#stas in kyiv

life in kyiv is pretty much back to normal, at least on the surface. kinda feels like lockdown times. no luxuries like cinemas or mcdonalds (i really miss junk food at this point), but also nothing which screams hey we’re at war. you know, except for alcohol being sold only from 11am to 4 pm. and an obligatory couple of air raid sirens a day but who cares about them anymore amirite

last week i got to see my best friend and even went to her place (and to her parents who fed me borshtsh and salo) to boryspil, the satellite city which actual fighting haven’t touched thankfully. the city administration building is all barricaded. they have this red signs with sculls and bones near it “warning, mines” - they’re ours.

i landed two jobs, as a freelance writer (in english, for a blog of an architectural CGI company, pays really well for the amount of work i’m actually doing, still procrastinate as hell) and kinda as an art teacher. it’s an art studio i first went to in 2015 when i only started learning academic drawing. and then i got my aforementioned best friend a job as an administrator there. and now she just kinda shoved me into teaching classes couple of days a week bc not one of the actual qualified art teachers who work there are back in kyiv now. (and i’m really really unqualified in academic drawing and even less so in oil painting, but my friend haven’t had any income all these two months bc the studio obviously wasn’t working so now we’re just trying to keep things afloat with the couple of students which are willing to attend. some of them are preparing to enrol art schools this year. in kyiv. like yeah good luck with that. i’m so glad im both an adult and dropped out of my art school before the war)

that day i went to boryspil with my best friend i had too much to drink and broke out crying for like the third time since the war started bc part of me (a large part) doesn’t want to be an Ukrainian Artist or rebuild the country or any other patriotic bullshit, i just want to live normal life, get a proper salary, transition, get a wife, you know. the proper old europe stuff yall arent valuing near fucking enough. but if i stay here it’ll never be just normal, and if i emigrate it’ll also never be normal, just in other ways. yeah, it’s not fun being a melancholic with a looong history of depression in the times of war. while some people just Do stuff, i still tend to overthink. although to be honest less than i normally did in depressive episodes. 

you know, depression actually prepares you quite well for the war: you’re way too familiar with this feeling that everything is wrong and nothing will be okay ever again and still you have to live somehow, and you do live somehow, it’s just that this time this feeling Nothing Will Be Okay Ever Again is not subjective, it’s a thing your whole generation in this country is subjected to. yeah.

ughh i wish i had a happier note to end this rant with?

well i’m drawing and painting quite a lot and it still brings me joy and i have this les mis project im doing and i actually plan to do more traditional paintings and start trying to build up my portfolio and maybe hit some open calls and shit to become A Proper Artist and that’s a happier note for me.

“A Ukrainian Woman” oil and acrylic on cardboard, 32x46cm

“don’t let the existential dread set it” mission failed

but at least i have a cool huge coat in which i feel very picturesque

spring 22

going to tumblr these days is funny bc it’s the only social media where i can actually get a Distraction from the war stuff and it’s nice scrolling through your feed and seeing fictional gay men instead of brutally murdered people but at the same time it drives me fucking insane that there’re people who can just keep living their normal lives

tried to draw myself a new profile pic managed to draw - predictably - only a “dead inside” self-portrait

if someone wants a more immersive experience of what sirens in kyiv are like