These past few weeks I’ve been preparing for my interview for TROM 2 Documentary. The first part of the interview was about my life- childhood, how I started traveling around the world, university, etc. The second part of the interview was about the state of the natural world- biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction, climate change, pollution, etc. To get a good overview of what’s happening globally, I read a bunch of reports from the UN, WWF, and a few other organizations, and went through a lot of articles, documentaries, etc.
And of course, we also talked about trade and how trade is at the core of the human society that we’ve developed- and how that’s creating a lot of problems.

Then finally- we recorded 3 days in a row and now we are finally finished with all of the filming for TROM 2! (My interview was the last one). Now Tio has a lot of work on his hands, I hope it’s not too overwhelming. But since Tio managed to make the first TROM Documentary all by himself, I am confident that he’ll be able to make something amazing out of TROM 2 :)

See our updates/progress at https://www.tromsite.com/live/

We found a very cool website last night: https://www.onezoom.org/life.html/@=304358?img=best_any&anim=flight#x1027,y474,w0.2697

OneZoom Tree of Life- An interactive map of the evolutionary links between all living things. Discover your favorites, see which species are under threat, and be amazed by the diversity of life on earth.

Here's our latest TROM-Cast: https://www.tromsite.com/videos/

This one was about movies, our personal opinions about movies, and the impact that movies have on society.

You can also watch it on Peertube - https://videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/b67faea3-8bf7-47b7-ba66-c7ffebfb405a

Big thank you to Uwe and Benjamin for continuing to support me on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/bigworldsmallsasha
Even a little bit each month helps a lot and is very encouraging :)

An update on my book- I’m just about finished with a second draft of the entire book and I also have a (almost) final draft of the first 15 chapters done. The entire book is now about 150,000 words divided into 26 chapters. I don’t think I can make it any shorter than that, so it is what it is… about the same length as Gandhi's autobiography :D

I struggled with this book a lot this year but I finally feel like I’m almost there!

Unfortunately, Tio and I will probably have to move out of our apartment in less than two months, so now I’ll focus on TROM 2 Documentary (bc we’re filming it in this apartment), then I’ll do my best to try to finish a third draft of the entire book before we lose this place. Then, once we move out of the apartment, I’d like to go into the Pyrenees Mountains for a few weeks or months and hike from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean (and maybe back, we’ll see) :D

I want to do this hike alone so that I can have a really long and hard think about everything that I’ve written in my book and everything that I’ve gone through over the years. For me, hiking and being out in nature has always been the best way to reflect and think through anything that may be important. It’s also a good way to step out of the norm, experience something different, and clear your mind. Actually, I think alone-time is extremely underappreciated in our society :)

I have most of the gear that I need so this trip won’t cost much money. I’ll camp or stay in free mountain huts every night so the only thing I’ll need to pay for is food (maybe about €3 per day). The trail itself starts pretty close to where I am now, so it’s not hard to get to.

I’d like to start hiking around June and come back around September (if covid restrictions don’t get in the way). Then, once I come back to the Mediterranean, I’ll be able to have one last look over my book with a fresh mind and make any last changes before I finally publish it. So hopefully the book will be out this fall (let’s see :D).

More detail about the trip later ;)

Here's last night's TROM-Cast: https://www.tromsite.com/videos/
Or on Peertube: https://videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/38a34103-ae53-4e8b-a85a-568ce013e049


This one was about "deplatforming" and the implications of it. How a few companies can mute anyone they want and what repercussions that has.

I finished Chapter 24- some crazy stories about hitchhiking through Europe in 2016 :D


I actually didn't realize how much time I spent hitchhiking around the world until I wrote this book :D There are a lot of hitching stories in there. Mostly good ones, but some were a tiny bit frightening too.

I also brought back a section that I had deleted earlier (from Chapter 8) so now the book is a bit over 150,000 words but maybe it's better that way, we'll see.

Now I'll have to make just a few small changes to Chapter 25 (the 2nd-to-last chapter) and then I'll see if I can manage to finish editing the conclusion or if I'll have to mull over it for a while longer.

I finished editing chapter 23, which was about Hawaii. This chapter included a story about the Kalalau, where I took this picture-


This was definitely one of the most incredible places I've ever seen, and the interesting part about this place is that there are a bunch of hippies living in that valley and making pizza :D
I hope to come back there one day and stay for a little while.

I also edited chapter 24 and 25 (Europe and Nicaragua) but I might go over it one more time.
And now I'm on the conclusion! ...And I'm struggling with it.

I'll try to take it little by little, hopefully finish by next week, and then we'll record my part for TROM2 documentary ;)

I made a lot of progress this week. I'm up to Chapter 23 now (page 275) and I think I only have about 4 chapters to edit! But I decided to go with a new strategy- right now I'm working on draft 2 of the 2nd half of my book (which I have never edited before). Once I finish draft 2 I will re-edit that entire section to make a final draft. Only then can we celebrate :D.

Now I just finished a part about Sri Lanka, which I struggled with a bit. I managed to cut out a bunch of pages so now the book is about 150,000 words. I don't think there's much more I can cut out but maybe that's okay.

Here's a photo of the Dambulla cave temple in Sri Lanka :)

I finished editing Chapter 17! Making progress :D
This one was about Cambodia, Thailand, Russia, Bulgaria and Morocco. Random, yes, but it made sense at the time :D

Here's a photo from this chapter-


This is from the Ta Prohm temple in the jungles of Cambodia (part of the Temples of Angkor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta_Prohm

Great TROM-Cast last night- https://videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/08976e30-bcb8-4660-9322-57a01272a943

This one was about our new project https://trom.tf/

Great job with this project @Tio and @Alexio I really love it! :)

@Tio has been working his ass off on an awesome new project that we will release tomorrow- https://trom.tf/ It will be a part of https://www.tromsite.com/tools/ which is a very useful section of TROMsite- full of great trade-free tools such as curated news, videos, illustrations, full-length documentaries, our trade-free Operating System, and a lot more. I really love all these tools and I don't think that anyone else knows exactly how much time and effort Tio puts into all of this. I've never met anyone who works more than him (especially on something that is given away for free). He's been working on this new project perhaps 15 hours per day, every day, for weeks, with almost no breaks. And it is awesome :) You'll see tomorrow, as soon as we release trom.tf ;)

And of course, much of this wouldn't have been possible without the other great people that have put a ton of time and effort into these awesome open source projects- so thank you to you all! :)

Tomorrow we'll have a TROM-Cast about all of this and we will stream through PeerTube for the first time https://videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/08976e30-bcb8-4660-9322-57a01272a943 And you can even watch it straight on https://www.tromsite.com/live/

See you then! ;)

#tromlive

I deleted 8 more pages and I've finished editing 200 pages! -So I'm more than halfway finished with my book! :D The next part will be more difficult though... Now I'm getting into the sections that I've never edited before. I'll try to take it little by little and hopefully not have any mental collapses this time :D

I decided to include an entire chapter about climate change in the book. At first, I thought that perhaps it deviated too much from the story, but I think I’ll leave it there because it’s an important topic and it impacted my perspective of the world quite a lot. Besides, the book will be called “Big World small Sasha” so it’s not only about the small Sasha- it’s also about the Big World :D

Here’s a part of what I wrote for that climate change chapter- https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/2020/02/15/why-were-changing-the-climate-but-not-ourselves/
I didn’t change much since I worked on this section a lot back when I was writing it.

I finished editing two more chapters and all of Part 3! Part 3 (about the years 2011 and 2012) was a hell of an adventure if I do say so myself :D

I summarized it in this dialogue as I was talking to some random people who had asked me where I was from and what I “do.”

[Chapter 15] “I spent the last year backpacking around the world,” I replied. “First, I traveled through the middle of Australia, then I backpacked through Indonesia for a couple of months. In Eastern Indonesia, I stayed with a tribe that sacrificed animals! Then I lived on a sailboat for about two months in New Zealand, then I took a flight to the US and lived in New Mexico for a couple of months. After that, I hitchhiked to California, lived on a blow up mattress in the Long Valley Caldera for a month or so and snowboarded in Mammoth, then I spent a couple of weeks in Mexico. Now I’m on my way back to New Zealand to snowboard some more!” I giggled. “But I’m from Russia, originally. And I don’t have a job, so I guess I don’t “do” anything.”

There are some eventful hitchhiking stories in these chapters :)

https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/

I finished editing Chapter 13- Sailing in New Zealand. I wrote a little bit about this adventure in a blog a little while ago- https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/2018/09/19/sailing-is-not-just-for-rich-people/
Now the chapter is complete and I'm making real progress with my book. Yes! :D

I'll post updates about my work here (https://social.trom.tf/profile/bigworldsmallsasha) and this automatically goes to my website on this page https://www.bigworldsmallsasha.com/live/

Thanks to @Tio for setting all of this up :) TROM Social looks great! - I love it! :)