Yet somewhere along the way, self-care has become closely associated with optimization—another habit to build, another routine to perfect, another product to buy.

But what if self-care isn't about becoming someone better?

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For me, self-care has very little to do with optimization.

It is about caring for the person we already are.

It is about creating the conditions in which our natural qualities can emerge and develop.

In that sense, self-care is less about changing ourselves and more about learning how to support ourselves at the stage of life we're in right now.

And this is where it becomes interesting.

We cannot simply copy someone else’s version of self-care.

Just as every plant needs different conditions to thrive, every person does too.

What restores one person may exhaust another.

What brings one person peace may leave someone else feeling empty.

Perhaps the first act of self-care is not buying something new or following another morning routine.

Perhaps it is simply learning to listen.

To notice what gives us energy.

To notice what quietly takes it away.

To become curious about our own rhythms instead of trying to imitate someone else’s.

In my experience, this kind of listening is impossible without three things.

Time

The first is time.

Not free time filled with distractions, but unhurried time that allows us to hear our own thoughts before they are drowned out by the demands of the day.

Silence

The second is silence.

Not only the absence of sound, but the absence of constant stimulation: notifications, endless scrolling, opinions, expectations, and the subtle pressure to always be consuming something.

Silence creates space.

And in that space, we begin to notice ourselves again.

Attention

The third is attention.

Not the fragmented attention we give ourselves between emails and meetings, but the kind of quiet, focused presence we usually reserve for someone we deeply care about.

Only then can we begin to ask a much more meaningful question:

What would truly nourish me today?

The answer might surprise us.

It may have nothing to do with what usually comes to mind when we think about self-care.

Meditation.

Therapy.

Exercise.

A spa day.

Supplements.

A digital detox.

None of these are wrong.

But sometimes what we truly need is much simpler.

Opening the windows in the morning.

Preparing yourself a nourishing breakfast instead of eating whatever is quickest.

Reading twenty pages instead of scrolling for twenty minutes.

Taking a slow walk without listening to anything.

Drinking a cup of tea without multitasking.

Calling someone you love.

Going to bed thirty minutes earlier.

None of these require a new identity.

Only a small decision.

When we choose the kind of care we genuinely need, something subtle changes.

We stop living according to someone else’s definition of a good life.

Instead, we begin responding to our own.

There is something deeply peaceful about that.

It reminds us that we are allowed to care for ourselves in the way that is right for us—not in the way that looks impressive from the outside.

So why do we so often underestimate these simple actions?

Because dramatic changes make compelling stories.

A marathon.

A silent retreat.

A month-long detox.

They are easy to celebrate.

Quiet habits are different.

They rarely create dramatic before-and-after moments.

Instead, they slowly shape the texture of everyday life.

Looking back, we often realize that we became healthier, calmer, or more resilient not because of one extraordinary decision, but because of many ordinary ones repeated over time.

On My Example

While working on one of the CurrentPress books (which is a cookbook) called The Modern Ayurvedic Kitchen, one idea kept returning to me.

Cooking isn’t only about nutrition.

It is one of the quiet ways we care for ourselves.

Not because every meal needs to be perfect, but because preparing something nourishing is a small act of saying,

“I am worth looking after.”

Perhaps it’s time to expand our definition of nourishment.

• Food nourishes the body.

• Conversation nourishes relationships.

• Books nourish the mind.

• Silence nourishes attention.

• Sleep nourishes recovery.

• Beauty nourishes the imagination.
  

Self-care isn’t one activity.

It is the ongoing practice of choosing what truly nourishes us.

Sometimes that nourishment comes in the form of food.

Sometimes it is a conversation.

Sometimes it is silence.

Sometimes it is simply allowing ourselves to rest without feeling guilty.

Perhaps real self-care begins when we stop asking,

“How can I become better?”

and start asking,

“How can I take better care of the person I already am?”

Tomorrow morning, you don’t need to transform your life.

You don’t need the perfect routine.

You don’t need to become someone else.

Perhaps all you need is one small act of care that your future self will quietly thank you for.

These are five books I would recommend for such periods. Each explores change, loss, meaning, and the possibility of beginning again from a different angle.

Why it belongs here

This book doesn’t tell readers how to “fix” themselves. Instead, it teaches how to stay present when certainty disappears.

It has become almost a classic companion for people experiencing profound transitions. Reddit communities and readers repeatedly return to it during identity crises and major life changes.

Ideal times for reading

• Grief and endings

• Loneliness

• Spiritual awakening

• Uncertainty and fear

Main message

• The breakdown itself may become the doorway.

Buy on Amazon

Why it belongs here

One of the most beautiful books written about periods when life slows down unexpectedly.

Instead of glorifying constant growth, May argues that retreat, solitude, and pauses are natural seasons.

Ideal readers

• Burnout

• Life after divorce

• Recovery and rebuilding

• Sensitive and reflective personalities

Main message

Not every season is meant for blooming.

Buy on Amazon

Check her website

Why it belongs here

The ultimate book about rebuilding life after loss.

Frankl argues that human beings can endure almost anything when they retain a sense of meaning.

Ideal readers

• Existential questioning

• Loss and suffering

• Major life transitions

• Second halves of life

Main message

Meaning can survive even when everything else changes.

Buy on Amazon

Why it belongs here

Part memoir, part adventure story, Wild is ultimately a book about rebuilding a life after it falls apart. Following the death of her mother and the end of her marriage, Cheryl Strayed embarks on a 1,100-mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. What begins as a physical journey gradually becomes a path toward grief, self-forgiveness, and renewal.

More than a story about the wilderness, Wild reminds us that we do not need to have everything figured out before taking the next step. Sometimes healing happens while we are moving.

Ideal readers

• Those navigating divorce or the end of a relationship

• Anyone grieving a loss

• People experiencing a major life transition

• Readers searching for courage to begin again

• Lovers of memoir and adventure writing

Main message

You do not have to know exactly where you are going to find your way again.

Sometimes getting lost is part of becoming whole.

Buy on Amazon

Why it belongs here

Retirement is often portrayed as an ending. The Second Bloom offers a different perspective: it invites readers to see this season of life as an opportunity for renewal, purpose, and meaningful contribution.

Blending reflections, practical exercises, and inspiring stories, the book encourages readers to let go of outdated ideas about aging and embrace the freedom of designing life on their own terms. It is a gentle companion for anyone entering a new chapter and wondering what comes next.

Ideal readers

• People approaching or navigating retirement

• Those searching for renewed purpose and meaning

• Anyone experiencing a major life transition

• Readers interested in personal growth and healthy aging

• Those who believe it is never too late to begin again

Main message

Retirement is not the end of life—it can become the beginning of its most liberated chapter.

Some flowers bloom twice.

Buy on Amazon

It’s Darya here — the founder of CurrentPress.

And honestly, it’s not even easy for me to introduce myself this way.

Because for a long time, I knew exactly who I was.

I was Darya — a Tech Recruiter and Career Consultant. Born in Belarus, living in the Netherlands. In a stable relationship for 14 years. Building a predictable, reasonable adult life.

Or at least, what looked like one from the outside.

Then, everything changed.

I separated from my partner. I stepped into a completely different chapter of life. Since the beginning of 2024, I have been living as a digital nomad (traveling a lot across Asia) — slowly rebuilding myself while moving through countries, landscapes, silence, uncertainty, and unexpected freedom.

At the beginning of 2026, I founded CurrentPress — an independent publisher born from a very personal longing: to create the kind of books that accompany people through meaningful life transitions.

And as I write this now, I still do not have a stable home. Not exactly.

I am slowly building a base in Europe, but at the moment, it is mostly me, my car, a few suitcases, and long road trips across unfamiliar places.

A new life.
New rules — my rules.
A lot of freedom.
A lot of solitude.

And, unexpectedly, a quiet kind of grief.

Because becoming someone new is beautiful.
But it also asks something from you.

It asks you to let parts of yourself go — even the versions of yourself that once made perfect sense.

I am still figuring out who I am becoming.

What surprises me most is that this new version of me feels deeply familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. More myself than ever before — yet still someone I do not fully know.

Not yet.

But I know her much better than I did two or three years ago.

She consciously chooses solitude more often than social noise.

She protects her health, peace, and nervous system — daily, non-negotiable.

She feels a deep longing to see new places, experience new cultures, and meet people who feel meaningful rather than random.

She is learning to quiet the very practical, strategic, highly trained part of herself — the one that always plans, optimizes, and controls.

And she is slowly giving more space to another part.

A quieter part.

A deeply intuitive, sensitive part that somehow already knows things before they happen. A part that feels profoundly connected to the world, to people, to beauty, to meaning. A part capable of trust. Of flow. Of staying calm in enormous uncertainty.

She is becoming someone who consciously chooses kindness and compassion every day.

Someone who chooses love — in the widest possible sense of the word.

Someone who values freedom more than material certainty.

And someone who is still learning how to build a life where passion, meaning, and financial sustainability can peacefully exist together.

I do not fully know this person yet.

But perhaps this article is, in part, about getting to know her.

And How It All Feels?

And this is perhaps the strangest part of transformation that nobody really talks about.

How deeply disorienting it can feel.

There is grief in becoming someone new.

Not loud grief.

Not the kind that arrives with dramatic endings or visible heartbreak.

A quiet grief.

A grief that lives somewhere in between lives.

A grief of no longer fully recognizing yourself.

Of waking up one day and realising that the things that once defined you no longer fit — but the new version of you is still taking shape.

You stand somewhere in between.

No longer there.

Not fully here.

Sometimes, I catch myself looking at my own life almost as if I were observing someone else.

Who is this person who chooses solitude so often?

Who suddenly no longer wants constant social activity?

Who can spend days alone in nature and feel full rather than lonely?

Who feels uncomfortable returning to versions of life that once felt normal?

There are moments of loneliness too.

A very particular kind.

Not because there are no people around, but because old connections sometimes stop nourishing you in the same way.

The conversations feel smaller.

The pace feels different.

The values no longer fully align.

And this can be painful to admit.

Because sometimes growth quietly changes the shape of belonging.

You still love people.

But not every connection can follow you into every version of yourself.

And then there are doubts.

Doubts about past choices.

About relationships.

About years invested.

About the roads taken and not taken.

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

Will I actually be happy in the future?

Will this uncertainty lead somewhere meaningful?

Will this life eventually feel stable?

Will love feel safe again?

Will I ever fully arrive?

I do not always have answers.

Most days, I do not.

But something surprising has happened in the middle of all this uncertainty.

I feel joy.

Not every hour.

Not every day.

But often.

Unexpectedly often.

Small, quiet joy.

Joy from waking up somewhere beautiful.

From long drives with no destination.

From meaningful conversations.

From books.

From silence.

From finally feeling that my life — despite all its imperfections and instability — feels honest.

Real.

Mine.

And maybe that matters more than certainty.

Maybe there is something deeply peaceful about no longer betraying yourself.

Even when the road ahead feels unclear.

Even when you are grieving versions of yourself you once loved.

Even when the future still scares you.

There is gratitude too.

Deep gratitude.

For freedom.

For health.

For second chances.

For the ability to begin again.

For the strange privilege of becoming.

And perhaps this is what I am slowly learning:

Sometimes life falls apart not because it is ending.

But because something more honest is trying to begin.

We often imagine ourselves as fixed beings — with stable identities, established beliefs, familiar ways of living. Yet if we look honestly at life, we are never truly still.

We are not mountains.

We are rivers.

Always moving. Always reshaping ourselves, even when we do not notice it. Sometimes quietly, almost invisibly. Sometimes through sudden turns that alter the direction of everything we thought we knew about ourselves.

Human life is, in many ways, a lifelong process of transformation.

The interesting part is that change rarely arrives in the form we would consciously choose.

There are people who intentionally seek transformation — who question themselves often, stay open to reinvention, and consciously allow life to reshape them again and again. But this requires a certain level of awareness, courage, and honesty with oneself.

For most of us, transformation enters through more difficult doors.

Loss.

Illness.

Uncertainty.

Disappointment.

A relationship ending.

A dream collapsing.

The quiet realization that the life we built no longer feels fully alive.

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I have often wondered whether life somehow knows when we have outgrown ourselves.

Whether there are moments when, deep inside, we are already ready for change — but resist it. We remain in familiar environments, repeat old patterns, postpone difficult decisions, sabotage new possibilities because what is familiar still feels safer than what is unknown.

And then, somehow, something happens.

Not always dramatically. But persistently enough to move us.

Life begins asking for our attention.

Sometimes gently.

Sometimes painfully.

As if transformation, sooner or later, is NOT OPTIONAL at all.

We may consciously choose it — or be brought to it through circumstances we never asked for. But eventually, life asks us to grow beyond the version of ourselves we can no longer remain.

And perhaps this is precisely why great literature matters.

Because literature has always understood something essential about human transformation.

Stories exist, in many ways, to make sense of what it means to be human. They observe us closely. They watch how people break, rebuild, betray themselves, forgive, lose meaning, rediscover hope, become someone else entirely.

Great literature does not offer quick fixes.

It rarely gives us answers.

Instead, it offers something far more valuable: recognition.

You suddenly realize that what you are experiencing has been lived before.

Someone has stood at this emotional crossroads.

Someone has grieved, doubted, wandered, resisted change, and still found a way through.

The greatest characters in literature are rarely static. They evolve — sometimes beautifully, sometimes painfully, often reluctantly. Their inner worlds shift under the pressure of love, suffering, moral conflict, ambition, loneliness, or loss.

And in witnessing their transformation, we begin to understand something about our own.

Perhaps this is one of the quiet gifts of reading:

It reminds us that becoming is natural.

That uncertainty is not failure.

That periods of confusion are often transitions.

And that transformation — however uncomfortable — may simply be life asking us to grow into someone we have not yet met.

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Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina book shows that transformation is not always linear, beautiful, or even successful. Sometimes, literature teaches us through collapse as much as through growth.

The novel follows several intertwined lives in Russian aristocratic society, but at its center are two parallel journeys:

Anna Karenina — intelligent, emotionally alive, trapped in a respectable but emotionally empty marriage. She falls deeply in love with Count Vronsky and chooses passion over convention, risking her reputation, social standing, and family.

And Konstantin Levin — a landowner struggling with questions of meaning, work, morality, love, faith, and the purpose of life.

What makes the novel extraordinary is that Tolstoy shows two radically different responses to inner transformation.

Anna: transformation through emotional truth — and inner fragmentation
Anna experiences a profound awakening.

At first, her love affair feels like liberation — a movement toward authenticity and emotional truth. She refuses to continue living a life that feels dead inside.

She wants a more honest, fully lived existence.

But Tolstoy also shows what happens when transformation unfolds in a society that punishes change — especially for women.

As Anna becomes increasingly isolated, judged, dependent, and emotionally unstable, her inner freedom slowly turns into suffering.

Her story raises painful questions: What happens when the self we are becoming has no place in the world around us?

Can transformation survive when we lose belonging?

Anna’s tragedy is not only about love. It is about identity, freedom, loneliness, and the unbearable cost of becoming someone society refuses to accept.

Levin: transformation through ordinary life

Levin undergoes a quieter transformation.

He struggles with existential anxiety, insecurity, work, relationships, and spiritual doubt. He repeatedly feels lost and disconnected from meaning.

But unlike Anna’s dramatic path, Levin slowly transforms through work, nature, love, family life, self-reflection, accepting uncertainty.

His transformation is subtle.

There is no grand revelation.

Only the gradual realization that meaning exists not in perfection, but in participation in life itself.

Tolstoy seems to suggest that:

Transformation is inevitable — but not all transformations heal us in the same way.

Some forms of becoming liberate us.

Others destabilize us.

Sometimes we grow by rebuilding ourselves.

Sometimes we break while trying.

And yet, even painful transformations remain deeply human.

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Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Shantaram is an excellent example because it explores transformation through exile, suffering, moral complexity, and reinvention.

The novel follows Lin (largely autobiographical), an escaped prisoner from Australia who flees to India and begins a completely new life in Mumbai.

At first, he arrives as a fugitive — broken, traumatized, addicted, and trying to escape his past.

But India becomes a place of profound transformation.

Over time, Lin moves through radically different worlds:

• a foreigner trying to survive in Mumbai

• a resident of a slum, helping provide medical care

• a man deeply immersed in friendship, love, and belonging

• someone connected to organized crime and morally grey environments

• a person confronting violence, loyalty, guilt, forgiveness, and identity

Throughout the story, he repeatedly loses and rebuilds himself.

What makes Shantaram fascinating is that it presents transformation not as something “spiritual” in a clean or idealized sense.

It is messy.

Contradictory.

Painful.

Very human.

The book asks an uncomfortable question:

Can we become someone new without fully confronting who we have been?

Lin is constantly trying to reinvent himself, yet the past keeps following him. His transformation happens not because he escapes suffering, but because suffering becomes unavoidable.

One of the strongest ideas in Shantaram is that places can transform us.

Mumbai itself acts almost like a living force. The city pushes Lin beyond his previous identity. Removed from familiar structures, he is forced to question who he is when everything external disappears.

When we resist inner transformation and remain stagnant, life somehow pushes us toward change.

In Shantaram, life pushes hard.

Exile, prison, addiction, loss, and unfamiliar environments all become catalysts for becoming someone else.

But the book also introduces another layer of transformation:

Transformation through relationships

Lin changes because of the people he encounters — friends, mentors, lovers, criminals, ordinary residents of Mumbai.

In many ways, the novel suggests that we do not transform alone.

Other people become mirrors for who we are, who we fear becoming, and who we might still become.

Shantaram is a modern example of transformation through lived experience.

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Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

The book follows Siddhartha, a young man in ancient India who leaves behind a comfortable and spiritually respected life in search of deeper truth and meaning.

At first, he believes wisdom can be found through discipline, asceticism, and spiritual teachers. He lives among wandering monks and even meets the Buddha — yet realizes that other people’s teachings cannot fully give him what he seeks.

He then moves to the opposite extreme: worldly life.

Siddhartha experiences wealth, pleasure, desire, love, business, and material success. But eventually, he feels spiritually empty and disconnected from himself.

At his lowest point, standing by a river and contemplating ending his life, something shifts.

The river becomes his teacher.

By observing its flow, Siddhartha gradually understands that

life is not linear, that suffering and joy coexist, and that wisdom cannot be intellectually learned — it must be lived and experienced.

In the end, he finds peace not through perfection or certainty, but through acceptance of life in all its contradictions.

What makes Siddhartha so powerful is that it presents transformation as an inevitable process of becoming, not a single breakthrough.

Siddhartha transforms many times:

• from obedient son → spiritual seeker

• seeker → ascetic

• ascetic → worldly man

• worldly man → disillusioned wanderer

• wanderer → someone deeply at peace with life

The key insight is this:

Transformation happens not through avoiding life, but through fully living it.

Hesse suggests that we cannot skip stages of becoming. Even mistakes, suffering, confusion, and periods of “losing ourselves” are not failures — they are part of the path.

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We all need stories to make sense of our own lives.

We all need heroes who quietly stay somewhere in the background of our minds — living proof that transformation is possible for as long as we are alive.

Life already makes sense as it is. And perhaps we make sense, too, simply by being who we are in each given moment, while remembering that in the next one, we may become someone else entirely.

We live to experience.

We read to understand the experiences we are living through.

Both matter.

🩵 Both complement each other — like a mountain by the river: one offering stillness, the other movement, together shaping the landscape into something richer, deeper, more alive 🩵

With warmth,
Darya 🌊

There are certain books that arrive in our lives at exactly the right moment.

Not because we were looking for answers, but because something inside us was quietly changing.

Over the years, I noticed that the books that stayed with me most were rarely loud or prescriptive. They did not promise quick fixes or perfect lives. Instead, they offered companionship — during moments of uncertainty, reinvention, grief, growth, or becoming.

More often than not, they were works of fiction.

Strangely enough, I learned some of life’s deepest lessons through stories. Through characters making impossible choices. Through quiet moments of transformation. Through endings that were never really endings at all.

Reading has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Growing up in Belarus, I spent countless hours in local libraries. By the age of fifteen, I had read nearly everything in my small city library that truly captured my imagination.

Soon after, I entered a school for gifted students focused on the humanities, literature, and languages. Later came philological studies, years immersed in Slavic literature, comparative linguistics, and eventually two Master’s degrees exploring literature more deeply — from modern drama to the works of Svetlana Alexievich.

But what stayed with me most was never simply literary theory.

It was the understanding that stories shape the way we see the world.

That reading teaches us compassion.

That life exists in infinitely different forms.

That when we encounter complexity in books, we slowly become more capable of navigating complexity in our own lives.

And that sometimes, the right book appears exactly when we need expansion — even before we know we are searching for it.

***

CurrentPress was born from this belief:

that meaningful books can help us navigate life transitions.

The name itself carries something deeply personal. Darya comes from Dariya — meaning river — a symbol of flow, patience, and quiet transformation. And so CurrentPress became both a reflection of movement and presence: the current that carries us forward, and the invitation to be fully here, now.

I founded CurrentPress to publish books that explore depth, inner change, and meaningful ways of living — books that feel less like manuals and more like companions.

This is not simply a publishing house.

It is an ongoing exploration of what it means to live thoughtfully, to grow slowly, and to become who we are meant to be.

🩵 And I’m very glad you’re here at the beginning 🩵

With warmth,
Darya 🌊

Meditation

1. 10 days silent retreat at Kopan Monastery - Kathmandu, Nepal - July 2024

2. 10 days silent retreat with Thomas Dhammadipa - Bir, India - September 2025

3. Active cosciousness meditation with Punnu Wasu - Bali, Indonesia - 2024 - 2026

Buddhism

1. Introduction to Buddhism at Kopan monastery with Ven. Tenzin Gendun - July 2024

2. Retareat with Ven. Amy Miller - Amsterdam, Netherlands - May 2024

3. Studies from Ven. Losang Gedung - In-deapth Meditation Training - Amsterdam, Netherlands - 2024 - 2025

4. Retreat with Geshe Sonam Gyaltsen - Loenen, Netherlands - August 2024

Yoga

1. 3 weeks Yoga Lifestyle Training with Manav Ji - Rishikesh, India - October 2025

2. 2 weeks practice - Sivananda ashram - Madurai, India - August 2025

3. Classes with Ashutosh - Rishikesh, India - February 2025

To know more about myself, click HERE :)

My name is Darya, or Dasha.

In Belarus, where I’m from, most people have two versions of their name: one official, used in documents (Darya, in my case), and another informal name everyone uses automatically in everyday life (Dasha). I’m lucky — I love both versions, so you can call me either Darya or Dasha.

Writing about myself has always been both difficult and strangely easy.
On one hand, I grew up as a highly self-aware child — always analyzing myself, noticing changes within, and creating certain narratives around my own personality. On the other hand, this is exactly why speaking about myself is complicated: I understand too well that personality is never static. It’s always moving, transforming, flowing — just like nature. And the “self” doesn’t really exist as a fixed thing. There are only reflections of who we are in the universal consciousness, shaped by certain life contexts and circumstances (which humans like to label as time and space).

Still, I’ll try to tell you something about myself — because it’s directly connected to what I write.

The Facts

I turned 37 in 2025.
I was born in Belarus and graduated from a philological university, where I studied Slavic languages and literature — which became my specialization. It was one of the most conscious choices of my life. I have always loved the humanities: literature, art, culture, history, psychology, sociology, geopolitics, and economics…

Since 2012, I lived in the Netherlands. Right after university, by coincidence, I stepped into the IT world. In Belarus — and later in the Netherlands — I worked as a global recruitment consultant (for the last six years as a self-employed professional).

In 2025, I went through a divorce after 14 years of a stable relationship — a relationship that shaped my life in many ways. This major life decision was the result of a deep personal transformation and triggered many other radical changes.

Right now, I’m trying to build a new life — one that aligns with my values, is filled with the people and activities that bring me joy, and carries meaning, growth, and contribution. As they say, life shouldn’t be spent only on pleasure; it should also create something that moves consciousness and the material world forward.
Although personally, I believe that if you live your authentic life — with honesty and a light heart — it already carries enormous meaning for the universal consciousness and the macrocosm.

At this moment, I’m re-examining my understanding of:

• what truly brings me joy;

• what I want to dedicate my time and energy to — in a way that benefits both myself and the world;

• whether I can fully devote myself to creativity and still remain financially independent;

• where I want to live and what “home” could look like for me;

• what harmonious and fulfilling relationships with myself and others truly mean.

A Few More Curious Facts About Me

1. For the last two years, I’ve been actively traveling and living across Asia, and I feel incredibly at home in India, Nepal, and Indonesia — as if my soul has finally found what it had been searching for.
   Buddhism, Hinduism, yoga, meditation, Panchakarma, Ayurveda… these are not abstract concepts to me but paths I explore deeply.

2. In early 2025, I ran my first marathon (42 km) in Tokyo — something I had dreamed of for many years.

3. I graduated from university with honors and have always been a studying nerd since childhood. One of my favorite activities as a child was reading books. By the age of 15, I think I had read every book and encyclopedia in my small-town library near Minsk.

4. I’ve always been drawn to philosophy, spirituality, the mysterious, cosmic, and magical. At 8–9 years old, I learned to write in a “mirror” language and kept my diary that way.

5. Theater and its magic fascinated me from childhood. In my teenage years, I was part of a drama club.

6. At some point in my career, I helped hire employees for Google in their San Francisco Bay Area and NYC offices and helped many developers and IT professionals relocate to the US and Europe.

7. I dedicated several years of my life to political activism, supporting my home country Belarus in its struggle for freedom from an authoritarian regime… But for that very reason, I haven’t been back home since 2021.
   I can write and speak Belarusian fluently — which is, unfortunately, still quite rare among Belarusians.

8. I can’t imagine my life without travel. As a tourist, I’ve visited most countries in Europe.

9. The most frequent compliment I receive is about the color of my eyes.
   But the most valuable feedback for me is how a person feels inside themselves after spending time with me or interacting with me.

10. I don’t have one favorite book or author, but right now I would name:

    • Herman Hesse

    • Leo Tolstoy

    • Jonathan Safran Foer

    • Jonathan Franzen

What Makes Sense to Me Now

Transformation.

I try to treat life as seasons of creation and exploration — not a straight, rigid path.
I’m exploring the idea that you’re not meant to “settle.”
You’re meant to

move, build, and share motion that inspires others — like a river.

And that’s why I’m writing here.

Even with all my fears:

• What if no one needs it?

• What if I won’t be able to sustain financial stability while doing something creative?

• What if I’m wrong about being a creative person capable of producing anything meaningful?

What matters is the path itself.
And I’m on it now.

If you’d like to see more about my spiritual journey, feel free to look HERE.