Марія Бровінська Історії 3 October 2025, 08:55

“I put in the work and plowed in so that I could earn experience, reputation, ranking on the site, and money.” The story of an IT professional who earned enough money to buy a house in the village in a year and now works with Americans and artificial intelligence to the sound of roosters crowing in the background

«Briefly about how I earned money for a house in a year: I sat almost motionless for 10 hours every day for a year. I gained 15 extra kg and several thousand dollars. Now all hope is for 'you have to work hard in the village',» wrote freelance IT professional Viktoria Samarina in Threads, who returned to Ukraine after several years abroad. She currently blogs about life in a Carpathian village, where she tells how she is equipping a village house that did not have a sewage system at the time of purchase. dev.ua spoke with Viktoria about the non-trivial decision, rural difficulties and contrasts, as well as career ambitions and plans. Her story is surprising and depressing at the same time.

Who is the «village talker»?

Victoria Samarina is 38 years old. She was born and lived in Donetsk for most of her life, but for the last six years she has lived abroad — in Georgia and Albania. «I went abroad in 2019, worked there. Then the pandemic came, the big war. And I stayed in exile for six years, unplanned. I didn’t want to live abroad at all. I had no intention of moving. That’s why I really wanted to return to Ukraine,» the girl says.

VIKA admits: I got tired of living in rented apartments for many years. She always dreamed of her own home. «I was considering „Eoselya“ as an option to buy a home, and then, unexpectedly, I decided to look at houses. I first looked at houses in the city, they are more expensive in the city, and then I started looking outside the city, and so I looked at a house in the village, and I found out that this is actually a trendy story now,» says Viktoriya. According to her, many specialists who have remote work are currently buying houses in the village, especially in the Carpathians, and moving to live closer to nature. «There are no air traffic jams here, there are no arrivals here,» the girl argues her choice.

House per year

Victoria claims that she earned less than the amount needed to buy a house than she did in her first year of freelancing. However, she does not disclose the cost of her new home, noting that she worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week. «I will not disclose the amount for which I bought this house. I do not have a fixed monthly income and never did. This is freelancing. There were months when I earned $8,000-10,000, and there were months when I earned $500. Freelancing is like entrepreneurship. You have to work hard every day so as not to lose a client,» she says.

According to Victoria, it was the instability of her income that prompted her to invest in housing.

«I wanted to invest in real estate, in my own home. Because if it all ends, I’ll at least have a home,» she says.

Charged with a goal, Vika, who creates custom visualizations, worked 10 hours a day, thanks to which she was able to significantly increase her income. «I have a lot of orders, a lot of work. And I also conduct courses on how to start and develop on Upwork. And most of my students are also involved in AI, visual technologies. And there is simply a lot of such work on the exchange in the field of AI, visual technologies. That is why my income has grown and is now consistently good,» she says, without specifying the figures.

15 extra kg and the «swing» of freelancing

Victoria understood that orders from large clients would end sooner or later, because this is freelance. «And so I took on as much as possible, while they had money and were ready to pay me. I understood that the client would not pay me such amounts all the time, that one day this channel would close and I had to take on as much as I could while I could. I did not balance life, rest and work. I was constantly working,» she says.

Victoria’s only obligatory ritual outside of work was daily 5 km runs. «I was constantly sitting, and the extra 15 kg came from this. I didn’t even cook food — I ordered delivery,» she says. The singer woke up around eight o’clock, opened the messenger, checked messages from the client, edited, read. then sat down quickly, had breakfast, drank coffee and sat down to work literally 20-30 minutes after I woke up. She worked literally all day, got up to pick up the delivery, have lunch, and in the evening went for a run, came back and sat down to work again. «And somewhere I went to bed until about 12 at night, I tried to go to bed to give myself at least a little rest. And the next day I woke up again, messenger, edited, work. «Sometimes I allowed myself to go out for a glass of wine to relax my brain a little. Sometimes once a month my girlfriend and I could go out for a walk in the park somewhere. But in general, this was my schedule. I was constantly, constantly, constantly, literally, constantly working,» Victoria recalls.

The girl is convinced: not burning out and not giving up on freelancing is a slightly different story than full-time. Because when you’re full-time, you have a project, tasks, a team, and you just follow them and know that you’ll get a fixed amount of money at the end of the month, life is easier.

«It’s different in freelancing — the more orders you take, the more you earn. And when this „tap of new orders“ opened, there are a lot of them now, I repeat, from the States, I realized that practically every hour of my time, every second of my time was monetized,» she says.

The girl was motivated by good earnings, so she consciously chose to work as much as she could. «I didn’t burn out and didn’t give up, because each of those 10 hard hours was paid, decently. I don’t regret it, it was a fun experience, now it’s different, but back then I just harnessed myself and plowed in so as to earn experience, a reputation, a rating on the site, and earn money, put it aside for a financial cushion,» says the IT professional.

Now, when the goal has been achieved and the house is being modernized through renovations, Victoria has reduced her workload — Vika deliberately takes fewer orders, has reached a medium-stable income that suits her, and is trying to maintain a work-life balance in order to settle down in life in Ukraine after six years of emigration.

Carpathian village

Victoria bought the house in June of this year, but she started buying when she was still living abroad. She admits that she never had her own home, and she was very tired of renting apartments and moving, so she decided to buy real estate for which she had the funds. «I returned to Ukraine in May, but I knew that I would be back in six months. And I was considering different options for buying real estate. So I looked at all this in advance. And I found this house about 3-4 months ago,» says the investor.

Vika’s new home is located in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. «There’s not much land, only 12 acres in total. That is, it’s a house and a small vegetable garden. It suits me just fine, because I’m not going to do farming and plant hectares of potatoes. But I will have some kind of salad set, such as basil, arugula, tomatoes, fresh cucumbers. It’s fun. I like working in the ground,» the specialist admits.

Now her house is a base to which she can return from trips and meetings, where she can store her things instead of transporting them from apartment to apartment.

«Now I know that if World War III starts, I will have a place where I can call home,» she says.

However, Victoria does not call her move final. «I do not consider this move to the village as the finish line, as the fact that now I will live in the village forever, now this is my destiny. I think that I can go to Italy to live for a couple of months, or go to my sister in Canada to live for a couple of months. I can go to Frankivsk to live if it is difficult and sad for me in the winter. I do not make any promises or limits to myself. I just have a house. It is just in the village. The village is 15 km from Frankivsk,» the girl says.

Basket of rural insiders

Vika admits that everything is fine in her new apartment. And the girl is very lucky with her neighbors.

The girl was ready for rural life, as she often visited her grandmother in the village as a child. «I understand how everything works — how to dig a vegetable garden, where water, electricity, and a toilet are taken. I have all the communications in my house. And I will complete what is missing. I am not afraid of anything and everything is clear,» the girl says.

For now, she’s just enjoying the fact that she now has her own home that she can customize.

«I denied myself this pleasure for many years. And now I enjoy it, buying all sorts of funny things for my home,» admits Vika.

She spent the whole summer in her new home and admits that the land now brings pleasure. «Nature, smells, sounds. and beautiful surroundings around my village, very much with the hills of the Carpathians. I get pleasure from this, because I went into this very consciously, understanding what I was going for and what awaited me. It is better to solve difficulties in my own home than in a rented apartment, it is much more pleasant,» says the specialist.

Rural IT is possible

Victoria is ready to transform and modernize the village and change the perception of rural everyday life. «In general, it seems to me that our society has such an attitude towards the village that it is something so backward, something that was left there 100 years ago. Yes, many older people, pensioners, they really live with an idea of how everything was before, according to their own rules, traditions, and so on. But this does not mean that there is no civilization there. Everyone has water, gas, air conditioners, sewage, Internet, satellite TV, renovated apartments, underfloor heating, three types of lawn mowers, two types of heating, solar panels, automatic lawn irrigation, and so on. That is, just like in the city — the same story,» she shares her observations. Just like in the city, Victoria admits, in the village you can see both deep poverty and narrow-mindedness, and modern technologies and development.

«I have high-speed cable internet. My WiFi router reaches all the way to the kindergarten. It’s enough. I sit there under a tree, correspond with clients. Now the village is not about Christianity and only knitting sheaves. You can live a wonderful modern life in the village. I have delivery to my house, „Nova Poshta“ works. Young people who work in Frankivsk have built themselves cool houses and live a modern life, going to theaters, concerts, traveling. And I have the opportunity to work remotely from the village. This is a trend,» says Vika.

She sees many advantages in her decision. First, buying a house in the village is really cheap now. Second, there is an opportunity to sleep without the air worries of a big city. Third, in nature, in peace, the nervous system stabilizes.

Ambition for development

In the future, freelancer Victoria plans to launch her own agency and develop her business. «I perceive freelancing as entrepreneurship. That is, it is an activity that requires daily organizational skills, starting from finding clients, from sales, from marketing, continuing with the work itself, project management, post-communication with the client, paying taxes — all this is done by a freelancer,» she explains. Therefore, the IT professional assumes that she can launch her own agency. «I don’t see a ceiling, I will develop as an entrepreneur in this sense,» she notes.

Victoria also doesn’t mind repeating her experience of intensive work.

«If there is a project where I can earn $500 a day, I will 100% commit to this marathon. While there is such an opportunity, you need to take this money,» she says.

Making money, adds Victoria, is very pleasant. «You should not be afraid to sell yourself more expensively. When I went freelance, I deliberately went to the American market in order to consciously receive more checks for the same work. And it turned out that I can sell my services twice as expensive as in the Ukrainian market. And people are willing to pay,» she says.

According to Victoria, all the best things we dream of are outside our comfort zone. «So, you have to go outside your comfort zone. It’s always scary, almost always difficult, almost always requires extra effort, tension, stress, nerves. But there is no other way to get more than we have now,» she sums up.

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