War#
War happened. Personally, I didn’t believe that would happen. But my judgement was just wrong. And the reasons for that were quite simple: I did not know both histories of Ukraine and Belarus, I did not know what Russia is (but I despised its nature and culture long prior to that knowledge). I wasn’t even aware the war was happening since 2014, for 8 years before the full-scale invasion.
The first months were very turbulent, mostly due to an unusual situation: we did not know how to handle war. Local people I knew, they took three sides: one would fly the country immediately, another one would fight tooth and nail, and the last one would neither fly nor fight. Us included. Not that we were sold on this ‘the situation isn’t that obvious as it may seem’ bullshittery, rather we had our very small kids (Hnat was less than a year old, and Nadia did not even speak and understand what happens), so we left the city to a countryside, to figure out what to do.
Andrii left the country with his family, at the very first day, within the first hours. Lviv is located 50 km from a Polish border, so that’s effectively a one hour drive.
I was trying to reach him out within that first day, and that was exactly the moment they were crossing the border. I had a whole mix of feelings. An understanding (he won’t fight for the country), a relief (they’re safe), a disappointment (it’s always comforting, knowing you’re not alone).
First months, we all were detached from each other. Me and my family, and all others. A huge amount of people reached out to me, asking me whether I was safe. Curiously, there were just two people from Russia: my ex-girlfriend from Bashkiria and my cousin from the suburbs of Moscow. And just one childhood friend reached out later. Not a single colleague from Moscow (I worked there for ~5 years, before realising ruzzia is a shit place not worth working with). Not a single relative (except the cousin). Nobody. I tried to reach out them, yelling at them to do something, trying to explain their country would come to a catastrophe. They were both indifferent to my sufferings and their own country’s fate. ‘What can I do, we’re a tiny people’ they say. That’s their life motto at Russia.
- I write more about the war in my separate blog, it’s called war.basil.
Turned out, as we know it in March 2025, you can invade a neighbouring sovereign nation and face no consequences. All you need to do is to hire a bunch of suckers to work as the American government.
Job Seek#
A few months later, I convinced Anrdii to come back to business. There were clients waiting for him, and his business had some meaning. Why give up on it?
His family stayed at the neighbouring Polish city, so they weren’t far from Lviv. They weren’t in any danger (yet?), but Lviv was mostly untouched by war, apart from the Air Raid Alerts.
There was this apartment he was paying for, there was me, who returned home.
Technically, I lost my job. Nobody fired me, and I was coming to the company, help here and there, yet it was obvious the things would not be developed in the nearest future. I stayed helping, mostly as a volunteer. So I started seeking employment or any other projects.
- I mostly not do projects since 2021, due to dedicating my free (from work) time for the family. So I was seeking a company to join.
I wasn’t ready for a sudden job hunt adventure, so I was pretty slow to move in that direction. I wrote more on that in my Résumé series. Particularly, starting with the 2nd story.
Renewal#
Anrdii returned. I was happy about that! Now I had my company, a friend next door. He was busy with his microgreens, restaurants returned to normal functioning, I was doing things with my computer.
At this point, it felt like I joined him in his adventure. Mostly as an observer.
- I explored some new cultures with him.
- I joined him with his deliveries. He did all his deliveries on his sport bicycle. I had a sport bicycle too, so we were riding together. He did his deliveries, I was making him company. Nick would join us for some bike rides too. At some especially warm days, they even rode to some nearest lake to swim. I did not join them, realising I’d be exhausted after such a long distance, and I needed my energy for other things.
- Out of the rest of my furniture, we designed some custom tools for him, for the farm.
- Sometimes, he would ask me to water the plants. That could skip him coming for just that. I lived the next door, he needed to perform a half an hour bike ride to do just that.
I spent the summer of 2022 exploring how one would seek job opportunities. Turned out, I was never on the market and I did not realise that.
I could openly despise Linked-fucking-In, and its pimp Microsoft too. I could despise the idea of résumés, all that shit.
So I spent the summer researching the market. I worked through my resumes, I started making my webiste (this one), and I prepared my portfolio, even the set of them. For different roles and industries, to show the NDA works I cannot show to the public, but can show in private.
Also, I started publishing some of my (mostly pet) projects, starting with Skriv. I published it to Behance, and prepared a couple of other posts. But I never published this queue, Andrii distracted me with the farm— by leaving it to me.
But that’s the next story.
Reply by Email