Hey everyone and welcome to the Poniatny Anglewski podcast.
You're all so welcome here today.
It has been a long time since I made the last podcast.
And honestly, it feels a little bit strange to be recording again.
As many of you already know, if you follow my Instagram, of course, I was in Russia for just over three weeks.
I visited St.
Petersburg and Moscow.
As a result, during this time, I didn't record any podcasts, as I didn't have my very good microphone and my equipment.
Now, I am back in the UK and I am currently sitting in quarantine.
It is necessary.
You must sit in quarantine for two weeks in the UK if you come from certain countries.
Because of this, I have just been in my new flat.
I hope everything is well with you guys, and I hope that you have had a wonderful August.
In this podcast, I want to talk about a few different things.
For a start, I would just like to do an update about my trip to Russia, about what has happened in the last month for me,
And the other themes I would like to discuss is work and mental health.
I think these are very important themes, especially mental health in the time of the coronavirus.
And maybe we're spending a lot of time on our phones and on computers and indoors in general.
Okay, so to start with my trip to Russia.
So I found out on about the second week of August that it was now possible for me to fly to St.
Petersburg.
And as many of you already know, my girlfriend lives in St.
Petersburg.
Well, she now lives in Moscow, but she was living in St.
Petersburg.
So naturally, I had really really missed her.
I hadn't seen her for five months because of coronavirus.
As a result, I looked into the flights and how to make the trip possible.
I immediately booked flights and I started to do my visa.
I applied for my Russian visa.
This is the fifth time I applied for the Russian visa.
So I guess I'm becoming a little bit of a Russian visa expert by now.
To get my visa, I actually had to fly from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Edinburgh, which is where I usually study.
Once there, I had to give them my fingerprints, which is like a scan or a photo of your fingers on a screen.
I don't know why exactly the Russian government needs this, but I give it anyway.
It seems a little bit silly to me, because I have given them my fingerprints already four times, so I don't know why they need new fingerprints each time, when the last time I traveled to Russia was January.
Once I did this, I returned home with my visa.
Three days before my flight, I had to do a coronavirus test to prove that I didn't have coronavirus.
I received the results and then I flew to London in England.
From London, I got on the plane to St.
Petersburg, and finally I had arrived.
After all the difficulties, it was finally over and I had arrived in Russia again.
I was so happy to finally be back.
Honestly, I had really missed Russia.
And of course, I had really missed my girlfriend.
Once I arrived, I had spent about 10 days in St.
Petersburg with my girlfriend and her family.
I continued to do a little bit of work to learn Russian and finally relax a little bit, which is something I had really needed.
I had worked so much the previous months that I was very stressed.
Now, this ties in to the theme of work, so working hard or working too much.
I think it is so important to know when you are working too much.
Some people say that you can never work too much, but I honestly disagree.
I always think that quality, especially with creative work is much better than quantity.
Before I took that trip, I was working every day on many different things, many different projects.
And it was very hard to give them the focus they required.
Because of this, my Russian practice suffered a lot.
It got less attention from me.
My learning had basically stopped.
And this was something that I wasn't very happy about.
I had also began to stop enjoying making Instagram videos and stories.
Because it became a pressure, something extra I had to do on top of my work.
And I realized that I probably needed a break.
I was spending so much time on Instagram every day on my phone, replying to comments, to people's messages.
And don't get me wrong, I love receiving messages and comments.
I absolutely love it.
And usually I really love responding to each and every one that I can.
But the stress was too much from other areas of my life.
This is why I took a break from social media and Instagram.
And over the last three weeks, apart from posting a few photos on my stories, I have practically not used my phone at all when I was in Russia.
I spent almost all of the time being in the present focusing on what I was doing.
I mean, of course, I did some work on my laptop, I read some books, I did various other things.
But most importantly, I took a break from social media.
Social media can be a wonderful thing, but it can often have many dangers and it can be very bad for mental health long term.
I'd like to do another podcast on this in the future, talking about social media, its effects and whether I think it is a good thing or a bad thing overall.
So back to the topic.
And how is mental health related to this podcast?
So the reason I included mental health in the title is because I think this is very closely tied, very closely related to hard work or working too much.
At the time, I really didn't notice that my mental health was suffering.
It was being affected by what I was doing.
I really didn't give my brain, my mind, some time to be calm, to be with itself, to be without distraction.
On the contrary, on the reverse, I was actually constantly being stimulated.
There was constantly things happening in my life.
So I was getting messages.
I was replying to them.
I was listening to podcasts.
I was writing things.
I was working on the book.
And I was doing so many different things that I never give time for silence or just pure, proper relaxation.
This is very tiring on the mind.
It's very bad for the mind.
And often in my life I have found that some of my best ideas for things that I want to do or create or begin come from a place of silence.
So a place of sitting in your thoughts and not being distracted.
For example, my very Instagram account, EnglishWithOliver.
I decided to begin this when I was just sitting and thinking about what I could do when I was a little bit bored.
I honestly think it's good to be bored sometimes, because it makes us think about what we can do, what we can create to distract ourselves or to entertain ourselves.
And a lot of really good ideas come from a place of boredom.
But with modern technology, with phones being a constant distraction and a constant way to escape boredom, It's almost impossible to be truly bored unless we just sit in our own thoughts.
I hope this topic isn't too difficult or too serious for this type of podcast, but it's something that I was thinking a lot about recently.
So back to Russia.
After my time in St.
Petersburg, we moved to Moscow.
I was helping my girlfriend move to university there.
In Moscow.
I had many wonderful days with her and just relaxing and doing lovely things and activities museums parks, everything you can imagine.
And it really was lovely.
It was very relaxing and de-stressing.
It was just what I needed to sort of calm my mind, refocus and then come back to the UK and work hard.
Since I have returned to the UK, I am now back in Edinburgh for university.
And I've found that it is so much easier to work, it is so much easier to focus on projects and my ideas and my studies, because my brain and my body feels so refreshed compared to before.
This experience has taught me how important it is to relax, to give yourself time, to not overwork yourself.
But for me, to me, the problem is not realizing when I am working too much or when I am feeling stressed and I have negative emotions.
Some people are very good at reading their emotions, knowing how they feel, knowing when they feel bad or when they feel stressed, and they can deal with that quite openly.
Maybe they find it easy to cry or to get angry or to let off some steam.
But personally, and this is being very honest with you guys, I struggle with that.
I struggle to realize when I'm stressed and to realize when I feel sad.
And as a result, I sometimes hide those feelings.
I push them down inside. and I don't realize that I feel that way.
A phrase that comes to mind is to get on with it.
I just sort of get on with it.
And of course, this attitude has benefits at times.
It's good to be able to just not be influenced fully by emotions.
But at the same time, these emotions don't just disappear, they build up somewhere.
So that feeling of stress, which I push down inside, it's still there.
And it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, until I realize, oh my goodness, I really need a break.
And I don't know if anyone listening to this can relate to that.
I'm sure many of you can.
I know I'm not the only person that is like that and that deals with emotions in this way.
However you relate to that, just always remember that to express how you feel is not a bad thing.
It's not a negative thing.
It's okay to be stressed, to be upset, to experience normal human emotion.
In fact, it's really healthy and it's healthy to understand how you feel and react to that.
If you're stressed and you need a break, you're probably better taking a small break and then re-beginning to work, restarting work, because your quality of work will be a lot better and you'll be a lot happier about it as well.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, what you think about stress and emotions, et cetera.
So feel free to message me on Instagram.
Let me know what you think of the podcast.
I love hearing podcast reviews or suggestions for podcast topics.
It means a lot to me when you guys give me feedback.
I'm going to try and make this podcast a lot more consistent.
Now that I'm back in Edinburgh, now that I have a routine and studies, it's going to be a lot easier to build a routine of podcasting and Instagram posts.
I hope this has been understandable for you.
I hope it has been enjoyable, maybe even insightful.
And thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
I really hope to see you in the next episode.
It should be within about a week, the next episode.
And as always, be sure to check out my Instagram page, English with Oliver.
There I post useful videos and stories and even just some things about my life.
And it might be interesting for you.
So thank you guys for watching and I will see you in the next one.
Have a wonderful day.
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