Unfortunately I may not be able to start any new video series for TROM anytime soon, due to the circumstances I am in. I have tried but it is kinda impossible.

Driving school madness.

For one I am too busy with the insane driving school - here in Spain it takes ages to do it and they are so draconian when it comes to these exams. You have to drive so perfect and the vast majority will fail the exam the first time. Funny part is NO ONE drives like that here or anywhere else in the world. And everyone knows that, but these people have jobs so they continue to teach you like this....as usual on this planet. Nothing surprising.

My instructor wants me to do more and more lessons, which means more time and money wasted. If she "thinks I am ready" for the exam, I will do it in July (next month). If not I'll have to wait till September....and based on statistics I am more likely to fail it the first time. So I'll probably have to wait a few more weeks after the first exam to try again.

This is so absurd it is hard to imagine how fucked up it is. If I knew I would have gone to Romania and get the driving license there in less than 2 months. Mind you I have started the driving school in Spain in December last year. Already some 7 months in...nuts!

I will make an article/video about the entire experience because there is a lot to learn from it. In a TROM-sense.

Summer madness

I live in a very small town that is 100% touristic. 3-4 months a year, from June/July to September tens of thousands of people come here and everything is a fucking mess. Noise, everything busy and kinda dirty, insanity. My family is working all day, they are stressed, they come and go, it is a terrible environment to be able to do anything creative. Add into the mix the extreme temperatures that are coming with the tourists, and it is really impossible to do anything like a video series.

For a video series I would have to first be motivated and have the space to "think" and come up with ideas. Write the scripts, fact check, etc.. Then to record - and when can I? I do not have the space/env to do that. And then to edit....Every summer is like that here, and every time I felt quite lethargic because of it.

Even while I write this article I have to put my headphones on with a white noise to be able to focus because I am sick to hear the noise coming from outside or inside the house. Every night I also put my speakers at maximum volume with an artificial thunderstorm, as loud as I can, to "cancel" the noise that comes from everyone getting up in the morning getting ready to work.

Else I could not sleep. I've been doing this for years now. Luckily it works. But this is not an environment that can allow me to do anything creative at all. I managed to do it somehow over the years but am too tired now....something needs to change, and it will!

Make money, buy a motorhome.

We will buy a small motorhome somewhere at the end of this year or beginning of the next. We want to live in it full time. One like the one in the photo.

But this puts a pressure on us to make more money now. Sasha is working a lot as a divemaster and I honestly do not do much. That makes me quite frustrated and depressed. I want to help in that regards but I was always terrible at making money. I can write books, make documentaries, and a lot of projects, but I am unable to make money.

I have tried with Webape.site but I cannot get any new "customer" who wants a website....

Unfortunately the donations I get from TROM are not enough at all to support my work. You know if the 200 for TROM campaign was successful and I knew we have enough money to survive, I could find a way to start a new video series for TROM and do more.

Unfortunately we are barely 40% funded. This is a constant struggle and a motivation killer for me after so many years of doing what am doing.

Motivation.

Speaking of getting support, it has become more and more difficult for me to keep myself motivated in this situation especially when you see that you can't even get 200 people to support all of our projects with the bare minimum of contribution. It means whatever I do for TROM does not reach that many people. And that is true. So without a proper support how can I push it forward? Projects like TROM are quite impossible to survive in this society....

I've been active since 2007, that's some 17 years. It is tough. But I am not giving up.

The best anyone can do now to help the project is to subscribe to our 200 for TROM campaign. 5 Euros a month, 200 people, make it sustainable. Unfortunately we need money else idk how I can work full time for TROM and keep this project relevant and alive.

Future?

I've said for months now that this year will be a bit insane for us. We need to move and do a lot of changes to our lives, make money, put up with a lot of stress and so forth.

The plan is this: suffer for the next few months and make money as much as we can. I have started to also sell some of our stuff that we do not need. And after the driving bullshit is done probably I'll work some days in cleaning. I will also try to get myself motivated enough to perhaps write some articles for TROM since that can be easier than making videos. I just have to find some quiet place/time (say from 00:00 to 06:00 in the night when everyone is asleep) and write/do research. Maybe later I can transform them into videos.

I will also try to film some stuff with the tourism here and other things "incognito" to then later on make some videos about.

In October we have to plan and see what money we have. We will have to bring my parents to Romania in November, so we will drive their car from here with their stuff since they move back for good. They will retire. We will stay a little bit in Romania to try and solve some more paperwork bullshit if we can - imagine this: Sasha has a driving license from USA, but she is only allowed to drive in Spain for 6 months with it. After that she needs to change it into a Spanish driving license. Easy? NO! She would have to go through the same bullshit driving school and exam like I am now....imagine that shit! She already knows how to drive but she will be forced to do again the theoretical and practical exam and take "driving lessons".

This world is such a load of nonsense it is not even funny anymore.

So we may try to see if we can exchange her driving license into a Romanian one, then exchange it for a Spanish one without doing the exam.

Hey Spain are you fucking mental?!

Anyway. We hope the madness will be over at the end of November. We will spend no more than a month in Romania (I hope). Then come back to Spain to buy a motorhome. Move into the motorhome and go fuckin away from the stupid parts of the world as much as we can.

We won't have enough money to buy the motorhome + pay the monthly expenses.....so we will also make a campaign if anyone can help out considering all I am doing for TROM is free and the motorhome is a house for me as well, of course, so that's a help for TROM basically. We will make the campaign towards the end of the year. We have the vast majority of the money we need to buy the motorhome already, but what do we do after we buy it when the only monthly support i get now is around 3-400 Euros?!

So it is going to be a bit rough for us to do the move.

The motorhome life.

Hopefully at the beginning of the next year we will be in our motorhome (TROMhome) and start a completely new life. We will make videos about our "adventures" and how it is to live in such a tiny mobile space with limited resources. Perhaps it is interesting for some. I want to put a big TROMhome logo on the motorhome, and to eventually go meet with interesting communities or projects and make videos about them.

In parallel I will keep our projects alive and relevant and I still hope to start a new video series whenever I can.

Ideally we would be able to travel and meet interesting projects and people and make videos about all of it, and also keep TROM relevant and alive and create new content. Meet our TROM friends, take them for a week or so with us, and try to live a very minimalistic life, enjoy it, and see where it goes.

Final thoughts.

I am terribly eager to make new content for TROM. I have a ton of ideas and notes. I feel quite depressed and frustrated to not be able to do that. But it is what it is. If it wasn't such a struggle to live in this society, perhaps I'd be wrong about this society when I describe the awfulness of it through our TROM materials. That's the paradox.

Maybe a miracle will happen and I would somehow start the video series soon, but I can't see that to be very likely. It is a terrible situation to want for the time to pass by faster, considering that our life is so short, but that's how I feel now: I want for these next months to be over! I want to see Sasha free and focusing on real important stuff not be trapped working 10-11 hours a day. I want us to not live in the same place anymore and be on our own. I want to start a video series that I can keep producing for the many years to come. I want us to keep on fighting but also have a relaxing life. And it is very doable!

This is a cake my family bought for my "birthday" recently haha. Me and Sasha, and TROMhome :). We will make this happen ;)

That's all for now :)

This month a bunch of "trom" people visited us and we had such a wonderful time together.

We had an Amber party looking through the microscopes at 40 million years old creatures...

Something most people in this world probably consider as boring and "lame". But if you understand the mind-blowing reality we live in, then you would understand why an amber party is a super fun and wonderful party :).

We also looked at the Moon through the telescope...

And we enjoyed the nature around, we had interesting discussions and a lot of fun.

I always hated to meet with "friends" because that usually meant lets get drunk or talk about boring shit, or brag about the stuff you have and all that. Or just eat and do nothing. Hated it. But now with these people I LOVE it. It feels natural and sane, and so much fun. And relaxing!

These are wonderful people who care about this world and have very interesting minds. And there are so many more like them. And I want to "harness" them all haha. We will organize a yearly event for sure and do more than just have a fun meetup. We will have fun but also do some important things for TROM and in general for pushing ahead with TROM-like ideas.

I am so happy that I have these creatures as my friends :)

This is the coolest thing on Earth! -- videos.trom.tf/w/oQ9amzYkm8FgT… (recorded by me 10 minutes ago)

Amber! Or stuff that the trees leak, then insects get trapped inside, then somehow it becomes super hard and survives for millions of years. It becomes transparent (lots of it) and we can look inside and see these creatures that lived millions of years ago and they look the exact same as they did when they got trapped.... Can't believe this "thing" exists on Earth!

My friend Agata game me a BAG full of amber. Her father was a scientist and amber was one of his main focus. He passed away and Agata gave a lot of his collection to museums but kept some.

Now it was the best time to buy a microscope! I spent only 50 euros on this one and it was well worth the money:

I spent ours tonight looking at every one of them and I can't stop it haha.

I HAVE to start the video series that I keep on talking about! We need not only to inform people about our global issues (cough trade!) but also inspire people to look at the important stuff. To know that the natural world is billions of times more fascinating and complex than any bullshit they are mesmerized to buy due to the aggressive marketing campaigns that happen everywhere.

We need to make this consumption craze obsolete. And reality (science/nature) is by far the best substitute. Often free, mindblowing, and more importantly real!

I wish i would start to make the video series now! But mentally can't. I need to adjust my enthusiasm and think about money/trade, at least partially. I will do it tho!

Anyway, amber deserves a video. Amber is fabulous. So precious, but not in terms of money, in terms of real value: to see how the past was. To learn about the tiny creatures and other things. To, in the end, know more about who we are.

#amber nature #microscope #insects