slice the sourdough. Skritch. Skritch. The sound of the blade biting through the hard crust was the only clock that ticked in that house. He cut each slice with the focus of a surgeon, terrified that if a single crumb fell outside some imaginary line on the dark wood, the fragile peace he’d spent years building would just snap.
By Feliks Karić14 days ago in Fiction
Slippers vs. Statues: Melania's Untold Human Story(Part.3)
In this series, I’ve explored Melania Trump through a lens Hollywood doesn’t have: the lens of a neighbor. I was born in 1973 in Croatia, just thirty miles from where she grew up in Sevnica, Slovenia. I’ve written about her "Stone Face" as a reflex of Balkan Survival Mode and how her marriage to Donald reflects the "Grč"—that deep-seated Balkan muscle spasm of seeking security in a cold patriarch.
By Feliks Karić16 days ago in Critique
Why the Melania Biopic Failed: Decoding the Power Dynamic (Part.2)
In my last piece, I talked about sharing the same "sandbox" with Melania Trump—born just thirty miles apart in the former Yugoslavia. (If you haven't read it yet, you can find Part 1: Why the Melania Movie Missed Its Mark ). I explained that her famous “Stone Face” isn't mystery or Botox; it’s a defensive reflex we call Balkan Survival Mode. But to understand why she stays in a spotlight she clearly resents, we have to go into the basement of the Balkan soul and look at the man who cast the first shadow: the Father.
By Feliks Karić18 days ago in Critique
Why the Melania Movie Missed Its Mark (Part.1)
I was born in 1973 in Croatia. Melania Knavs—the woman the world knows as Melania Trump—was born in 1970 in Sevnica, Slovenia. If you took a compass and drew a circle, you’d see we basically shared the same sandbox. My front door is maybe thirty miles from where she first inhaled that crisp Slovenian air.
By Feliks Karić20 days ago in Critique
The Ignorance Tax: Why Your 20$ Gourmet Burger is a Scam
A friend of mine charges twenty dollars for a piece of ground beef and two slices of bread. He calls it a "burger." In private, he calls it an "Ignorance Tax." We’ve reached a point where basic survival is marketed as a luxury, and frying an egg is treated like cold fusion. While the West pays a premium to be fed like infants, I’m sitting in my kitchen in Croatia, watching the world forget how to live—one overpriced burger at a time. *** Last night, I committed a miracle. At least, that’s what a modern-day lifestyle influencer would call it. I actually made dinner. In about fifteen minutes—roughly the time it takes an average Californian to find their car keys—I produced six gourmet burgers. Beef, veggie, and fish. All sourced from a local organic shop where the ingredients actually remember being alive. I toasted the buns with ghee, caramelized some onions, and watched the local cheese melt over the patties like a slow, delicious tragedy. I assembled them with the precision of a watchmaker: a thin slice of tomato, a leaf of lettuce, a pickle. Total cost? About the same as a mediocre latte in San Francisco. My wife, my daughter, and I “suffocated” ourselves in the goodness of it. It was healthy. It was fast. It was, frankly, a joke how easy it was. And that’s the problem. The Teeth-Brushing Paradox I’ve been cooking since I was fifteen. Not because I had a “passion” for culinary arts, but because life is a series of unfortunate events. My parents were divorced and busy; I lived with my grandfather, a man who viewed a stove as a decorative object. So, I cooked to survive. To me, cooking is like brushing your teeth. You don’t stand in front of the mirror and congratulate yourself for five minutes because you managed to clean your molars. You just do it so your mouth doesn’t rot. In Croatia—this little patch of earth that used to be Yugoslavia—a man in the kitchen isn’t a “sensitive modern hero.” He’s just a hungry guy. Roughly 90% of the people here, even the kids obsessed with TikTok, can actually whip up a decent meal. We are like the Italians, but with more cynicism and slightly worse PR. We value the origin of the food, but more importantly, we value the “table.” In the States, dinner is the big event. Here, it’s lunch. Even in the middle of a workday, the world stops. We drink coffee, we eat, we talk. The capitalist model of “time is money” hasn’t completely strangled us yet. We still think time is for living. Charging a Tax on Ignorance When I lived in California, I felt like a wizard from a superior civilization. I watched people—educated, successful people—treat the act of frying an egg like it was complex engineering. If someone “cooked” for you, it usually meant they’d taken three semi-finished products, dumped them in a pan, added too much salt, and called it a masterpiece. The flavors were aggressive, the execution was sloppy, and the conversation about the meal lasted longer than the eating itself. I have a friend who owns a burger joint. I asked him once, “Why the hype? It’s a piece of meat between two pieces of bread. Why are people paying $20 for this?” He looked at me with the weary eyes of a man who understands the decline of Western civilization. “They don’t know how to cook,” he said. “That’s it. To you and me, it’s nothing. But I’m not charging for the meat. I’m charging a tax on their ignorance. I charge for the service of doing what they’ve forgotten how to do.” The Survival of the Simplest We’ve turned a basic survival skill into a luxury “experience.” We’ve made it so expensive and so hyped that we’ve lost the simple reflex of feeding ourselves. Knowing your way around a kitchen is no longer just a domestic chore—it is the ultimate act of rebellion. It’s a stand against a system that wants to sell you back your own autonomy at a 500% markup. Back in my kitchen, my family is full, the dishes are done, and I didn’t even notice I was “cooking.” I was just hanging out. Maybe I’m ready to become a professional chef. Or maybe the rest of the world is just ready to admit they’ve forgotten how to live. Either way, the burger was great—and it didn't cost me twenty dollars to realize it.
By Feliks Karić21 days ago in Critique
