My goal was, in other words, to build a suitable space for the manufacturers and to assist them. The idea proved to be effective: “Bolshaya Medveditsa” lives, develops and prospers to this day.
For about two or three years, I worked on the new business with my natural passion and inspiration. The project pleased me with new opportunities and unexpected solutions. I was able to create and imagine. I had total freedom to design something brand-new. However, later on, the situation repeated again. I ran into the same wall again. I got that feeling of being disappointed and following it – a sense of the emptiness and meaninglessness of everything I had been doing.
Business and daily rush seized me so much that there was no escape from my depression. I exchanged my expensive cars with the ones which cost a fortune, spent more money on clothes, chose absolutely unbelievable (regarding the price as well) destinations for my trips… Nothing I could imagine made my life more cheerful or better.
More often I started feeling I was a character of a famous joke about an owner of a luxurious yacht, who felt happy twice in his life only: when he bought it first, and when he managed to finally sell it.
That was the way I used to live those days: I felt a short flash of a desire to possess something new. I got it and, almost immediately, that feeling of inner emptiness came. To feel more alive, I always had to find some new reasons to get an emotional rush. More and more, I felt that I was not living, but just riding the same carousel in a circle.
Those days, I travelled all over the world looking for something (I didn’t actually know, what). That was a situation we call: go there – I don’t know where, get that – I don’t know what. There was hardly anything I hadn’t tried! I attended different workshops, studied everything that could catch my attention or give me a hint of a hope to find the answers to the most important questions. I tried everything I had met in my way. Everything the consumer’s world could offer – expensive or cheap, extreme or safe, classic or exotic…
All those things were done for one and only one reason: to feel happy, to find a new source of joy and inspiration. Nevertheless, days went by, – and the feeling of boredom came. Everything I’d used to love – skiing, yachts, parties – sooner or later stopped grasping any of my interest.