AWC #1: NATALIYA APANOVICH

Nataliya is a third year PhD student at Iowa State University studying Sustainable Agriculture & Biorenewable Resources and Technology. She was born in Belarus and moved to the U.S. at the age of 15. Between then and now she's lived on three continents in five different countries. She found her passion for smallholder agriculture while doing data collection for her research in Uganda between 2015 and 2016. Now she is looking forward to finishing her degree and moving back to Africa where she hopes to teach and start social enterprises. Find out more at https://ugandaandmore.wordpress.com/

When I tell people that I don’t want a 9-5 job, a big house or anything that comes in abnormal sizes, I get similar reactions. ‘But how are you planning on supporting yourself’ seems to be the biggest concern. And the most recent ‘Not saving up for retirement is just not serious’ made me straight up furious. If I use that logic it means that the gist of my life, any life, is to be serious which implies working a full-time job to save for retirement. Therefore, hoarding money for when I am old, weak, and, lets assume, still alive is what I should be doing now.

In my world I want to work the hours that suit my lifestyle and not the other way around. In my world a 9-5 job does not equate to happiness, security, inner peace. Strictly set work hours, the idea of full-time work and our attitudes to it are simply well disguised capitalist notions created to promote consumerism, over production, wastefulness, individualism and the resulting alienation and depression, which make us consume even more. I am making a conscious decision about in what world I want to live and what my role should be in it. We ALL have the power to move and change our lives. It took me 25 years to come to it when I left both a big city and a job to go back to school for a PhD. I didn’t do it for money or social status – I did it to understand why I should love myself.

The move to a rural town located in the middle of nowhere tested my relationship with my boyfriend, took an emotional toll on me, and is still putting me through unexpected hardships. But I did what I knew was right for me – change. A few months before my move, a stranger on the metro in Washington, D.C., once asked me if I was happy living and working in the city. I told him that I wasn’t and he casually suggested that I needed to do something about it. When I told him that I was doing something about it by moving away for a PhD, he looked surprised. We are so accustomed to hearing others complain about their lives, jobs that we become numb to people’s unhappiness… we just accept it.

I am tired of being treated as someone who’s avoiding responsibilities, not thinking about the future, naive. I am thinking about the future, I do want to be financially independent and I am a realist. The fact that I am doing those things differently from the convention makes me a social outcast. The only thing that really differentiates me from everyone else is my desire to find myself in this big and messy world through my own experiences, successes and mistakes. I don’t what any government, person, or idea to tell me what I can or cannot be. Let me find that out on my own – this is the least and the most I can do for myself.

We face so many expectations from the people who surround us that sometimes the ones closest to us do us more hard than good. At 28 my mom still tells me that my skin is ugly and that my forehead is too large. Every phone conversation with my sister makes me cry as she dismisses my opinions and plans as unimportant no matter what they are. I am supposed to be perfect in body and mind. But no one mentions the word ‘happiness’. Sometimes all we need to hear is that we are allowed to be happy, that it is OK to be happy. Why do we feel guilty quitting boring jobs, moving countries, finding meaningful work, challenging ourselves, living with no regrets? Why is it that our society hides happiness from us under so many layers that sometimes we get lost trying to uncover them? By default we are born into ordinary and when we free ourselves from that notion somehow our lives lose validity.

And while my forehead will never shrink in size and my skin is still covered with acne – I am incredibly proud of myself to be where I am now. I have nothing to prove to anyone and I am certainly not apologetic for me being me. The only thing that makes me sad is to know that the majority of the people on this planet will never realize their full potential and know how it feels to be happy and fulfilled.

Do you relate to Nataliya's story? Want to learn more about the ups and downs of non 9-5 life? Facebook, tweet or send your questions to info@above-water.co.uk

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