Personal Update
I’ve been in lockdown in Spain for over a month now, so my life hasn’t been extremely exciting lately, but I’d like to share some updates here:
1. I had an interviewed with Alex on the All Real podcast. Alex does a great job with his podcast, you can find part one of the interview here, and part two here.
In the interview, we talked about some of my travel stories and observations of the world, we also discussed my blog about climate change and my article called “Why I Left the Venus Project“. I explained some details about my experience with the Venus Project and I also talked about TROM and the idea of focusing on trade as the root cause of most of our global problems.
2. We (TROM volunteers) created a new project called “Our Minds“.
The idea was to make a hub where we can all post our blogs, since some of us don’t have our own websites. Some of my blogs are posted there and you can also find blogs written by other like-minded people. See all of our “minds” here :).
*Since this is just a casual place for us to post our thoughts, you might find some rants and random thoughts in there. Just warning you :)
3. If you didn’t know, we also have a weekly podcast that we call “TROM-Cast”.
We try to get together once a week to discuss various topics, usually relating to our trade-based system. The discussions are casual and anyone is welcome to join. You can find all of the old episodes here or here and if you would like to join a future TROM-Cast, see our live updates or get in touch with us via our public discussions chat. We usually stream on Thursdays.
4. Also, we have a TON of great tools that you can use on TROMsite.com
We curate: news, videos, podcasts, illustrations, movies, courses, documentaries and software.
The idea is to provide people with great educational material and to remove the bs, click-bait and unscientific content you find elsewhere on the internet.
Our newest addition is illustrations ;)
5. And lastly, an update on my book.
At first it was a bit of a challenge to concentrate on my book because I couldn’t get my attention off of COVID-19 news. But after soaking in a bunch of information, writing a short blog and participating in three TROM-Casts about COVID-19, I said “enough is enough!” and I made peace with the coronavirus :D
In order to concentrate on my book, I had to rip myself away from the news (at least in the mornings). I realized that if I start reading the news in the morning, I won’t be able to concentrate on my book because all I’ll be able to think about are the horrible things that are happening all over the world. I’ll get pissed off and I’ll want to write a blog about it :D In fact, I really want to write another blog about the pandemic, but I won’t do it now because I think it’s more important to focus on my book instead.
Anyway, so my advice is- if you want to be productive and not spend the entire day thinking about the coronavirus and our shitty “economic” situation, just ignore it for the first half of the day. Put it to the side and read about it later in the evening. It was hard for me to do this at first but now I’m getting the hang of it so I’m finally making progress with my book.
I’ve been editing a lot. This has been taking a while because I’m re-writing a lot of parts, I’m creating new dialogues and making new chapters to make it flow better. I’ve edited 100 pages so far, I’ll have to edit about 80 more and then I’ll have to write some more and edit more. I never thought that writing a book would be this difficult :D
So, in short, this is why you won’t see many new blogs from me these days- I’m busy working on my book!
I hope you’re all dealing with this pandemic as best as you can :)
Here are our three TROM-Casts about COVID-19:
And one last note:
I know the situation is tough for a lot of people, especially for those that don’t know how to pay for rent or food now, or for those that are at high risk of having a severe reaction to the virus, but remember not to take out your anger or frustration on your loved ones, your roommates or family. The situation is what it is, so do what you can to stay safe and sane. If you feel upset, it’s probably not your fault, or their fault.
The entire pandemic could have been handled much better globally if we did not live in a profit-driven, trade-based society. Instead of spending billions of dollars on sports stadiums and shopping centers, we could have “invested” more money in hospital beds and ventilators. We do have the resources, after all. Instead of having patents on medical devices and essential equipment, we could have open sourced and distributed this stuff more efficiently. Instead of forcing 80% or more of our population to have “non-essential” jobs, most of which are pretty useless and can already be automated, we could have “invested” in training more people to provide essential services such as medical care. Instead of leaving people scared and stressed over not being able to pay for food and housing while they’re in lockdown, we could have provided basic needs for our entire human population. We do have the resources, after all.
But the truth is, none of those things are profitable, and therefore, not worth “investing” into in this society.
There are a million more things that I want to say about this situation, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Big big thank you to Uwe and Benjamin, the two people who support me on Patreon, and to Roma and everyone else who has supported the fundraiser for my book. Your support has helped me survive the last few months and has put me into a great position to be able to work on my writing (I’m renting an apartment with Tio and we both have our own comfortable space where we can work). I was planning on getting a job in a bar or restaurant this summer to be able to continue paying for rent, but it seems like this might be out of the question now with this pandemic. Tio and I still have enough savings to pay for the next 3-4 months but after that we’ll either have to move out of here or figure something else out. If anybody else can and would like to support either me or the TROM project, we would really appreciate your help. But of course, make sure you take care of yourself first, I know that this is a tough time for many people.
Stay safe and well!
Hi Sasha,
I love your work (and the work of TIO, SEB and AARON), the way of living you choose and i am sure life will always be worth the confidence you have in it. The flow of life will carry you through all disturbances. I am living at the edge (the edge of monetary survival) for now about 5 years. Constantly reducing slavery workload (working as a high-school teacher in this broken german capitalist education system) and work more and more for free, which is indeed not working but helping people (helping to unfold their potential).
I can feel that there is an underlying universal power or law (like a physical basic force e.g. gravitation) which leads to constant unfolding of structures which are potentially inherent in the universe since beginning of time. When i am still, switched of my thoughts, just listening to the waves of the constant vibrating wholeness (which reduces me to a single knot within this endless interconnected net of knots) then sometimes i got a glimpse of how it will feel when the world is in an equilibrium.
Give and you will be given. This is an unconditional act of giving (love, time, food… whatsoever). Not exchanging things which is always a combination of giving and receiving (i am so bored with the existing system), but giving in the sense of let it go.
Let us all create a world of abundance, of trust and confidence, of collaboration, of freedom, of respect and tolerable tolerance (which means to not tolerate the intolerance…. which is by the way one of the most difficult differentiation we have to make) …. huups, i don’t want to make things boring.
To cut a long story short… Keep on going…love an peace to you (and the whole TROM-Team).
Uwe
Thank you Uwe, I appreciate your nice words :) And nice to hear that you are reducing your slavery workload and helping people more and more. I hope it’s okay there at the edge :-/. It’s a tough world we live in..
And yes, the more we give the better the world could be, we hope :) If you haven’t seen yet, we’ve also recently released a trade-free directory to showcase all kinds of projects and organizations that provide trade-free goods and services: https://www.trade-free.org/directory/
It’s an open collaborative project where anybody can submit trade-free goods/services. We hope that one day it will be a big collections of these genuine organizations/people that just want to give :)
Love and peace to you too :)