Big thank you to Uwe and Benjamin for continuing to support me on Patreon!
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 ;)

@Tio has been working his ass off on an awesome new project that we will release tomorrow- trom.tf/ It will be a part of 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 videos.trom.tf/videos/watch/08… And you can even watch it straight on tromsite.com/live/

See you then! ;)

#tromlive

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 :)

bigworldsmallsasha.com/book/