impostor313131

I am 36 and I have been thinking about suicide a tiny bit lately. But I will share my perspective with you, hopefully to draw a picture how different circumstances can be. I live in Ukraine and my optionality in life collapsed the day the war started. I had a good life, good income and traveled a lot. I used to dream of a career in big tech and life in different countries just to give it a taste. Now I am not able to leave the country because I am a male of conscription age. My city is being attacked by drones daily, and ballistic rockets a few times a month. Witnessing your country getting wrecked with rockets and drones is hell of an experience. Businesses, electricity plants, infrastructure, gas stations becoming rubble. There is also little hope in a resolution of this soon. I have to work on a job which provides a reservation from military service if I don’t want to fight, otherwise I will be picked up on the street to join the military.

I have it so much better than a lot of my countrymen, but holy shit does this suck and it is not getting better anytime soon. The hopelessness gets you.

Software engineering is one of my last remaining pillars of life remaining more or less intact. At least I get to write some code and make computers do things.

Life is a strange thing.

I dream about a newer car like this. I know it’s rough out there with subscription service for seat heating and over engineered overpriced unreasonably large cars being the norm, but maybe there is a niche where pragmatism survived? A Toyota maybe? Anyone know?

You are not alone in this my friend.

As a Ukrainian, seeing how US sometimes romanticizes Russia and takes active interest in its culture is heartbreaking. But I guess having an ocean between you and the continent with Russia does that to you.