I’m in my new office!

It’s smaller than my previous one and doesn’t have an exit to a veranda, but I really don’t care. It’s less open to the public, which is all I want.

The problem with the Iran peace deal is that it implies that Israel will abide by its terms. The U.S. is not managing, and never managed in the past, to keep Israel under control. I don’t know what can possibly save the deal from collapsing. It was good, though. The oil and the gas prices started getting very pleasant.

To avoid such debacles in the future, it would be great if the American government sought advice from qualified people who understand cultural differences and regional politics.

One thing I don’t get in Raphael Chirbes’s diaries is that he never seemed to struggle with what to read. Somehow, he always knew what he should be reading next. If only he could reveal his decision-making method, I would find that extremely helpful. There are so many books that require immediate reading that I feel paralyzed by the wealth of choices. Sometimes I don’t even read because I can’t decide what specifically I should be reading.

I am a typical Buridan’s donkey, torn between identically appealing piles of hay. Chirbes wasn’t a decisive person in other areas of his life. He was racked with doubt and goes on and on about his incapacity to make up his mind. I’m a lot more decisive, not to say impulsive, but in this one area I can’t figure out an organizing principle that would make book choices easier.

What Chirbes and I do share is the outsized importance with which we invest in reading. It’s not a thing that we do. It’s the thing. Everything else organizes itself around this thing. I’m not suggesting that everybody should be like that, God forbid, but some people are. It’s great to know that I’m not alone in this.

I have five days total left in the office (not counting the weekends), and I can’t wait to be free. People are driving me up a wall, as if there is a conspiracy to remind me why I don’t want the administrative job anymore.

I don’t even remember anymore what it feels like to not have to write absence request reports for every time I have an appointment and come late into the office. More importantly, I don’t remember what it feels like not to have to care about:

– anybody else’s low-enrolled courses
– unattractive classroom furniture
– forgetfulness
– conflicts with students and colleagues
– tantrums
– vendettas
– dysfunctions and dishonesties.

I have my good-bye ritual for the last day in the office all planned out. I will come in after hours, walk around, and then lock the doors behind me for the last time, knowing that I no longer have to care.

It’s simply that I’m very tired of people. People are not bad people, but there are more people than I need to be around me.

I’m reading the part of Rafael Chirbes’s diaries where he talks about the destruction of the regional cuisines of Europe. Chirbes was a lifelong foodie who edited a culinary magazine for many years. He says that the local rituals surrounding cooking and meal times that had been honed by centuries of the local climate, habits, and community traditions were wiped out within a couple of decades by mass migration.

The middle classes, he says, thought that going into raptures over curries and kebabs made them worldlier and more progressive. They accepted slop on their plates instead of the vibrant, interesting, local dishes because this bought them a self-image of well-travelled sophisticates. The writer lists the food-related rituals and dishes that were lost to the belief that global slop is better than local food art.

Trump ended up helping the Ukrainian war effort yet again by signing the Iran peace deal at this precise moment. Oil prices are dropping off a cliff just as Russia loses one of its main oil refineries. And also, of course, by removing the longstanding American opposition to Ukrainian long-range strikes into Russian territory. What we saw today, and yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, we could have seen in 2022, 2023, 2024. We started seeing it only in 2025.

I have zero interest in whether Trump meant it or didn’t mean it. It’s impossible to know what’s in anybody’s head. Only the results matter. I’m liking these results.

Or, and here is a fresh thought, you can do fitness, home maintenance, personal development, and entertainment together with the kids. They are not in diapers for the entire 18 years, are they? Your kid is there while you’re living your life. These are not separate bins that have to be done separately.

Until the end of this month, I am in a regular office job. Since school let out in May, my daughter has been at work with me every day. And I’m not suffering in any way or suspending any of my regular activities. This is a great learning opportunity for my child because she observes my life and gets important lessons from witnessing my daily behavior. For example, I accidentally forgot to scan a jar of pickles at the store because it was at the bottom of the shopping cart and I didn’t see it. The next time we were at the store, I made a point of scanning a jar of pickles twice because, as I explained to my child, stealing is wrong. No amount of lectures on the importance of honesty could send the message as effectively as having the kid actually witness the parent practicing these principles on a daily basis.

In addition, once the kid is past the early childhood stage, she starts helping. The quoted post makes it sound like you have to do all of the housework and everything completely by yourself, even when the kids are teenagers. But that’s nuts. A family can’t run this way. The normal situation is when everybody contributes and does that gladly.

As for working out, kids love physical activity. I’ve never done as much physical activity in my life as I do with my child because she enjoys it and constantly encourages me to do something active. Even with babies, there are strollers for running, there are bikes with attachments for toddlers. There are all kinds of things. N bought a yearly membership at the local trampoline park and goes there regularly with Klara. He wouldn’t go by himself because a middle-aged man jumping on the trampolines by himself would be creepy. He is in the best shape of his life since the time when he quit martial arts. Yesterday, we spent the evening playing badminton in the driveway, and again, this is something we probably wouldn’t be assed to do without our child’s encouragement.

Yes, your lifestyle changes a lot when the kids are very little. But what people seem to forget is that this early stage is not that long. Gradually, you get all of your favorite activities back and gain a new, very eager partner to participate in them.

I was afraid of having children because everybody, including my own mother, told me endlessly that my life would end and would never be fun again. And it was all completely untrue. We should share stories about how having kids is great and actually enhances your life and makes all of your favorite activities even better. Because it’s true. In my kid, I have a personal trainer, a stylist, a decorator, a dietician, a conversation partner, and a wonderful witness to my life. And yes, it got hairy for a bit some years ago when she learned to get out of her bed and developed a habit of visiting me several times in the middle of the night, hovering over my bed. But no kid does that for 18 years straight.

Of course, people are going to say, “Ha ha, wait until she’s a teenager, and she will not want to spend time with you at all.” But that’s crap. My sister’s daughter is sixteen. She has a job, a boyfriend, and a very successful dancing career. I have not met a happier, better-adjusted, more normal teenager in my life. And guess what? She loves spending time with her mother. She thinks her mother is mega cool. They have a very profound relationship and spend tons of time together. And yes, she’s a normal teenager, so sometimes she gets pissy, moody, and grumpy. So what? The relationship is still there, and it’s still amazing.

My own father died when he was seventy and I was in my forties. Until the day he died, spending time with him was one of the most enjoyable things in my life. So no, it doesn’t go away when children grow up, or it doesn’t have to.

Ultimately, it’s such a short sacrifice of a couple of years of disrupted sleep and having to lug around a heavy backpack with kids’ things to gain such a wealth of joy, love, and amazing experiences.

Observing the events depicted in my previous post and contrasting them to what happened in Iran, we have to conclude that the U.S. military is grievously, woefully behind in what concerns modern warfare.

The U.S. military was never much good, having lost every war it participated in for a hundred years. The U.S. won in World War II only as a result of gifting half of Europe to Stalin. (If you believe that this is untrue, then you must think that half of Europe was handed over to Stalin for absolutely no gain. That makes the situation worse. So take your pack.)

The defeat in Iran is, of course, strategic in the sense that the initial plan was stupid and not grounded in reality. The idea that the Iranian people would rise up if the leadership of the country were eliminated was moronic, and as we all have seen, nothing like this remotely happened. On the military level, the war was waged in the most unproductive, outdated, ridiculous way, where extremely expensive missiles were used for no purpose and no visible gain. There was an outlandish degree of gullibility in regards to Israel.

None of this matters by itself because Iran is utterly unimportant both to our country specifically and at the global level. But for our future preparedness to defend ourselves and advance our interests, this should be an enormous wake-up call. With the truly outlandish budget that our military has, it should be able to produce better results. Or any results other than a humiliating defeat at the hands of some 3rd-rate silly theocracy

If people think I am being harsh, I recommend they read the MOU between the US and Iran. It’s capitulation, and Iran is not the one capitulating. We are extremely fortunate that this unpreparedness was revealed in such a minor, unimportant conflict. There is a great opportunity for learning and improvement, and I hope that opportunity is used.

We never saw Ukrainian attacks of this kind on Russian territory during the Biden administration because Biden didn’t allow them. Or whoever was there in reality instead of Biden.

Now, on the other hand, the destruction of the Russian oil industry and military infrastructure by long-distance precise Ukrainian strikes is a daily occurrence. Neither civilians nor cultural objects are ever attacked. I personally do not support that, but that’s how Ukraine is choosing to conduct its retaliation strikes.

This is exactly how I ended up with diabetes.