Welcome, apprentice, to Practice Space!

What de heck is it?

Practice Space is a blog and newsletter created by Andrei Atanasov, a memoirist and fiction writer from Bucharest, Romania.

Right, that’s pretty vague. Care to elaborate?

In short, I publish essays.

I like to think of Practice Space as a dojo of the mind, in the sense that this is where I come to do my thinking.

To essay is to attempt, according to the English Dictionary, so here you’ll find a collection of attempts to figure things out, to answer questions, to find out how and why this or that thing changed my life.

What you’ll also find here is a vibrant community of beautiful people, who flock here every two weeks to learn and converse. You know, like you’d find in one of those regular dojos.

Every post is designed to lead towards further discussion. I want to spark your imagination and engage you in conversation. You’re just as important to this as I am.

How often will I hear from you?

Regular issues drop every two weeks, on Friday. If something notable occurs in-between, I might tackle it in a smaller installment, called an Interlude.

So where should I start?

I wrote this introductory post to make things easier for you:

Interlude: Introducing My Reflection

Andrei Atanasov

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Jun 30

Hello, Practitioners! The changing of the seasons is upon us. Slowly but consistently, the mellow breezes of spring are giving way to the overbearing heat and the occasional, childishly aggressive rains of midsummer. This time of year, the pace of life slows down, and I always feel …

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It’s a bit on the longer side, I know, but I think it serves to make a pretty good first impression.

Still, if you’d like a quick bite before you commit, here are a few of my most popular essays:

No. 17 - Three Pieces

Andrei Atanasov

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Jul 29

I don’t remember the first time I left my country. When I was little, my parents and I did a lot of sightseeing. After Communism fell, the world opened up, and they wanted to see it all. They believed travel was integral to one’s education, and looking back, I think that’s true.

It was on a trip to Austria that I received my first lesson in darkness.

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No. 14 - The Lords of Summer

Andrei Atanasov

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Jun 2

As a boy, I had a friend. By virtue of being my only friend, he was also my best friend. We shared a first name, and almost every afternoon, although we’d spent all day at school together, we grabbed our phones and dialed each other’s landline number. Often we’d call at the same time, which prevented both of us from get…

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No. 16 - On Talking With Strangers

Andrei Atanasov

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Jul 14

Eleven months ago, an old man told me that he missed his daughter. “She’s forty-three now,” he said, “and she works at one of the banks near here. But she won’t have anything to do with me. My wife saw to that, all right.” As he spoke, tears coursed freely on his cheeks. He had been reigning in those tears for a long, long time, it looked like.

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Some Final Thoughts

For me, the name of the game is variety. From week to week, I’d like to surprise you and make you think, and maybe see the world a little differently or pay a little more attention to what’s happening around you.

Welcome aboard. I hope you’ll stick around!

-A.