33 Days OFF-line or what I found in rural mountain villages in Russia. Part 1.

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The waste of time

Being a little girl I was always amazed by one nature fact - Why do bears sleep in winter? To little kid, the fact that they can sleep for so long seemed out of this world. The things is that I was not fascinated with just their capability to sleep SO long, for me - it was the waste of their precious time. My world was always about actions - I would build castles, I would go to the moon, I would build an oil plant and be its boss. Yes, I was born in the country where even a small child can figure out that if you are the boss of an oil plant, the life is good. But if you ask me, I would never go and sleep for the whole winter. Why would I do it if life was so interesting and full of new discoveries? "How can you just sleep?" - I wondered. How can you switch off your life and go to sleep? It took me more than 30 years to understand how.

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That little girl grew up, but the pace of her life remained the same. It seems I was always trying to prove that life is worth living in full and you can do a lot with it. For instance, why to have only one Diploma, lets get 2 of them the same time - it will be fun. Sleepless nights, a lot of things to manage but there are also permanent cultural events, trips which you can’t miss. It seemed that if I stopped, then the world would also stop and that was something I was always avoiding.

Ok, fine. I got 2 Diplomas at the same time, I was the Winner. Yet, the next journey was about to start - I got a job in one of the leading event agencies in Russia. And life was the same unstoppable routine again. I managed contractions, I dealt with logistic problems, organized visas for guest, juggling several phones while dealing with “urgent situations” which are plenty in this type of business. Somewhere along my life flew without me really noticing it.

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Somewhere between one project and the next, I moved to Europe - to a small island of Malta. My the first cultural shock was about people who lived in“relax mode” as I tend to call it to all problems answering to you “Mela, let see what can be done? …” or “You’ll have it tomorrow” with tomorrow never comes. Life would go further with slight adjustments to Maltese way of doing things and more reminders and call to get all done in time.

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The real DREAM

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At the same time, all of this time somewhere there has always been a dream that started around the same time as the question about bears. For a girl from Russia, born in the USSR era, where everything was limited somewhere inside, there was a huge, incredible desire to find out what was out there, beyond the borders of this big but kind of limited country. When I started traveling as a teenager I would come to a new country and be amazed by people, buildings, cultures, My Motherland, Russia would fade away comparing to all of them. So the dream somehow formulated in a very short sentence: "I want to travel to different countries and just live there."

The universe is a funny thing and it gives you what you want. Malta was my first step there. So, by the end on 2017, when this story began, I had already been living in the rhythm of "I want to travel to different countries and just live there" for almost two years. The work has smoothly developed into online projects, carried out around the world, which made it possible to travel and live wherever I wanted.

The dream came into my life by itself. However, raising a glass of apple juice to celebrate the arrival of 2018 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the question of a little girl: “Why do bears sleep in the winter?” came back by itself. Maybe it was time for me re-consider the way I lived and allow myself a little rest after all of these years.

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The CHOICE to make

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It came along with the next choice I had to do in my life. If you've ever read Russian fairy tales, there's always a hero who has to choose from 3 different roads the right way to go. So in the end of 2017 that was my time to chose: the first road would lead me to Europe with my husband, who needed to be there for a business. That was the road I knew very well and I assume I could have easily done it. The second road was even easier - to stay a bit longer in Malaysia and do things I wanted to do long ago celebrating the arrival of the new year with some creativity.The third road loomed on the horizon in the form of the invitation of the family friends to join them in Russia on a trip to the North Caucasus, Russia. "Well, what can I do there?" - was the first thought appeared and the answer was simple” I can do nothing there”.

I bet most of the people given the same choice would opt for Malasia or Europe. I would do it myself I guess but that time it was not interesting to me. At that particular stage of my life, for some reason I can’t really explain, I decided to go to cover with snow Russian mountains, the place I have been so long ago and tried to avoid ever since I left. That was my road to the place, where bears were sleeping peacefully, just bother me with the fact. It was my time to fall into some kind of hibernation, disconnect from the outside world. And as it turned out later, the Universe as always prepared me another gift and as always it was the perfect timing.

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33 days in the attempt to do nothing

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33 days spent in Russia, in the country I was born gave me what I tried to grab for so long when moving from country to country. It turned out that the search outside was an incorrect choice by default. All the answers were inside me and they could only be understood by falling into my own “sleep mode” for a while as a bear would do with the start of the winter. So here I was - heading right from summer in Asia to winter in Russia with purpose just to stop for a while.

If you want to know how it went and what else I saw on my way just follow. I will keep posting from now%)
Inner journeys are good but being back on-line and to Steemit again feels awesome!

With love,
Sasha Genji