Dear Vadim,

Every day I spend my time drinking wine, feeling fine, reading books and cooking something cool whenever I want. I travel quite a lot, check my Twitter feed at Business lounges and use Priority Pass in case of noisy children somewhere near the queue. I trade with French shopkeepers at small Montmartre stores in their native language, I don't have any problems with writing articles in English, and my communication skills are quite good to pitch a product to British Minister for Transport (checked one year ago).

I don't have all these good ol' fears, so I am pretty comfortable with living a moment, skydiving, surfing, skating and swimming. I worked for a plenty of IT companies, made a selfie with Tim Cook, won Apple WWDC Scholarship, developed an app which made it to the TOP of App Store. I study at one of the most proficient national research universities in the country, I give talks at Yandex, Mail Group and VK headquarters, I publish articles on DNA reconstruction and write columns for food blogs, I teach the most brilliant children at Summer Informatics School and I maintain a course on iOS Development, powered by the biggest Eastern European social network and inspired by Paul Hegarty. I have the best friends and live in a beautiful city.

Everything sounds really nice. However, it is too early to sit back. When I hear that I am too good for my age, that I inspire or give a hope, I should constantly remind to myself that I have to keep going.

Let’s imagine our life path as a climbing route. All previous days you were looking at the peak, suffering from cold and wind, but now you are here, at the supposed final destination, while all these people were left behind you and are still struggling with weather conditions. But what is going on? Right above you there is another mountain and a plenty of alpinists are already climbing up in a desire to be the first.

So yeah, feel free to eat a snack or two here, to make a Story for Snapchat, or to have a nap for some hours, but don’t even think about setting up a camp. Both our life and work have their own milestones and you should constantly crave to see what is next. I don’t want to make you feel like life is similar to racing, no. There is no point in pushing yourself to the limit or walk along the razor’s edge, just don’t sit back.

Make sure you understand that staying at the peak will not make you a winner: while you are here, all people around are still climbing up. While you are resting as a Lead Developer or a passionate traveler, someone already wrote a book or visited Iceland.

Probably, you’ve already heard that, but the most important lessons are so because they are hard. They are those that take the most work to admit and they are those we need to hear over and over again. However, even when you already could see the next peak, don’t forget to live the moment. The only thing that is important is your joy of living, so look around, feel the ice and the wind, get a pleasure of drinking hot sweet tea, keep talking with people around you: keep track of your goals, but don’t make this process your only aim in life.

The worst you can do for you is to speak in Second Conditional. Probably, you’ve already done that a time or two. Do you remember? “I would get driver’s license if I had time”. “I would quit this job if I saved enough money to do what I want”. “I would ask her to go out with me if I bought a car”. Let me be honest, success and happiness are less related than you probably think; don’t let your next peak outshine the delight from reaching the current one.

So let me caution you. Whenever you feel yourself in the mood to have a pause, to set up a camp using this particular peak as a basement, ask yourself, is it really a right place? Or probably you allowed yourself to lose the battle and to stay here forever? Is it really impossible to take the best from here and pack it with you? Maybe with new skills, maybe with a partner, or some good friends, but don’t forget to leave this point as soon as you can on your way to the stars (even if the only thing you can see through the clouds are backs of other alpinists and you are not sure if there is something worthy the climb). But don’t forget to have enough fun during your travel, as it is all about fun after all.

This is a reminder to you at the first place, Vadim Drobinin: it’s too early to sit back. Now wake up and keep working to make your parents, your date and your friends proud of you.

Yours truly,

Thanks for reading! Feel free to share your own hints about living the moment and climbing up to success at the same time or tell me what you think about the idea in general.