At the end of last year, I came across Dasha’s intro in the Vas3k Club. It was short, honest, and alive — and I thought, “she seems cool.” So I messaged her and suggested a call.
Since Dasha is a delovaya kolbasa, we only managed to talk a month later. We had a nice Zoom chat, then forgot about each other for a few months — until we both ended up at Vas3k Camp in Liberland.
Everyone there was great, but most were new faces. And seeing someone from a "past life" (even if that life was just 20 messages and one call) felt like a tiny island of familiarity, a small, soft place in the middle of all the newness.
After the camp, we started talking more — and today, I genuinely and gladly recommend her Telegram blog (yes, I do get a PROFIT from this because she genuinely and gladly wants to recommend mine too!).
Her blog feels similar to mine: nothing seems off-topic, and it’s a kind of soul striptease. And when a soul is interesting — reading it is like borrowing someone else’s eyes for a moment. It’s a rare kind of intimacy that reminds you how we’re all both the center of our own universe and just side characters in others’.
What’s different is that Dasha lives a very different life — she’s a nomad, runs therapeutic walks (I joined one — absolutely lovely experience), and processes the world in her own way.
So yeah, this is half an ad. But for me, it’s also a small proof that doing “weird” things — like messaging someone out of the blue to say “hey, you seem awesome” — tends to work out. We often think we need a reason to tell someone they’re cool. Otherwise, they’ll think we’re flirting, or strange, or needy — however, sometimes they can just think we're cool too. To me that feels like a risk worth taking.