Moms United

About Me

No little girl stuff

I learned all the adulthood lessons slowly and painfully, through trial and error. I didn't have much people to teach me about any shortcuts, and nowadays, I only take advices from people who live their ideal life. When it comes to others, I respectfully will not listen to them.

I was born and raised in Eastern Europe. Had the best time of my life and learned first lesson: you can have great time and trully be happy with very little money.

I came to the United States when I was 25. This means my accent is obvious even when I say "Hi" to someone and I will forever be an immigrant, regardless of the passport I hold in my hand. My name will forever be "unique" and mispronounced, but I care very little about that. Somehow, all people around me who care, know how to decently say it. Additionally, I kept my maiden name to show my daughter that we are equal pillars in a marriage, even though my husband is awesome.

Why did I come here? I came for graduate school. This is the BIG lesson number 2: even though I have a PhD diploma in my hand, I had $0 in my 401k when I was 30. Additionally, Academia pays very little. Definitely not directly proportional to the effort that takes to hold the earlier mentioned diploma. I did learn many other lessons in grad school, nothing ever is waste. Even learning that is actually not something you want is a lesson by itself.

I've been working in industry for 6 years. I got itch for entrepreneurship in my early to mid-30s. Definitely later than most. But taken into account that I basically shed and grew new skin, I think I'm right on track. So here comes lesson number 3: if I'm going to be anyone's bi**h, I'm going to be my own. How did this click for me? I've been religiously listening to My First Million podcast, among others, and reading books. I've been reading or listening about anyone who found a successful second life (a term for people who pivot in their careers) and "made it". I am still on this journey.

I have 2 kids. Older one was born while I was in grad school and younger while I had a full time job (not like the first one wasn't a FT job). They made me so focused and motivated to do everything better. They are like the mirrors and my parenting method (for most of time, except when I lose my cool) is lead with examples and not words, i.e., show me, don't just say it to me. This society is very behind and at this pace, it will take women 134 years to close the global gender gap. Outrageous.

Interests:

• Pickleball, medium running and "tennis sized" pingpong. And I'm very competitive.
• Podcasts. Favorite ones: MFM (already mentioned above), Freakonomics, Second Life (great guests, but host underutilizes them big time - Shaan and Sam would kill it!), Codie Sanchez (always good stuff there, and Codie seriously is one of the guys/bros, but the girl is sometimes trying to hard sell her webinars - whenever anyone says "do XYZ and it will make you rich", I click exit button), Mel Robins (I didn't grouw up with Oprah, but Mel hits the nail in the head most of the time for me).
• Working out, AT HOME.(While it started as "I want to lose postpartum weight", now it's pure source of energy. And I guess I found my jam. Additionally, I created my own cardio workout website page that I love, and I'd always hated cardio.)
• Coloring. (This became a hobby when I realized that people make money by posting on youtube - and I thought "Whaaaat???". So I started doing so (check out the Coloring tab). Now all 3 of us color together, i.e., kids and I, while listen to my favorite pod, what's there not to love? Finally I'm learning how to wrangle video editing. But love it all.)