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Your health will get better

Your health will get better

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Now I am in pain. A lot of. Right side of my throat hurts like a hundred big needles got stuck there. I had a look. I see white spots. Throat ulcers very likely. I had this for about a week. I woke up so many times last night simply because of so much pain. Eating is something I hate right now because it hurts the most. Sleeping makes my throat dryer and in about 1h I wake up with tremendous pain. Talking is very uncomfortable. I want this to end.

This is me and my pain now 😀 :

Only warm tea is helping me alleviate the pain. I’ve been to the doctor. She looked for 15 seconds and said it is a virus infection and to take ibuprofen if it hurts. Now go home. Fuck them, today I have another appointment and I will make sure to insist to give me some pain killers and more explanations for my situation. I had COVID and this started after that COVID episode. I also took a lot of ibuprofen when COVID hit since I had fever for several days. I’ve read that ibuprofen can also cause such mouth ulcers. I also fucked up since I did some gargling with water and salt (usually this helps me when in such pain), but I exaggerated and put a ton of salt in the water. Hurt like a bitch.

Then I also used another spray that was for infection+pus….and that also fucking hurt. Now I bought something for canker sores and the doctor said is fine to use it. Hurts less but still…I also tried several painkillers. Nothing works.

This is me having a tear:

Man it really hurts and it is so uncomfortable. Even my ear hurts. Painful pains that last for many days, or longer, are (of course) the fucking worst. I had kidney stones and here’s a post I did about it. That was way worse, tho what I experience now it is getting closer to that experience if it keeps on lasting. I forgot about that kidney stone event. And that’s normal. And that’s my point.

It will go away.

That I know for sure. May take days or a week or so, but eventually it will go away. And this is the point of this post. You know when you are in a lot of pain and your health sucks balls and you think: fhuck, I’m gonna die! You won’t. Except in very rare cases if you have a terminal illness, in which case this article won’t help you at all 🙁 .

I remember when I was 11 or so. I had a pain over here:

(again this is still me at age 11, deal with it!).

Even now I remember how awful that pain was. I could not lift up my leg, and took months to go away. I had to learn to kick the football ball with the other leg because the right one was hurting. It is funny that I did not give up football tho, despite the pain 😁.

Several years ago I had a constant pain here:

That would not go away for 2-3 fucking months. I thought I am losing my mind it was so awful. Not that painful, but fucking constant. I thought there is no life without that pain, that it will be there forever.

But eventually it went away. Took me weeks to get rid of the ghost pain tho. It got tattooed into my brain.

I also had a skin rush on my face that period of time (as you can see in this photo 😀 ):

And hurt and was uncomfortable. Took me months to get rid of it.

We all have these moments. And it seems to me like that whenever we have them we feel like dying. I dream about the day when I won’t have that fucking pain. To then forget about it the next day I feel ok.

So this is a message for all of those who suffer in pain. Don’t worry, it will go away.

I cannot wait to read this post when I will have no more throat pain.

From Fireworks to Drones

From Fireworks to Drones

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This is a show from a few days ago from the little town I live in:

It used to be this:

So messy.

Great! It seems that the world is starting to replace fireworks shows with drone shows. No more noise pollution, smoke, waste from the burned fireworks, and so forth. Sounds much much better!

Here’s a more advanced and cool example:

But I am concerned they will use them to also display some ads, like brands and promote shit…

Oh wait, they already do it!

FUCK.

Above Sydney so that everyone can see them…and loud music….so still noise pollution. What about those batteries and components for these thousands of drones that are used for such shows? Where do they go after not working anymore? Probably land-fields…

Ok ok….I know, nothing can end up well in a trade-based society. Everything gets traded, and thus marketed. Nothing is what it seems. A drone show is not just a drone show, it is an opportunity to advertise. A book is not just a book, it is an opportunity for the author to buy a new car. A piece of software is not just a piece of software, it is a way for the developer/company to collect more data, to then transform that into currency, to then transform that into holidays, houses, and fancy shit and so on for themselves.

This is the most fundamental thing that everyone should understand about our society, that we are forced and incentivized to trade. Very few people can afford to, or are willing to do things for the sake of doing things. And of course this creates a very messed-up society when you do something in order to get something else. We did that in school where the goal was to get good grades to pass the exams. Most kinds would cheat, not learn anything, because the goal was not to learn. And so it goes for our society…the goal is not to write books, do drone shows to protect the nature, create a PDF converter or whatever. Nah….

So we should not be surprised that everything goes to shit. Pollution, waste, bad products, scammy services….

Nothing will every change unless we understand that #TradeRuinsEverything.
#tromlive
Birthdays

Birthdays

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Apparently today was my birthday. I have become 34 years old. Sounds old to me, but also uninteresting.The only time I still enjoyed celebrating my birthday was when I was 14. 20-bloody-years-ago. But after that I hated it. I don’t like to be put in the center of attention, especially for such a shallow thing. Then, why should I celebrate the fact that I get older?!

This is me when I was 14. Waiting for my friends to come for my birthday. Lots of them came..

They gave me many perfume bottles… It was fashionable in 2002.

Anyway. My parents still force me to semi-celebrate it because they buy me a cake and such. It is fine. I am ok with this. But I really hate these events overall. Weddings, birthdays, baby showers, new year, I hate them. I think it is because they are mainly a mindless and consumerist events. Why drag these into today’s world? Why don’t we celebrate the first time we discovered exoplanets? Neutrinos? The theory of evolution? These are the events we should celebrate every year.

In any case, I wanted to share some things about me that I think are mighty weird for today’s normality, now that I am saying I do not like celebrating my birthday nor do I care about that.

So. Here are some facts about me:

  • I do not celebrate anything. I do not care. But I like to have fun of course. I was/am usually the one having more fun than the rest.
  • I do not “go out”. I’ve been to bar/restaurants maybe 100 times in my entire life. I hate these places. Expensive, shallow, fake, annoying. I do not care about them. I love “going out” tho, in nature, for a walk, with the bike, for a swim, at the beach, mountain, etc..
  • I do not drink alcohol. I never did. I tried it tho. I do not like the taste or the side-effects. Actually I only drink water for the past 4 or so years because of my stomach issues.
  • I never did any drugs. But I am ok with trying some in the future. But just trying.
  • I rarely listen to music and I do not like a particular genre, tho I sometimes prefer to listen to “soundtracks” from documentaries or movies. Hans Zimmer and the like.
  • I do not watch movies. None. I cannot. I used to be a movie addict but then I discovered “reality”. Tho I watch tons of documentaries that are a lot more fun and interesting, and real, than movies.
  • I do not pay for any subscription to anything. No Netflix, Spotify, no anything like that. Except paying for the servers we have for TROM.
  • I do not use Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Tiktok or anything of the sort. And youtube I watch through Invidious. I use Friendica and Peertube tho.
  • I rarely if ever use my phone. My phone is a 2015 Samsung S7 and I see no reason to change it. It was my 2nd smartphone ever. I use it to check the weather and pay with it. That’s all. Well and for Signal to talk to my parents. Else is like a credit card with a watch and a weather app. A thick one.
  • I do not have a driving license.
  • I rarely if ever had a girlfriend. Thanks to @Sasha now I have a great one haha. I never felt the need. I was always happy with being alone. Even now, being alone is fine for me. I never mind that. I am never in need of having people around me really….
  • Speaking of that I do not like meeting people that much. I prefer avoiding that. Except when it is for TROM-friends :P. I also do not like small talk, and I am not interested in people’s stories…
  • I only lived in 2 places. I never traveled. And I am fine with that. You think the world, not feel the world anyway. However Sasha will probably take me out there in the nature world because I’d be curious to see some stuff.
  • I only eat a few types of food because of my stomach…. Chicken, eggs, potatoes, tomatoes and bread. That’s mostly it. I eat at least 2 eggs a day. I feel like I am 24% chicken by now. I used to eat lots of different foods…but my stomach can’t handle most.
  • I never ever had any job. But I worked a lot for TROM and similar projects.
  • I do not have any vices, except maybe that I buy some specific sweet things for like 2 euros every other day.
  • Video Games. I do not play them. At all. I used to when I was in school. I see no point now. Waste of time. I do like to play some “offline” games tho. Involving balls 🙂 and rackets and such.
  • Although I am from Romania and know Romanian, I really don’t like talking Romanian. It has become more difficult for me to express myself in that language. I feel like English is my main language now.
  • I hate scheduling things. I never do that. I hate calendars for that reason. My perfect day is to wake up and have no plans. And then I’ll do stuff. Because I do not lack ideas or motivation.

Ok I will add this to my Tinder profile. In the weirdos category.

But well, I like my life. I am really happy as long as I have enough money to support a basic life for myself and Sasha. Actually money is my only problem. If I had 1k Euros guaranteed a month for the rest of my life, I’d be the happiest and most engaged human out there :). Because I do not need much. I don’t want any new gadgets, go to any fucking paris-nonsense-thing, expensive shit, and such. The natural world is an amazing place to think about and admire. And the projects I am doing are my babies. I love them.

I know people who have plenty of money but have no clue what to do with themselves. That is scary to me. I am happy that at least I am not like that at all. I know what I want to do. I do not get bored or confused. So yeah….trying to make some money now to support my trade-free work and my very basic lifestyle.

Phones, clothes, houses, cars, online fame….are a scam. Happiness is a state, not an object. Chase the state, not the object(s).

As for celebrations….whatever….if you like them I am not there protesting against you. And I can be part of some, is fine but not that comfy for me. But I would not be the one initiating them. I wish humans would become a saner and smarter species and celebrations would have some bloody meaning, more than let’s buy more shit, or let’s celebrate someone’s “name”, or any crappy idea.

Ok. Bye.
My most used Linux apps. 11 in total.

My most used Linux apps. 11 in total.

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This is the list of the apps I use the most on my Linux machine.

1. Firefox.

I have multiple windows, each with multiple tabs, on different workspaces…This is what you’ll see on my computer if you were to look at it, a Firefox window or two. Inception:

I have it heavily customized and I won’t tell you how but it is quite the same as we have it default in TROMjaro. So if you are curious install TROMjaro :D.

I tried many browsers but Firefox is still my favorite as long as I keep it tweaked as I do. I see no ads, I use Libredirect to not even visit the popular websites like youtube, twitter and the like. I therefore use trade-free instances of those. Anyway, Librewolf seems to be a candidate for me in the future, but for now I’ll stick to Firefox.

2. Zettlr for my notes.

I tried so many notes apps, but I need one that can sort my notes in folders and sub-folders that are easily accessible. Plus support basic text formatting/lists + code. Zettlr supports Markdown and a WSYIWYG editor for it so all looks neat.

The fact that I can add the type of code, is useful because it automatically uses the proper colors for it, making it easy to understand it. Since it saves everything as individual markdown documents then it is easy to backup and move to another Notes app if needed.

3. Syncthing to file share.

Because it is so easy to use, and is p2p. So no limitation in terms of how much you can share and with whom. I share files with my friends like this, and it is so fast. The only difficult part is setting up the Send and Receive folders between you and your friends, mostly because you may get confused by that. The way I do it is to create a Sync folder. There I make another with the name of the friend: Sasha. And then inside this 2 more: Send and Receive. I share them both with Sasha and the Receive is set as “receive only”, the other one as “send only”. DONE. Now copy the files into the Sasha-Send when you share with her, and look in Sasha-Receive when you get files from her. Easy and reliable.

4. Flameshot for screenshots.

I screenshot a lot. To showcase bugs with the software, or for posts like this, and so on. I cannot find anything close to Flameshot. Press one keyboard key then drag the area you want to screenshot.

And you also have access to quick tools for blurring parts of the image, add arrows, and more. Then CTRL + S to save or CTRL + C to copy it. Done! Cannot live without this app.

5. Thunderbird for email.

If you customize it a bit can look sleek. I absolutely love and need the “open in new tab” feature because many times I want emails to be stored in tabs so I can reply later. I cannot do email without this feature.

6. KeePassXC for passwords.

1 file with all of my passwords. Encrypted with a master password. Stored locally. Perfect. KeePassXC simply works…stores all of my passwords.

If I lose this file I do not know any passwords. But is fine I have it backed-up in multiple locations. The integration with Firefox is decent and at times fails. So is not ideal when you want to save new passwords when you register on some websites….but is fine….

7. Transmission Torrent for torrenting.

It does the job. Not too simple, not too complex. Works. Reliable.

I use it nonstop. I seed some 2k torrents. Good for me!

8. EasyStroke for mouse gestures.

I have a mouse with 18 buttons. I use them all. But I also use global mouse gestures and it makes things so much easier. People who do not use this, have no idea what they are missing :D.

9. SMPlayer as the video player.

The default SMPlayer looks like crap. But installing some skins and tweaking it a bit and looks like this:

Everything I throw at it, it plays. You can tweak the seekbar as you want (easily), and setup it any way you want. Has hardware acceleration, and a ton of features. I have been using it for so many years and I tried so many other video players. For me nothing beats SMPlayer.

10. Nuclear for music.

Such an amazing project. Plays any song from lots of sources. All trade-free.

Easily make playlists even download any song you want. You can even use it as your local music player.

11. Imagine for image optimization.

Out of all image optimization tools nothing beats Imagine. Not very well known but damn good. Easy to use and reduces the size of photos while keeping the quality. The best of any I have tested, by a lot!

The other notable mentions are: Blanket because I need some background sounds when I sleep… :D, Element + Signal as my chats; I use Gnome Boxes to test TROMjaro or other distros, and Meld to check between versions of files; I use Shotwell for my photo albums, Inkscape and Krita for image editing, and Kdenlive for video editing. Lastly, Private Internet Access is my default VPN, Vorta + Timeshift is the way I backup my files, and Peek helps me video record my desktop when I need to make a short video.

That’s it! 🙂 If you want, tell me what are your top apps that you use. I’d be curious to try them out.
My/Our plan for this year

My/Our plan for this year

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I and Sasha. I am 1.8 meter tall, she is a meter and a half. She is quite short, but I really like that. Together we are 3.3 meters tall.

Not that it matters but we are also more than that. We want to reach higher and higher. I spent the past decade fighting in the online world with this society. Trying to make people aware of the fuckery of this world, but also showcase how to perhaps think differently about this society, through the perspective of trade. Then how we can do awesome things via this trade-free approach. She spent that time traveling and learning a lot about the world, the offline one. And writing about it on her very interesting blog. She gathered so much knowledge that she also wrote a 300+ pages book about….the world basically. And again how to approach it differently.

So she has a massive book ready to be published (currently 2 people are proofreading it), and I have tons of active projects (tromsite.com plus tromsite.com/tools) and have finished 2 hours out of 4, for the TROM II documentary that can be a really interesting one. Cannot wait to release it.

So, we are very active. As much as we can.

We are also financially fucked because in this society it does not matter if you are engaged and try to be informed, and be a good human overall. It does not matter if you want to do, and do good things that are valuable for hundreds or thousands of others. Does not. And we are very aware of that.

The focus is always how to be a better trader. Chase the trades!

But we can’t give up! And we try not to!

Because we have so little money and we live with my parents, we can’t continue not to make any money. The donations for TROM are dropping and dropping for the past many years. So we decided to take the matter into our hands and try to trade ourselves a bit in order to support these projects of ours, together with the help we still get from donations.

So this is what we are doing and we hope to “succeed”:

UNO – I have launched a new project: WebApe. I am trying to make websites for money. I can build pretty much any sort of website (this is my “skill”) and I have a decade plus of experience with that. I charge monthly but provide a lot.

If I manage to get some 10-15 websites then we are saved! I will make enough to support both of us. Because we need very little. We spend less than 300 Euros on food a month. We don’t eat out ever, we do not use drugs or have other bad habits :D. So if we can get some 1k Euros a month then we should be fine.

So far, thanks to @Alexio who is a long time TROM friend, I managed to get 3 long term projects. And my “mission” for these next months is to get more.

DUO – Due!? I don’t know. On top of this we are trying to work in cleaning in weekends or any other “gigs”. The retarded part is that @Sasha is willing to get a summer job here, but no one can employ her because she does not have the right papers. She is from USA, married with me (having a Spanish residency), but she cannot get the papers because I (the husband – I hate these words) am poor. I need to make over 1k a month for Spain to allow he to work…. So we do not have money, and the gov in Spain is like “then she cannot work”….but if she worked we would have the money….

This world is so retarded. So we are trying to make money but it is difficult as you can see….

TRES – WebApe + summer gigs + donations. Donations. They are super important. If we can get at least some 300 Euros or so a month, and with our savings (around 2k now) we can survive till February when Sasha can get the papers. Here’s another retardation: so Sasha cannot get the papers because I am poor. She cannot work to make us not poor, because she has no papers. BUUUUT if she can manage to survive in Spain for 3 years WITHOUT leaving Spain, she can get the papers!!! haHahA. Stay here! But you cannot work! If you want papers, you need to have money. But you cannot work here to make money. Also cannot leave if you want the papers. This is me jumping very high:

If you think that this photo-insertion makes no sense now, it is the same with this system. Makes no fucking sense.

Anyway, if we know that she can get the papers in February when she will have completed the 3-years-stay-without-money-in-spain, she can then work to make some money….

Basically we need to be able to support each other until February/March so then to be able to try and keep on supporting each other….

My hope is that I can make enough websites to support us, so that then I can reach a point when I only manage these websites and have enough time for TROM. So that I can finish that documentary, so that I can scream more, louder and better.

Also at the end of this year I will have to make a donation campaign to help me pay for all TROM servers + backups. That’s around 1k Euros a year. Not that much considering that we provide so many tools and content.

So TROM donations + WebApe + summer gigs + a yearly campaign for the server/backups + getting Sasha’s “permit” to live and work in Spain in February, is what we need to be able to “make it” in this trade bullshit game. If we do not see any drop in donations we can make it. We try folks. It is difficult. We should not be forced to do any of this. We were already engaged and active and doing good things….but our situation is the perfect proof to support our work, because it proves that this trade-based society is the root of most problems and fucks things up.

We are at war with this society. And we know that.

Stay curious and furious!

Posting from Friendica to WordPress!!

Posting from Friendica to WordPress!!

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I just tested it and posting from Friendica to my WordPress blog seems to work now. This is amazing and it is yet another set of amazing features Friendica has. My blog is my own personal place. My home. My thing.

But Friendica has become like a backyard with neighbors. A place where I can keep in touch with others, with the news, and so forth. But also a place where I can share my thoughts in seconds. No need to visit my blog, log in, and create a new post. It is a lot easier on Friendica. Coupled with the fact that I can add inline media on Friendica, and it makes it easy to create simple posts. I can have some basic text editing such as: bold, italic, underline. And I can even add markdown

Links are of course a thing, and quotes are handy:

Like so

Our Friendica instance has custom designed themes so that it makes it look more modern and easy to navigate. I am using the Dark Purple one:

Ok. So how do you post form Friendica to WordPress?

Go to your Friendica Settings – Social Networks

Then add your WordPress URL and the /xmlrpc.php after it. Add your user and password and click save.

Then, when you make a post, click the Permissions tab and select to post on WordPress:

You can even select to auto-post on WordPress by default via the same Friendica Settings – Social Networks setting.

In any case this is so awesome! Thanks to the Friendica developers. I keep on Saying Friendica is super underrated.

Updates: TROM II, moving, making money, etc

Updates: TROM II, moving, making money, etc

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I am very active on the fediverse but when it comes to more important posts I will still use my blog for that.

Because I do not have money I will have to pause the work on TROM II and try to make some money.

So.

TROM II is going very well. I made 2 parts already, a bit over 2h long combined. But I will have to add some 20 minutes to each + very likely make 2 more parts. Everything is setup and ready to go.

This is the first part in the editing program:

What is in red I have to add to it still. First part is about us and how the environment shaped us as humans. It explains the role of culture, movies, music, school, and so forth. But also the scientific evolution of the universe and the creatures on this planet.

Second part:

Again that red thing needs to be added to the documentary. Here we talk about the evolution of human societies and with the focus on trade. We talk about our personal situations with university, money, jobs, and so forth. It is what introduces the viewers to what trade is and how it is the core of our society.

Third and fourth parts (in the making):

Left is the third part, right is the forth. They are kinda done in terms of the storyline. I had to cu through around 30-35 hours of footage and bring it down to this. The third part is about detailing what problems we have in the world today, from biodiversity loss to climate change or waste. And how trade is to blame for that. Fourth part is about solutions and a new way of looking at all of these. How to move beyond this awful society.

Now I’d say there will be 4 parts, each around 1 hour 20 minutes long. So….it will still be a long documentary. It is a different approach that I am taking with this one. I am making it more personal, but it is still packed with facts and hard science.

I think it will take me some 2-3 weeks to merge the leftovers into the first 2 parts so I am fully done with them. However to finish the 3rd and 4th parts it can take me some 3-4 months. Maybe less idk.

This being said.

Here is the current situation. I have around 1.800 Euros. All of my money. The monthly donations for TROM are at about 350 or so Euros a month. I and Sasha live with my parents and my sister in spain, in a rented house. Our spendings here are around 900-1.000 euros a month in bills and rent. I and Sasha spend some 300 euros or less on food a month, and contribute some 200 euros to the monthly expenses. We can’t contribute more. I also pay some 60 euros a month for the servers and backups. In total we try to survive with 500 euros a month, 2 people.

My parents worked in Spain for some 15 years now and this year they are forced to retire. My mother gets some 300 euros a month in retirement money, my father needs to see….but he worked with shitty contracts in spain (being forced to do so), and his 15 years of work only count as 6 for example…both of them try to save and then in November go back to Romania for good and try to survive there if they can.

My sister is going to move to another rented apartment here in the same town.

I and Sasha?

That’s the dilemma. We cannot support ourselves right now. We would need at least 1.000 Euros a month to survive on our own.

My parents and my sister will have to do a lot of gymnastics when they move because of stuff…and we also have stuff, tho not as much. We will also help them move to Romania so either way we will go there in the winter.

So what to do?

We won’t be homeless of course since we can go to Romania and live with my parents. I have a small room there. But for me to finish the documentary I need to be relaxed and focused on it. Romania is not that sort of environment for me. We also have some stuff so where can we put that!?

It is very tricky and the following months will be very busy for us.

My plan.

Finish with the 1st and 2nd parts of TROM II. Add those leftover bits. After that is done (hopefully not more than 2-3 weeks) pause the documentary. I hate this, and I want to work on it and finish it, but I have no better alternative.

As soon as I finish with those 2 parts, I will start the “MAKE MONEY” operation. I need to. There is no way around this. People’s donations are amazing and super helpful but nowhere near enough to support myself. Donations are not working unfortunately. With the money we have now I hope to be able to support us for 4 or so more months. Until August. If there will be more donations that would be amazing, but I can not rely on this at all.

So I will focus on making money. I was never good at this but I need to try. I have some ideas. We will also try to sell our stuff, whatever we have. We have a TROMjaro tablet, a heater, a not-very-functional electric scooter 😀 and so forth.

So from at least June on, we are focused on making money. If a miracle happens and we have enough money by October, then we can rent a place here and move and I can continue the work on TROM II. But likely that won’t happen, not so fast at least. So likely we will end up in Romania and try to make money somehow. Maybe I can still work on TROM II this year, but we shall see.

I will try to work in cleaning this summer, also will release a website for my webdesign-money-making plan, so I can try and make websites; a TROM friend may also help me find a job in some IT company….not that excited about that tbh :D.

No worries, TROM and TROM II are happening and being supported.

TROM II will be finished. But I want to make it very well and not rush with it. The info there is relevant for the many years to come, maybe centuries. As for our websites and projects they will continue uninterrupted. New TROMjaro releases and a few improvements and fixes as usual, trom.tf services will be maintained; VideoNeat will be updated; we may even do some TROMcasts if I have the time. And so on.

It is unfortunate but this post is not about complaining. I did a lot of that and now I need to take care of myself in order to take care of these projects. It is me and a few wonderful people who support these projects financially or volunteering their time. It is very hard. But if it wasn’t, then we might have been wrong about bitching how bad this society is. This is, in fact, a proof of how fucked up this society is, where you can’t even focus on doing good things. You have to trade yourself all the time.

We are the pioneers.

We are doing trade-free projects and try to make humans aware of how fucked up this society is, while doing so from inside the monster itself. We face a lot of hurdles. We struggle. But whoever is against this society, has to face those. Big changes come on a horse called “Suffering”. And this horse has a long journey ahead. And it gets tired, and depressed, and scared at times. But we need this horse to go where we want to reach.

Not long ago we met with this human who was perhaps quite normal. But because “we”, the ones who have this (let’s say) TROM mentality were outnumbering the human, the human started to see what we talked about as normal. We were the normality. I felt like the world flipped. Suddenly the other side was smaller, and ours was bigger. And of course we agreed that is fucked up to force people to slave for even their basic needs, all of their lives; of course we need to provide trade-free stuff for people. Of course trade-free makes sense and is such an important approach. Of course. But we had to bleed to reach that point, that situation. If there will be more of us talking about these things, and doing the things we do at TROM, then that could become normality, at least in pockets and groups. And that has a tremendous power because what we talk about is backed up by facts, so when it becomes normal, it also becomes stronger and stronger.

Don’t worry. Really.

I will feel a lot better if I could build and manage some 10-15 websites and get paid monthly and make enough to have a good life on this planet and support TROM, than seeing a handful of people trying so hard to support TROM and me financially. And having to complain that I have no money all the time. I’d feel so good if I could sustain myself and TROM financially. I have some plans as I said and I will put them into practice very soon. We will see how this goes.

Of course it would be amazing if I would get enough support for the tons of work I am doing on these projects. I am busy enough with these. And it worked for a few years and who knows in the future, if TROM becomes more known, may work again. But for now I am beating a dead horse and the poor horse can’t go anywhere, if I were to try and rely fully on donations.

I keep everyone posted on the Fediverse and of course, if anyone wants to still donate this is the place to do so https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ but don’t sweat over it. In the long term I have to anyway make money somehow. Because projects like TROM may never get enough donations anyway. We are too odd of a project for that :).

Ok friends. Will try to finish the first two parts of the documentary. And as soon as I can get back to work on it I will. We could even release this year, if not for sure the next year.

Cheers!

Why I don’t post on my website again?

Why I don’t post on my website again?

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I started in 2005 or so with a website. In Romanian. My blog. My own place where I could write my thoughts. It was easy thanks to WordPress. No need to code anything. Just write and add some images/videos. Great!

Having your own digital space where you an share your thoughts publicly is a fantastic thing. And something I personally really need because I have too many thoughts inside my skull. But after I made TROM documentary in 2011 I felt like I burned myself down a bit with such a long documentary. I expressed myself via the documentary in quite detail. So I stopped writing on my website that often. I then started TVP Magazine and I was writing books basically. More detailed, and now I could design them a lot better, enhancing the message. Did that for a few years.

Currently I have a ton of projects to manage and I work again on a big documentary, the sequel to TROM. I used to also write books for TROM and that was my way to express myself in extraordinary detail. However since I work on TROM II for the past 1-2 years and I have some 30 projects under my belt, I was unable to write books, and yet I still want to express myself form time to time

I thought this website is the perfect place. It is a simple website and to write here is easy-peasy. And yet I rarely make blog posts here. Why?

Because of the “social network” effect. Since we released our Friendica instance I find myself using that a lot. There are two main advantages to it that makes me want to post there instead of here:

  1. I use my account to follow a LOT of stuff. People, Sub Reddits, websites, projects, youtube channels, etc.. The nature of Friendca makes it a perfect social network where you can follow and connect with the world. Facebook is shit compared to Friendica, even if it was trade-free. Speaking about that there are no ads on Friendica (of course), so it is a clean and neat place to be on. I keep in touch with people there, follow, so for me it is the website I visit the most.
  2. Friendica allows you to create big posts and add images/videos inline. So posts look like blog posts. Since I am already on Friendica all day, it is so easy to click the “post” button and quickly make a post. Plus I can add them to a “blogs” category.

So then why would I choose to open my website, log in, then create a new post there and all that!? When I can do it much quicker on Friendica….and there there are the people I know who will react/share my post. Easier than via my website.

I wrote several blog posts on Friendica both for my account and TROM’s. To me the content is the king, so I’d rather have a fast way of expressing myself rather than go through some hoops and loops to do that. Books are different. They take months to finish so it makes sense to properly design them and such. But quick blog posts should be quick and easy to make.

Now….having a personal blog is better in the sense that people know it by name and can visit it. On Friendica they need to know my “handle” – tio@social.trom.tf. Then have a Fediverse account to connect with me. Or know my profile url: https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio

tiotrom.com is much easier to remember. Plus on my blog I am limitless in what I can do and post….I can have a page with my photo gallery, video gallery, whatever….and posts can have sliders, columns, you name it!

So if I ever want to post something more substantial and complex, I will use my website. Then the post will be automatically shared on my Friendica profile. But for shorter posts (most of them) I will use Friendica.

The Best of Both Worlds.

Friendica has an addon that let’s you post from Friendica to WordPress automatically. That’s amazing because it means I can use Friendica to post (which is easier and more handy as I explained) and then also have those posts here on my website. The problem is that the addon does not work anymore….I submitted the bug to the developers. If that would work again, then that’d be the perfect solution.

I can also do the opposite. And I actually do. I can post here and then the post is sent to my Friendica as a native post. So it looks like I posted on Friendica too. And whoever comments on that post on Friendica, I can see their comments on my blog post too. So awesome! But it is still easier for me to post via Friendica than via my website…

The best is that there are options to connect the two, and in time I will improve on that 🙂 .

So if you wanna see my Friendica posts here are the ways:

  1. All of my posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio
  2. My blog posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/tio/status?category=blogs
  3. TROM’s posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/trom
  4. TROM’s blog posts at https://social.trom.tf/profile/trom/status?category=blogs

Broke.

Broke.

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This blog post will not have any images. I like adding images, but I feel like I only need words right now ;).

I and Sasha have 900 Euros in total. That’s it. Hopefully we will get back some money from the apartment deposit, but probably it will be around 100 Euros after paying the remaining bills. Perhaps I can get 100 or so Euros from Patreon too. But yah, I can finally say I am broke. I threatened everyone about that for a few years now, haha, and now it finally happened.

I write from the same house where I made the second version of TROM documentary back in 2012. And from the same room where I built TVP Magazine, VideoNeat, and a few other projects. We made the room neat, as much as we could. I took my hand-made desk from the other place, and my galaxies. I printed 8 A4 pages with some of the most iconic space-stuff, back in 2012 when TVP donated me a printer to print a non-disclosure document…yah. Well. Retarded, but thank you for the printer. I have no clue why people still use printers… So back in 2012 (wondering about the same thing), I used all of the ink to print these amazing space-stuff-things. Some of the first exoplanets ever captured on camera, the farthest galaxy ever photographed (that was back in 2012 but still fuck-amazing): our sun, a few other galaxies and clusters, and the cosmic microwave background. I framed them into one mega frame, and hanged them on the wall behind my monitor so I can face it anytime and remind myself of my story – the one of a human being. To diffuse all of the human-invented problems that could cause me a lot of scars. Money problems mainly, and some stupid societal issues here and there, that condiment the shitty life of a citizen.

So here I am, same place, same stuff. Let me remind myself:

From 2007 or so I kept on writing on my romanian blog about all kinds of important subjects: from religion to money, abundance to technology, mysteries to science. I loved to let my brain explore the world through this digital vessel. There was no Facebook or any such centralized place online – it was a wild wild west kinda. You went there and didn’t know where there was, what was there, how to even reach somewhere. So you went about and around, searching and poking all kinds of websites. It was fun. Today it is all about 5 or so websites (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, TikTok and the like). A managed online life, by ads companies. It is the difference between my childhood and today’s childhood. Back in my days, all kids were going out. No phones, nothing like that. We interacted with each other, climbed trees, made tree houses, played football or any other game, laughed, ran, biked, it was an endless stream of adventures. Some newer than others. Today, from what I can tell, everything is organized: here is the park for children, here is a gym for adults, a cafeteria for the rest. Kids go for lessons: guitar lessons, football lessons, tennis lessons, ….. Not such thing in my childhood years. We played and had fun. The Internet today is like the childhood of today: a few places, all organized, all tasteless. No adventure, no fun.

So yah, from 2007 on I was poking around the Internet having fun, and writing a lot about the world. I was broke as fuck. Had 0 money. Dependent on my family? I was. Then made TROM documentary, still broke. And remade it; still broke. Then collaborated with TVP and created their online magazine for like 8 months – still broke. I was lucky as fuck when we made a TVP Magazine Indiegogo campaign and we raised over 20.000 Euros. That’s insane that I think about it. It was make or break for me. If we didn’t raise the entire amount, all money would have been returned. I did it this way because I was desperate. I was dragged into a very unpleasant situation living with my family for the past years, mooching on their resources. They were also putting a pressure on me to “do something” – and by that they meant, to have a job; and by that they meant to make some money. So I was like: either I raise all the money and give myself 1 year trial (1k Euros a month for a year), or idk….I’ll just go out and walk until I cannot walk anymore. That’s how I felt. Just go out, walk and walk and walk on this planet until I collapse and I can’t walk anymore. What can I do!?

Side-note: the money for TVP Magazine was for me and Ray who proofread and reviewed all issues, that’s why it was just enough for myself to live for one year with 1k Euros a month.

Ok. So.

2013, the magic year. I finally made it. Had a good ‘salary’ for at least 1 year. Go Tio! Go! And I went! From 2013 to 2016 I managed to get financial support enough to have a good life. I was paying for my own shit. No more dependence on my family. Damn it felt so good. All of that stress was out of the window. From 2014 to 2016 I even managed to live in my own apartment (rented of course), and it felt so cozy and relaxing. I was working like nuts for TVP Magazine and we released one big issue every month. I kept my promise.

Then it declined.

From 2016 on, the donations went down and down. It coincided with me and TVP splitting apart and the discontinuation of the TVP Magazine. But somehow I still had enough to pay for my own shit. In 2016 I moved back with my parents because I was making less than I could afford to live on my own. But since I could still contribute financially to the house’s spendings, I was all fine. I was getting less and less financial support to the point of making it difficult to even contribute to those spendings. But at least I had some money to do so.

Then it was better, but it still declined.

In 2019 we had that TROM meeting and a bunch of people came here to meet me, and meet with each other. We ended up moving together (Me, Sasha, and Aaron). Together we could pay for a nice apartment in the same town. It was fun, relaxing, great. Aaron left after one year, but he kept on supporting me and Sasha like crazy. Honestly the guy is too nice to exist in this society. But me and Sasha were unable to keep ourselves afloat.

Rent: 450 Euros. Electricity over 100. Water + Waste, 30. Internet 75. Servers 50. That’s some 700+ Euros on bills. Then we have to eat. We managed to eat with around 250 Euros a month, which I consider reasonable. We don’t buy much, and nothing fancy. Of course no eating out – that’s stupid, wasteful, super expensive, and stressful. We make some really great pizzas at home for like 5 times less the costs. 1k Euros for 2 people to live in Spain is super low. It’s way bellow the poverty line. But we don’t have a car or other such things – we have no debt and no consumerist values. We just need our basic needs: a comfy shelter with a basic cooking facility, toilet, bed and all that. Basic. An internet connection and hot water. And we can buy some fruits, vegetables, and some meet for myself 😀 (sorry), and that’s all. But it was a very shaky situation. We were sure we will go broke last year, but Roma, Aaron, Shas, and some other close TROM friends saved our asses with big donations.

We knew it was over.

We can’t have several Aarons or Romas or Sebs or Shass or others who helped so much, working their asses off, slaving themselves, to then donate thousands of euros to us. This is insane and unsustainable. So I told Aaron and others to fuck-off 😀 and not donate anymore. Keep the money for themselves. They need that to survive and TROM also needs them. And Aaron is insane-kind and sacrificed his life I’d say, to pull us out of misery lately. He should stop doing that and take care of himself and if possible keep on TROMing because he is so amazing at what he is doing for TROM.

US saved us for a few months. Funny enough. US sent some “stimulus” money because of this COVID situation, to its tribe members, and since Sasha is one of them, we got some 2k Euros from them. It allowed us to prolong the suffering haha.

We. Are. Busy. With. Relevant. Stuff.

You see, both I and Sasha work on some long projects that suck all of our time. Sasha is writing a book about her life that is also tied with these TROM things we talk about – from what I’ve read so far here and there, the book will be super awesome. It may have the potential to reach many new minds. She traveled around the world for the past 13+ years and her stories and what she learned from all of this, coalesce into a great and awesome pie of information. So she needs a lot of time to write it, to compile all of those years and more (she also writes about her childhood). And then is I. I work on a second part of TROM documentary. Like a 10 year celebration. At least that’s what I tried to do. I made a campaign to see if I can get enough support to work on it for the entire 2021, but I only raised some 30% and that’ mainly because of Aaron’s and Roma’s donations….

So yah, both I and Sasha were busy as fuck with these things, not to mention that I am also managing a lot of other projects and in the meantime I released a new one that requires a lot of my attention.

I never stopped working.

If you could look at the donations that TROM received since 2013 to now, they go up till 2016, then go down and down and down, sharply. Right now I may get around 100-200 Euros (maybe) overall, a month. Which is barely enough to buy some food. But if you look for the same period of time at my work and even other people’s work (involvement) for TROM, you will see a rise. A continuous rise. Podcasts, new books, new videos, new amazing tools….all that had no correlations to the support we were getting.

Anyways.

Bottom line is, I am here now, broke. Finally. My nightmare came true. I always feared this will happen and it is here. What am I gonna do now? I have no idea. I cannot see myself having a job. I simply cannot. I put so much effort into TROM and had so many plans….to make the TROM II documentary, to write several amazing and important books about the human behavior, about what science is, about technology and more. To create more trade-free tools….To…

So if I am forced to have a job to make money, it would mean to cut 90% of my work on TROM and by that I also mean to cut 90% of my brain. And I will end up either killing myself or killing someone else at my work place since I am 100% sure you’ll get enslaved in any job out there. I know how to make super detailed books about complex subjects, I know how to make podcasts, I know how to make videos and documentaries, I know how to make a plethora of projects and manage them, I know how to maintain a Linux distribution….I know how to make websites that are (I think) unique and interesting. I know a bunch of things and I do a lot. But I do not know how to make money since I was never interested in that. And that means, I do not know how to survive in this society unfortunately for my own sake. What would have happened if my family or the few people who have donated so far, didn’t exist? I perhaps would have decided to either steal money to support my work (which is ironic thinking about what TROM is), or killed myself. I know this sounds too dramatic, but I’ve always had that in my head: you can always choose not to play this stupid game anymore, by ending your own life. That’s the only escape it seems. Think about how harsh this sounds, and how true it is.

Keep this in mind:

I, a human being on this planet, am super curious how this society works, where are the problems coming from, what are the solutions to these. I am also super curious about how the world works: humans, atoms, whales, computers, and so forth. And I spent 15+ years trying to educate myself about these, and to inform others about them. But I could only do this because a few people helped me stay afloat in this society. Else, I had 0 chances. The society helps you not at all to be an informed human being. It only wants you to work work work. Mostly mindless jobs. Now I am broke so normally I will have to get a job to survive in this society. Like to work in say marketing, sell stuff, be a charlatan and the like. What “good” jobs are out there? Doctors that only “save” people who pay? Mechanics who only repair the broken stuff of those who can afford to fix them? Scientists who are poorly paid and work mostly for for-profit companies, helping them destroy lives and the environment? Honestly, think about it, if I were to say “Ok Tio, we accept a job now! Shut the fuck up and do it!” – then what jobs can I do? Probably some that are pushing this trade based society further. So making things worse in this society.

So:

I am basically forced now to not care about this society and stop be curious, and stop informing others and create educational content and tools, and stop create free services for others. STOP! Stop that, and focus on doing something mindless that in turn creates more waste and slavery.

Am I insane, or the rest of the world!?

Even I get this guilt feeling from time to time when I see myself so moneyless – as if I am not worth anything in this society. I am a lazy, not deserving to live, human being. One that does nothing! But then I look at the stuff I’ve been doing and the stuff I am doing, and the stuff I want to do. And it is a TON. There are people who “make it” in this world by doing just one of the things I am doing, like say a podcast, or write books, or provide services to others like trom.tf does…. The difference between them and myself, is that myself says “All that I do is free for everyone”, and them say “All that we do is not free, so pay you fucking cunt!”. Who is the good human being here!? manyfacepalms.

Should I still play this game?

This is a serious question. It is always going to be a struggle to keep myself afloat while trying to focus on this TROM project. In other words: to keep myself a human being who does important (in my view) projects, I would have to put up with this fucked up trade society till the day I’ll get old and die, to trade myself somehow to it, to keep myself a human. But that trade is going to destroy me. So what should I do? I don’t know. There is one hope and one comforting thought.

The hope:

Sasha. Sasha always found ways to trade herself in this society in a way that maximizes your time as a human on this planet. Trade a little, to be able to free yourself from this shithole. She may come up with a plan about how we can make it in this society. At least I am not alone now. I fight with Sasha and she fights with me. We also have a little hope in the book she will publish, to both attract new minds towards projects like TROM (and who knows, maybe new financial help), but she will also sell the hard copy of the book (the digital will be free), and what if we get lucky and it sells very well and we can support ourselves out of that? This is like the lottery, at least I can dream about that haha. The book is important as it is, and if it sells is not important. But of course, would be fantastic if that would pull us out of this misery. So lets see….with Sasha by my side I feel less concerned about making it in this society.

The thought:

In a weird way, but understandable, my fucked up situation makes me more relaxed at times since it is the perfect proof that this society is the way I have described it. I need no statistics, documentaries or documents, group of scientists or whatever to prove to me that this society is 100% fucked up. Like seriously retarded. The fact that I, Tio the human, who decides to dedicate its life to understand how this society and the world work, and how to fix them, and inform others about all of this, and publish lots of content for free and create lots of other free services, the fact that this Tio human, I, cannot even survive in this society by doing these….it is 100% proof to me that we live in the most fucked up society. And it is funny that so many scream how climate change is fucking us over, corruption destroys our ways of governing, plastic is chocking the planet, destruction, slavery, bla bla bla. Yet the same people support a system that creates mindless humans who have 0 time trying to understand these problems and -0 to do anything about them.

How the fuck can we change any fucking thing in this society if people like me get so raped by this society that it makes it impossible to give a fuck about it in the end.

So perhaps the fact that my life is a living proof to me that this society is indeed as fucked up as I describe it, makes me want to fight it even more. To give it the middle finger and survive despite all the shit it throws at me, and continue (despite the odds) to create awesome and important trade-free stuff: books, services, videos, podcasts, documentaries, and so forth. I also understand why projects like TROM get so little attention, because I can see what gets attention: retarded content. If TROM was popular (and thus more financial support), then I would be concerned….is TROM also retarded!? 😀

Fuck.You.Society.

Last thoughts:

My family is forced to trade in this society, like 3-4 billion other humans who are employed slaves. They are entangled with their jobs and I understand that. If I refuse to trade but stay in their house and cannot contribute to the trades (bills and stuff) it will put them in a very uncomfortable situation and it will create tensions between us. That’s for sure and I’ve experienced that before. I totally understand that. And I do not know what to do about it. So if they want to throw me into the streets, I’ll go and live there, but I will not have a job because that’s a literal death trap to me. They are very helpful and for sure they’ll never do that, but there will be tensions, and we will get stressed. In the end, is the society who fucks all of us in the ass, and we end up screaming at each other. But is little for any of us to do. What can my family do? Say “Yeah is the society’s fault for the situation!”, and then go next morning to their job, trade their time and energy, and through that support me who doesn’t trade!?

Anyways.

I do not have answers right now about what I am going to do. I have many questions tho. We have money for food for like 3 or so months. I will try to go work with my family in cleaning in weekends if they need my help, since that’s the only form of a job I perhaps could do – to do something physical, like cleaning houses, for 2 or so days a week. But even that is perhaps not available for me since there is a scarcity of jobs here.

I will try to not let this society crush me, but I am telling you it is hard. I feel very sad and angry at all of this.

I do not want to become a burden for my family.
But I did not ask to be born in a fucked up society.

UPDATE: I received a 2.000 Euros donation a day after this blog post. This saves our asses for the next few months. I cannot believe… Thank you Tara so much! I do not know you, but donating so much money is simply crazy. Thank you again!
yes.no.yes.no.yes.no. ? !

yes.no.yes.no.yes.no. ? !

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For the past several months I have fluctuated between excitement to do this or that, and total lack of any excitement. Happy and motivated, to then being depressed and demotivated. But I like to try and understand myself, so I always use me as the rat I am experimenting on.

I’ve been through such moments all of my life, and I don’t think it is unusual considering the work I’m doing: researching the ugly face of this world, and then (at times) finding the nice face of the world here and there. So my brain is like “Jeez the world sucks balls. Really bad. And is nothing we can do about it. We are doomed”. Then at times is like “Oh look, nice people and projects. How nice. Flowers and bunnies and all of that.”. And these get mixed in my brain at times. On top of that I always had to worry about money…will I have enough for the next months!?

But lately I am a lot more “yes.no.yes.no.yes.no”. Like a bunch of waves in a storm. Why?

At times I get excited about TROM II and discuss with the people around me about it, and ideas of how to make it more interesting and such, to then, in a few days time, to be like “bleah…I don’t like any of these ideas…I don’t want to make TROM II”. And it goes on and on for months, not making much progress with it. Again, why-why? I think I know why.

 

2000-2005
2000-2005

From mind to notebook

This trade-based, zombie-full, and retarded-graded society always stressed me out. But once I started to have a notebook (journal) - pen and paper - I got more relaxed. I could express myself. Write about the idiocracy. Felt good.

2005-2009
2005-2009

From notebook to blog

Then I decided to write digitally.

Back in 2005 or so, when I was starting my romanian blog, it felt like I came across a big pile of fresh air. It was me, my computer, usually late at night, writing about the stuff I wanted to write. I felt like I was alone on a planet, beaming my thoughts to other planets. Not many listeners, not many reactions. But I liked that. Because all I wanted was to say some stuff. That's all. After a few years it became a bit busier and I didn't like it that much. People voicing their opinions to your opinion, in your own home (your website) can become annoying. But hey, there is a lot to learn at times, from this minds from other planets.

My thoughts were no only mine, hidden in an old notebook in my room, they were out there for all to see. I retired my notebook.

2009-2012
2009-2012

From blog to documentary

After a few years I felt like I can express my thoughts better in english and in a video format. I was watching too much EN stuff, but I could not write very well, so it help that I could cut segments from videos and make some content that would mirror my thoughts. Like a DJ, I was remixing stuff. So I made TROM Documentary with videos from other documentaries, lectures or other videos, plus a badly written EN script (from a grammar perspective). I remade TROM with a proofread script a year later. I was happy, but not in the mood anymore to write on my romanian blog. I was leaving that behind. Didn't consider it relevant anymore, same way I stopped writing in my notebook once I started my blog.

I tried however to still write in romanian on that blog, but I realized it is not happening. Almost like being 15 trying to jerk off on 70s playboy magazines. I needed new adventures :)). It's not working!

2013-2018
2013-2018

From documentary to books

Making a 14h documentary was a great way of expressing my thoughts. But now I had even more thoughts. I wanted to do proper research, to source what I was writing about, to move from writing articles to writing books. To do "serious" work. And so I created a lot of books, very detailed, very important. A fuck-ton of work. Writing them, designing them. I got better at writing in EN. But not that great at speaking in EN since I could not practice with anyone. I was behind the screen, typing words. That's me.

In this time I tried to go back on the Memory Lane and make some videos based on the books I wrote. That documentary-lane...I tried a lot. A lot. We recorded, and recorded, and recorded. And we released 2-3 videos, and that's it. I felt again like that 15-year-old jerky. Not working anymore. Doesn't excite me anymore to make videos...I made a huge one, and I put a lot of work into it....now I was in the book-mood.

2018-present
2018-present

From books to in-action

Since 2005 I've been broadcasting my thoughts indirectly. But in 2018'sh I started to meet people who were very aware of my work. Meet them in person. We also started TROM-Cast. Us. Live. Speaking directly to each other, and to the other planets. My spoken EN got a lot better.

Until then I felt like a runner who trains for a competition. Year by year, accumulating knowledge and skills. 2019 was the year I could run. Be out there. Touch the other planets. Broadcast my thoughts directly.

Another important thing happened: my realization of "trade" and how it is a thing that influences everything, and how focusing on that is the best we can do. Understand. Destroy. Also, trade-free. Create trade-free goods/services to both help people in an honest manner, and to also inform people about this trade-monster. And so I created tools like TROMjaro, the Trade Free Directory and the website, and I re-labeled and re-purposed all of the other websites to be trade free: videoneat, my website, other people's websites...our tools were directed towards that vision. I wanted to showcase how we can do some work in this saner direction. No more "just talking", now it was doing. More directly. Yeah, small scale. but still...a lot considering my "powers".

For the past 2 years I loved working on TROMjaro and make it better and better and make a point with it within the open source community. And I got my voice heard a couple of times. I curate hundreds of trade-free apps for it, I added stuff to the trade-free directory, I removed the trackers from most of our websites. I started to get away from online trades as much as possible, as a matter of principle and also because it feels damn good and could inform people about why trade sucks, and trade-free goods/services are a lot better. A LOT.

No more books for me, it was all about doing something. Talking to others, challenging them and their values, be out there into the wild. That started to excite me.

But then I had this idea, partially influenced by the people around me, of making another TROM documentary and explain this new thing I discovered with “trade”. I agreed we need such a material on our website and out there on the webs. TROM documentary is still relevant, but talking about abundance, and scarcity, and rbe, and tvp and the like, doesn’t make sense for me anymore. I evolved past that. I changed my mind about many of those notions. We made a TROM-Cast all about that and it is part of the TROM documentary now, as a “review” of it, at the end of the documentary. But it is not enough. I would like to replace that documentary with a new (updated) one. Although that’s the rationale, and although sometimes I feel super excited about it, it does feel a bit forced…as if I force myself to go back to making videos instead of focusing on the “in action” part of my evolving life. I feel more motivated to invite experts on TROM-Cast and talk about the human behavior or other notions, to invite people from the Open Source communities, volunteers, those who want to change the society, and talk to them. Learn from them. Challenge them.

I think I am ready-enough to go and talk/debate with others about these ideas. I want to go fight now :D. Doing things like books or documentaries is an indirect fight for me. But I still would love to write more books. I want to definitely write a few more. One about science so that I learn what it is in detail, one about human behavior in great detail, one about “shapes” (you’ll see it is a fascinating topic and it affects everything: medicine, tech, behavior, etc.); and a few more. I’d like to write them on my own phase and in the meantime do more work on TROMjaro, Trade-Free Directory and the other tools we have, and definitely TROM-Cast.

I fell like that’s my new “era”, the in-action era. And I am kinda forcing myself to go back again to the “documentary” era. But I’ll give it a shot. We are trying to do a different kind of TROM documentary, more “in-action” with filming me, Sasha and Dima. We already started that so let’s see where it goes.

Thing is, my idea was to raise around 13k Euros for a year of work (1k a month to survive), and all of the 2021 to work on TROM II. I could have done that if I had the money. But since I only have raised around 2k then I had to rethink it completely. It will be a shorter one, but maybe more interesting and personal. More “catchy”.

So yah…let’s see how it goes…

The good part is to see myself evolving and trying new approaches to understand the world and explain it to others.

When I know what I want to do, it is a lot less of “yes.no.yes.no.yes.no.”. But when I try to force myself to do things I may not enjoy doing at that period of time, then I fluctuate a lot. It happened to me when I tried to write again on my romanian blog, when I tried to make videos out of my books, when I have to do this documentary it seems.

In any regard, I also have to enjoy life and the things I am creating, else it is pointless. I’d rather have a normal job and forget about this, if I end up in a pile of stress and regard TROM II or other projects as “work that I HAVE TO DO”.

I am so so happy with the stuff I’ve created so far and I will create more of it, and evolve to new kinds of projects and approaches. The flame of “doing something” is still burning inside my essence. That’s for sure!

This website is Trade-Free