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 ;)

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/

I really struggled editing that chapter about New Zealand but I think I’m satisfied enough with it now. It’s funny but you might not realize how certain little moments in your life may have influenced you until you look back and write about these moments. I didn’t think much about the day or two that I spent in Christchurch in 2011, following the disastrous earthquake, but now I’ve realized that this had had a huge impact on me. I only witnessed the aftermath of it all- shattered infrastructure, a crumbled city center, and a lot of traumatized people, but it made me realize how short and precious life is, and that everything you’ve ever worked for can perish at any given moment.

This was one of the cumulative events that led up to me quitting university to travel through the middle of Australia, backpack through Indonesia, sail in New Zealand, hitchhike across the US, and then go to Mexico and New Zealand again before coming back to Sydney Uni in 2012. I learned a lot during that trip, so it was a very valuable time of my life (definitely more valuable than all that time I spent at Sydney University :D ).