The Freedom Manifesto

In the summer of 2019, I sat in front of my therapist and wondered out loud why, despite having a successful career for years, I had nothing compared to the folks in my engineering community. No house, no apartment, no husband, no children, no car. Nothing.

She looked surprised. “Based on my knowledge of you, all of those are not your true values,” she said. “Do you really want your own house and car? Do you want to be married and have kids?”

“NO, NO, NO,” I answered, almost in a panic. And then it was my turn to be surprised. Why do I envy such things in other people?

This happened just a few months after a series of dramatic events shattered my world. I had broken up with my boyfriend. My mother had died after two years of fighting cancer. I lost my job. I lost my ability to write code, to organize community meetups, to speak at conferences. I lost all my identities, like “daughter” or “frontend lead”, in a very short span of time.

I was completely ruined and felt like a loser. Add to that a deep dive into climate change research that convinced me we were all doomed, and I was experiencing an existential crisis at its absolute finest. I couldn’t even think about the future; it seemed like I wouldn’t have one.

In that void, I could only feel envy for people living their “normal” lives. There was such an emptiness inside me. I didn’t understand what kind of life I could have, so I apparently looked for support in established societal ideas.

But those social attitudes never suited me.

I am a woman, and I am Kabardian. In my worldview, obeying the rules means being a housewife with three or more children and a poor husband. It means caring for four generations, from great-grandparents to toddlers. It means being tied to one piece of land and suffering for the rest of my life. When I imagine that life, I imagine my brain in agony 24/7.

Sorry, but it’s not for me.

The “Obey the Rules” Illusion

The truth is, I’ve always lived on my own terms; I just didn’t realize it. I would occasionally get criticized: “Zarema, you can’t just ignore the established rules and create your own. Obey the rules!” I never understood that criticism. Because if I had obeyed the rules:

• I wouldn’t have become a programmer in the 2000s, when female engineers were considered absolute nonsense.
• There would be no SPB Frontend community or HolyJS conference.
• I wouldn’t be living in the city of my dreams.
• I wouldn’t have walked the runway, met amazing people, or attended the concerts of all my favorite bands.

My journey back to myself began with analyzing that false envy. I realized I wanted the exact opposite of what I was envying. I don’t want to be tied to one place, one group of people, or one routine.

My North Star: Freedom

Life can be so full, interesting, and brilliant. There are so many things I can do and see. Moving forward, my compass is completely aligned with one ultimate North Star: Freedom.

This means living only how I want to live, doing only what I want to do, strictly on my own conditions. To protect this freedom, I am building my life around three core pillars:

1. Freedom to Create (The Scanner’s Mind)

I am a scanner, a multipotentialite. I refuse to shrink myself to fit into a single professional box. I will write code to solve deep technical SEO issues, I will cut dimensional paper collages, I will write books, and I will build platforms. My diverse interests are my superpower.

2. Freedom of Time (Leveraged Income)

I am absolutely done trading my hours for dollars. I am shifting away from active work as an employee. Instead, I am building an engine of leveraged income, creating micro-SaaS tools, digital products, and automated systems. I am using my 20 years of engineering experience to decouple my revenue from my time, so my schedule belongs entirely to me.

3. Freedom of Connection

I am stepping into the light to find my tribe. I am building a community of fellow rulebreakers, creators, and scanners who understand that life is a massive, beautiful experiment.

I want to create things. I want to find my tribe. And I want to wake up every single day and do exactly what I want.