Two honours degrees from Moscow State University, a PhD, a huge stack of certificates and certificates. And what did all this get me?
People often ask me: “Why did you need all that? Was it necessary to try so hard and get all these diplomas in order to then live the way you do. To do what you do. To be a blogger, to search for yourself – you didn’t have to study anywhere at all, and you could come to Israel at any time without education under the repatriation programme.
Two honours degrees from Moscow State University, a PhD, and a lifelong learner. And these are the most useful skills that help me achieve my goals and be happy:
✅ reading quickly.
✅ blind typing
✅ English
✅ searching the internet
✅ passive income
We pick up stones for a lifetime
And it gets hard to carry them.
We are at war with ourselves
and fighting our own shadows
“I should have done it that way,”
but then you believed in luck.
And only now you realize:
“Stupidity, and that’s suck!”
Why not relieve some weight?
Bounce around with bare feet.
Learn to forgive yourself –
foolishly, while being uplift.
I’ve already said it’s better not to compare yourself to anyone else. But we won’t get rid of all bad habits all at once, will we? So I’m sharing another idea that helps me compare myself more adequately and less traumatically. After all, as it happens – “look how well painted Mashenka, and you what? Have you found out how long Mashenka draws? We often compare ourselves with the achievements of other people who have spent much more time and effort than you.
Don’t compare your beginning with their middle
What’s the point of comparing yourself to someone who is 10 years older than you and thinking, “He’s got this and that. So wait, I still have 10 years to get what I want. Or say – you compare yourself with a girl with an athletic figure, and you yourself have gained 10 kg and you haven’t exercised at all. What’s the point? If she had a similar lifestyle, who knows what she’d look like now. And if you exercise as much as she did, that’s when you can compare more adequately.
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I came to Israel 7 months ago. Considering that I didn’t come alone (but with my IT-husband) and not “with my bare ass” – good education, free English, money cushion, some kind of passive income… Everyone saw how many difficulties we encountered – from finding accommodation at an adequate price, to arranging documents, the new language, the climate, everyday life and other peculiarities.
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Do you live from the word “should” rather than from the word “want”? When you do humdrum things, you get bogged down in doing things, and what you really want for yourself is hard to understand? Let me tell you how I live my life. My motto since childhood has been ‘what I want, what I will’. I only do what I want to do. And how do I know what I want now? Very simply. I look around and look for things in the world that hook me. And if nothing hooks me, that’s fine. Then there’s nothing around that I want. I just have to look somewhere else in new places – on the internet, in a shop, on the street, on the phone, at the cinema, on social media, etc. And if you don’t feel like looking and searching for anything? It is also okay. Then it is possible to do anything until you want something. And to want something – sometimes it is enough to sleep, take a walk, eat, go for a shower. You shut your body’s basic needs, and there’s something curious looming on the horizon.
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And then I realised how long ago I had started making web pages – I made my first website in html on free hosting back in school. And it was… my school 😀 Yeah, come to think of it, back in the ’90s schools didn’t have their own websites. In uni I mastered all sorts of CMS like WordPress and Joomla and became a webmaster on flash in Dreamweaver. At that time Russian Bear and I were into websites, freelancing and even wanted to open our own agency. That was about 15 years ago.
Envy is my main negative feeling in life. I didn’t understand what to do when I was jealous. I thought envy was a character trait of mine that could not be changed. I believed that I could just not communicate with that person and it would help. I was sure that I would get what I wanted and I would never be jealous again. But it was all bullshit!
The origin of envy is having an ego (self-awareness). Normally, we are aware of ourselves as individuals without comparing ourselves to anyone else and therefore not towering over anyone else. The bigger the ego grows, the more you compare yourself to others and the more you elevate yourself above others. The bigger the ego, the more you become envious and your self-confidence goes down. A vicious circle: comparison – envy – insecurity – compensation through domination – comparison – envy, etc.
Uncertainty, helplessness and the search for meaning in the world are not only my main companions in life, but also the main theme of existentialist philosophy. That very existential crisis – doubts and inner conflicts, searching for oneself, reassessing values – not just once or twice, but throughout life. This is what happens when you think too much – about yourself, about life, about meanings.
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Hi, I’m Shtuky. A blogger who managed to live on passive income from youtube before monetization of views from Russia was turned off. Now I’ve come to Israel and am trying to figure out my new life.
Gaps (good thing they’re not in memory). I will start with them. It feels like the whole year has been a failure. But feelings often mislead us and prevent us from seeing the main thing – I am still writing this post, alive, healthy and still quite good looking. It is still important to celebrate the failures in order to admire how resiliently and cheerfully I overcame my difficulties in life.
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It is amazing how people can foresee the future through their fantasies, utopias, and dystopias. This book on the psychology of the abnormal was written before I was born (in 1976). I read, “We are rapidly moving into a hightech society for which most of us are unprepared. Our future is not guaranteed.”
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I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I feel confused.
After the monetization of views from Russia was turned off, I lost everything I had invested 10 years of my life in on YouTube.
It’s been a year. I came to Israel. Lost almost all of my former sources of income.
I decided to start from scratch on YouTube. In six months I am very tired, and the result only gives me the opportunity to live somewhere in Thailand. Do I want to live in Thailand? I don’t know what I want at all.
I don’t want anything.
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There is a concept – mirror neurons, which like to explain how people copy each other’s behavior. This is how learning, fashion, trends, synchronized dancing, and viral videos work. And understanding – what exactly I want to do – can arise from observing what other people are doing. I want to do that, too! How am I any worse? I want to do it, too.
I have long been interested in why it is now so fashionable to talk about “mirror neurons” and what this actually means from a scientific point of view. Do mirror neurons exist? Do they help you look at people like a mirror and see yourself, your reflection? Why do I understand what I want to do by watching what other people are doing.
In my childhood, photography was the only way ordinary people could save a moment for the future. We had a video camera at home when I went to school, and you could record a couple of hours of material on video tape. A videotape that looked like an audio cassette. You know, a little plastic box with a black tape and two reels inside. Now it’s all become artifacts of antiquity along with music records, disks, floppy disks, audio players and palaroid.
You can spend years thinking about how you’re going to do something. And sometimes life kicks you in the butt and you fly into a new reality through a bus stop window. And it’s not at all what you imagined. I had no idea that in Israel I would be living on a mountain in a pine forest overlooking a snowy peak. That I would eat hummus less often in Israel than in Moscow. And that most of the fall, winter, and spring I would wear warm socks and a scarf, and complain at home, “Why is it so cold! Israel is a hot country, they call it…”
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