About Travelogion: A project of Self discovery

The name is made of two words - Travel and Logion.

Travel: because life is a journey through time, space and experiences (which seem to be by turns good, bad and indifferent, depending on which way the wind blows, it seems.)

Logion: because it means “word” or “oracle” in Greek. It also appears in ancient writings and refers to communications of divine origin. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, logia meant Scriptures that were inspired by the divine, and Logion is a saying attributed to Jesus Christ, especially one not recorded in the canonical Gospels so Logion could be literally translated as the “Word of God”.

If we put them together, we get something like a life journey with God, and I guess it doesn’t hurt that the name looks a little bit like Travelog too.

This name means something to me because my personal journey to God has brought together the two disparate sides of my personality and united them.

About Me

What is a story without protagonist…

My name is Denislav Denev. I live in New York City, which is an interesting place, but I leave it a lot to travel to other interesting places. Originally from Bulgaria, I moved to the USA in the early 2000’s with $300 in my pocket and one pair of shoes with holes in the heels. From humble beginnings I followed my passion for psychology and earned a bachelor’s degree from a University in Oklahoma. From Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung, Watson and Skinner, I was and still am fascinated by philosophies and theories that explore the topographical view of the mind. I suppose that means I like internal geography as much the external.

I grew up in the 80’s when Bulgaria was still a communist country and I’ve never forgotten how things were back then. How could I? Spending my childhood years in a communist society left a strong imprint on my psyche.

I still remember the long nights spent sitting first in electric light, then in candlelight. Two hours on, two hours off. We would share stories and laughs while gazing at the building across the street, their windows well lit up, our neighbors enjoying their electricity while they could. Then after two hours, the pattern reversed. Our windows blazed into life and theirs would vanish in darkness.

Bulgarian communism meant that we learned to sacrifice our personal comforts for the greater good. This lean regimen was there to preserve the county’s resources, and in our hearts and minds we knew this made us all equal citizens—we were the building blocks of our utopian society.   

Those were the days when we only saw oranges and bananas at the store around the new year holidays and Christmas was not celebrated since religion was considered “poison to the minds of people,” so our spirits faced austerity too.

After landing in New York, I discovered my second passion–Real Estate. I worked for many different companies then started my own firm. I’ve built a successful real estate business, specializing in real estate investment sales and property management. I’ve done well because my passion sets me apart from my competition, but as much as I love its obvious financial benefits, I wonder if I also love it because a career in bricks and mortar feels tangible and ‘real’, like part of a search for something solid? 

I have been doing this for more than a decade now, starting in residential, moving to commercial real estate sales then on to boutique development. I know NYC’s neighborhoods intimately and extensively and I learned how to spot investment opportunities and negotiate contracts by doing it day in and day out.

Our culture tells us that you can get what you want if you work hard and push yourself somewhere new, outside your comfort zone, and I had come from a place where everything was rationed. So, I immersed myself in building my business and increasing my financial prosperity. I became a money-driven machine who was looking for freedom. I thought that freedom meant being able to do whatever I wanted, and that money could buy it, but working hard and making more money made me feel less free. It isolated me from people and the things that really matter.

Lucky for me, in 2018 I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, which is normally just about the least lucky thing you can be diagnosed with, but in my case, it brought me to a big turning point. The prospect of imminent death caused me to re-evaluate life because it suddenly dawned on me that I wasn’t going to live forever, which isn’t as stupid as it sounds. Everybody knows that the party has to end eventually, but we see it as a distant speck on the horizon that we can always put off worrying about until tomorrow. But then death sends an appointment reminder and things change.

For me, everything came into sharp focus. Priorities realigned. I knew I could no longer keep putting important things off to a future that might not be there.

In 2018, my old self died and was born again, and looking through new eyes, I wanted to make every second count. So, I proposed to my then girlfriend, endured 8.5 hours of surgery, then we traveled to 7 countries, hosted a traditional Chinese wedding with 500+ attendees and made a promise to keep life alive among other things. 

My wife, Mei loves travel as much as I do. So much, in fact, that she quit her job when I did so we could travel together and experience other cultures, connect with the people we encountered and sample their foods and ways of life. I believe that traveling is a process of self-discovery as much as a physical one, and that by mapping the physical territory, we develop a better map of meaning for how to live life. 

Since the brain tumor steered my life in a new direction, I’ve been looking for the causes of brain tumors. I am grateful for the medical staff at NYU Langone and their constant assistance, but neither my neurosurgeon, nor anybody else could give me a clear answer about what might have triggered the growth of a mass in my brain. I’m still curious to find out, and something I’ve come to believe is that brain tumors sometimes form as result of trauma. They show up as a physical metaphor for trauma and are the body’s attempt to signal that something catastrophic has taken place: the emotional equivalent of a pearl in an oyster.