When was the last time you went out of your comfort zone, and what did you accomplish? Good day, I'm from Ukraine!

Google said that the comfort zone is a living space in which you feel safe, both psychologically and physically. Well, that is, you live your normal life and know what awaits you further in life.

In general, ideally, this post would be finished and ready if I just wrote "Good day, I'm from Ukraine!" and that's it. But only the residents of Ukraine would understand this and laugh. Because we haven't known what a comfort zone is for a long time.

I will try to tell and explain everything in order. First, there is a full-scale war in my country. And this already creates certain problems. I will not write now about the horrors that are happening in our country. I will write more about the same comfort zone, what difficulties arise and how I personally cope with it and what I have achieved success in.

The first thing that immediately comes to mind is prepared for various extreme situations that can occur at any moment. And you need to be ready for it. Therefore, I have a supply of various non-perishable foods, a supply of drinking water in sealed bottles, a supply of food for my dogs, and also a supply of various medicines. And I always buy something extra. You know, I now understand the constant supply of all kinds of canned food at my grandmother's.

All this is necessary in order to simply not die of hunger in case of occupation or something similar. That is, with this method, I am preparing to not find myself in a critical situation and to get out of my comfort zone as much as possible.

And now about what I face every day and somehow learned to live with it - power outages and the inability to plan my life normally. The fact is that the occupying forces decided to additionally destroy the critical infrastructure of our country. It includes systems that provide the population with electricity.

Because of this, we have blackout schedules to give everyone an even chance to live with the light and not overload the system in general to avoid additional accidents. To be honest, the graphics are pretty bad at times, because again, there are attempts to kill the system, as well as crashes.

Ideally, if there are no problems, I have electricity for 9 hours a day. Here it is important to clarify that the graphs work in modes 3 through 6. That is, there is electricity for 3 hours, and there is no electricity for 6 hours. And therefore the period with light is constantly changing. Today I should have no light from 3 to 9 p.m. That is, my working day will not be full. For a better understanding, I will show a graph from the website of the company that distributes electricity.

Where there are dark squares, there is absolutely no light, where there are grey - 50/50%, that is, if there is an opportunity, it will be turned on during that interval. And white squares guarantee the presence of light. However, the schedules do not give a 100% guarantee, because, in the event of accidents or massive missile attacks, the system goes into emergency shutdown mode. It has already happened that, for example, my entire region (the largest in Ukraine) was without electricity for almost three days due to shelling and destruction.

I hope I clearly described the situation. And now I move on to the next part. As you can see, I need to invest in three hours of electricity availability. This includes - work and household chores. And you know, today I have already learned how to cope with it. But the big plus here is that I have a gas stove at home, as well as a centralized water supply and heat. For example, in new high-rise buildings, absolutely everything runs on electricity - electric stoves, heating and water also depend on it.

Therefore, I can cook food at any time and not sit in a cold apartment in winter. But there are problems with the hot water, in our apartment, it depends on the boiler, which runs on electricity. I can wash the dishes with the remains of the water heated in them, but it is problematic to take a shower or take a bath.

So, I have already worked out a certain scheme of work so as not to be left in complete darkness and without the things I need. First, I almost always have all my gadgets connected to the network, so that in the event that electricity is supplied at night, they can be charged. I also have three power banks to charge phones.

And I charge all this in those three hours. In order not to be complete without lighting, I have a garland that runs from a power bank, as well as a small lamp. It works from its own battery, and when it is discharged, it uses ordinary batteries.

So, for those three hours, I just charge everything. Also, during this period, I do housework that requires electricity - I turn on the laundry, prepare a supply of coffee, which I put in a thermal cup, and freeze products so that they can be stored longer. In parallel with all this, I still manage to work and download movies/series to have something to watch during the blackout.

Of course, three hours is not enough for work, so after a power outage, I just turn on Wi-Fi from my phone and work using the mobile Internet. And at the same time, I try to adhere to time management as much as possible and do everything quickly and efficiently so as not to completely discharge the laptop.

In conclusion, I can say the following - I left my comfort zone almost a year ago. Namely, February 24, 2022, at 4 o'clock in the morning. Since then, I don't know what tomorrow will be like and what awaits me. Problems with electricity started sometime in October and became another test for everyone. Is it difficult for me? Of course, it is difficult. Do I give up? Never. All these months I understand one simple thing, it is better to die free than to live in slavery. Without internet, communication, electricity, water or heat, but free. Therefore, I will survive these hardships, but I will never survive if my country surrenders and loses this war.