Before the dawn of December

Well hello all,

It has been soooome time since I posted last and I guess I didn’t need to externalise as much in the last year, nor do I know but I am sentimental about the idea of sending out my thoughts through the ether...

FACTS FIRST

I left Germany because I felt I developed a lot of dead ends in my life there and after a horrendous Christmas or personal destruction, I knew it was time to leave.

For my birthday I went to Kiev, a long time teaching friend had been trying to convince me to come to Kiev for almost 4 years, and as I was running out of options in Germany I decided to through caution to the wind and go for a week.

I will be the first to say I had a good time and it did give me the impetus to pack up and move and shake off the sadness soot.

So by May I had finished an extremely difficult and exhausting pack up of my life and went home to reset and revive in Oz. Three weeks later I arrived in Ukraine. It was quite the hot and sweaty summer and a huge culture shock, which, looking back on I was extremely arrogant about the illusion that I was desensitised after 6+ country moves in my life.

But, there it was - staring me in the face - the whole huge leviathan that is Ukrainian Culture. The fatalism, the apathy, the lack of respect for thing people and places. I breathed it in like Paris during rush hour, a few splutters and coughs of course along the way.

Making routines, settling into patterns and struggling to hold it all together to make a life worth living, it has been all consuming in the last 6 months or so...

I took a breath this week and looked around, I saw the seasons change and felt the cold in the air, the oncoming winter was looming.

I have had some health problems in the last 3 years, most people at my age have. Now inconveniently, one has returned and taken a lot of my strength and energy too...

This month I met a girl who is charming and slippery like an eel, wonderful fun and good company.

This month an old work colleague from Poland came to visit and he had a ball, I could not keep up nor did I want to go out til 4am every night. think he is coming back in a week or so, a curtain call.

FEELINGS

Quite the range of emotions have happened again and again. Why cant I ever learn... haha I have to laugh at myself. Frustration being key here, just the serious challenge of learning yet another language to be terrible at... Disappointment in a promise and a person, a real let down but a full recovery by me. Loneliness, well not so much actually, but more than I ever want ever again...

THOUGHTS

Getting old... just getting old...

SPECULATIONS

At this point I will give Kiev at least a full year and then next summer I will consider my options. I could happily return to the frying pan from the fire and go back to Germany, but I am not at that stage yet.

I could go home get a soul crushing job and buy a few dogs and live anonymously for the rest of my life, actually that sounds great...