Author Julia
Relationships with people have always been of great importance in my life. I love creating these relationships, developing them, continuing and preserving them, and I consider this to be one of the most valuable moments that can happen in our lives.
The wonderful woman I am interviewing today on her birthday [the interview took place on January 28on] is the same girl I met when we were both seven years old and went to the same first grade!
Author Julia: Tanya, I immensely appreciate our relationship, and I am infinitely happy that we are creating, preserving and developing the 4-year-old project — our magazine Coffee Time Journal. How did it all begin for you?
Tatiana Priyma: I have never thought to belong to the world of journalism. Although, it seems to me that our project goes beyond just a magazine. It is rather a certain mission. Moreover, I have never thought to become part of a big mission. In fact, it all began with the desire to know myself more deeply and change something in my life, which is with the participation in your programme “New Level”, held online in the spring of 2020. Even not, a little earlier, when you told me about your dream, your project and asked if I wanted to write something for the future magazine. And then, we can say, “New Level” allowed me to rise to that height from which it did not seem so impossible to accept the offer to head the magazine, becoming its editor-in-chief.
Author Julia: Please, tell us about your education.
Tatiana Priyma: Talking about my official education, I graduated from Kyiv Linguistic University and have a diploma of French and English teacher. It should be said that I worked in my profession for exactly one year (while being still a student) as a French teacher for first-graders in a Kyiv school. At that same period, I realised that you probably have to be born a teacher. It is a very responsible job! That’s because, in my opinion, a teacher is related to the future of humanity, as they contribute some of their vision and attitude to the world into developing minds. Being a teacher means devoting yourself to this work completely and entirely, living it, developing it. For me, this is the only way. That’s why I left this profession (for 23 years), and I had many interests in other directions.
Afterwards, I tried to master other fields. I studied office work, graduated as an accountant, attended painting courses and master classes, reviewed plenty of literature and watched or listened to many webinars on psychology myself, studied energy healing, maritime affairs…
My education, worldview as well as my personality were especially influenced by the studies at French Higher School of Commerce in the north of France, ESCIP, where I came under the student exchange programme and spent about 10 unforgettable months. At that time, I was almost 30 years old, and also I was the only Russian-speaking student in the whole school (and, as it seemed to me, for 300 km around, as it was in the small town of Saint-Omer, situated 300 km north of Paris), so I had to work my brain very, very hard, re-immersing myself not just in the world of the foreign language, which I hardly practiced at all at that time, but also exploring a new area for me like economics and commerce. And considering the fact I shared the apartment with two Argentinian students, I was inadvertently immersing myself in the world of Latin America and Spanish language at the same time. In general, this is a vast subject for a separate story.
Right now, I am mastering the IT profession of UI/UX designer and thinking of getting into the field of programming.
Author Julia: So, you are fluent not only in your native language, but also in French, aren’t you?
Tatiana Priyma: In fact, I can say I have two native languages — Russian and Ukrainian. However, as my family has always been speaking the first one, of course, it is easier to me. Nevertheless, I also edit material in Ukrainian, as well as translate from French and English (and sometimes translate into French). When necessary, I can deal with Italian (I learnt this language on my own and through communication with my Italian friends), a little with Spanish and even German, as I tried to learn this language exactly while studying in France. I still remember with great warmth my German teacher, who eventually became a good friend of mine in a foreign country — madam Donker.
Author Julia: What is your perfect activity?
Tatiana Priyma: Perhaps creativity in all its manifestations and with its inherent freedom — freedom to choose what to do, how to do it, where and when. I used to work “from call to call” in a certain place (in one office, in another one, at school…). But with the birth of children, I realised I no longer wanted to fit into certain frameworks. It’s important for me to have the opportunity to:
- create something beautiful (a work of art, a culinary dish, a homemade toy, clothing or an interior accessory, interior itself, a new website design, a perfectly verified text, which is understandable, literate, stylistically impeccable to the best of my knowledge and skills, and so on),
- do it at the time I choose myself, when I can and when I want to,
- not to be tied to a place, create (work) from any corner of the planet,
- take my time,
- see that what I do brings joy or benefit to someone.
Perhaps, bringing joy to someone with my deeds is already a perfect activity for me 🙂
Author Julia: What is interesting about our magazine personally for you, as for its editor-in-chief?
Tatiana Priyma: If you look at it from the point of view of working conditions :), it is exactly all of the above: I can do my work when I can and want to, where I am at that particular moment. Besides, I create something beautiful and useful, which brings people pleasure, joy, their boundaries expansion and, I’d like to believe, hope, faith and in some ways even love.
For more than four years of the magazine’s existence (plus all the preparation for its launching), as the editor-in-chief, I’ve read an incredible quantity of material on various subjects. I am probably the only person to have read EVERYTHING published by us, at least twice : )), or even more times. And we have 3,000 articles in 24 sections! Every single day I discover something new, our world is incredible! And how much do we not yet know? I don’t mean our magazine in particular, but humanity as a whole — how much have we not yet discovered or invented? Recently we have added a new section, called Innovations and New Technologies. And it is the one I fill in with special interest and enthusiasm.
However, I’m not an enthusiastic person in rose-colored glasses. There is a lot of sorrow and pain around and it doesn’t pass me by. But our life is where our focus is. And I, like the mission of our magazine and mostly thanks to it, learn and try to notice the good that exists in our world and draw our readers’ attention to that. Otherwise, it is very easy to lose all meaning of life.
Author Julia: The editor-in-chief’s duties include a large number of responsibilities, one of which is communicating with authors. Please, tell us what is interesting about this activity for you?
Tatiana Priyma: The fact that our authors are very interesting people. People with their own vision, independent thinking, very inquisitive, digging deeply into their field of interest, ready to argue reasonably with the editor-in-chief :), defending their vision. I am incredibly interested in dealing with them! For instance, more times, after publishing an article, I watched the film that the author wrote about and which I would have probably missed without them. Or after reading a new article for the Self-Development section, I realised that it was again about me, but HOW it was written! In an understandable language about complex processes, with a hint of what can be done with all that. The very fact that you suddenly understand that this is what’s exactly happening is already stunning. It seems obvious, but until you read, you never even think of it. Moreover, thanks to our authors, I discovered the world of fashion and began to understand modern trends. Young people do not allow my thinking to become rigid, they teach me to understand, accept this very rapidly changing world, not to get stuck, and develop constantly over and over again.
Author Julia: In your opinion, who is our ideal reader?
Tatiana Priyma: I have just tried to imagine somebody specific. I couldn’t do it, though, as I saw the face of a young man, then an elderly woman, and then somebody laughing, tired, or hunched over at the computer, studying a recipe for a new dish tonight, someone commuting and reading our article on the phone, or someone driving a car and listening to a podcast. In general, it’s difficult for me to describe the ideal reader. I guess now we provide material on any topic. Of course, if you look for something that inspires, fills you with kindness, new ideas, hope, just pleasant emotions. Our ideal reader is definitely not the one looking for gossip or horror. And who it is — a man, a woman, a child or an elderly person, a housewife or a successful businessman — it doesn’t really matter.
Author Julia: In conclusion of our interview, I would like to wish you Happy Birthday. I want to wish you that the gifts and talents given by the Lord, and those that are still deep inside you, will pour out, shine with bright colours, improving and enriching this world. I wish you to be happy, loved, healthy, joyful and enjoy the life you live every single day.
Tatiana Priyma: THANK YOU!
Author Julia
Основательница Сoffee Time Journal
