Everybody is doing “2014 in Review” series, listing the subjects they blogged about in the departing year. But I post so much that I can hardly remember any of it. So instead of the regular year in review, I will remind you of some posts that, I believe, represent each month of the passing year.

January 2014: The year started with a discussion of what makes immigrants so successful (yes, as I said many times, “immigrant” is the only collective identity I value and am proud of). I also shared a very painful thing students did to me.

February 2014: Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea. I had trouble convincing people that it was important. N and I started looking for a house to buy and I discovered how hard it was for me to let go of my Ukrainian peasant origins. I was also reading Tony Judt and discussing racism and xenophobia in the USSR.

March 2014: We did our self-care and happiness challenge and it was fun. I visited Montreal and fell in love with beautiful, doll-like Lola. And people kept offending me with their incapacity to understand what was happening in Ukraine.

April 2014: I started my Bildung series that were wildly popular with readers. There was also a funny pro-Russian protest in the city where I was born. And I also met the Happy Hedgehogs mansion for the first time ever.

May 2014: I got my driver’s license and met my very first car for the very first time. I also discovered that Gen-Xers are total squares when compared to the wild and spoiled boomers.

June 2014: We finally moved and I almost died of exhaustion but still created a beautiful first dinner at the new place. And I started my endless series of posts on the collapse of the nation-state with this post written on a sleepless night between bouts of feverish packing.

Jule 2014: The blog’s readers helped me figure out what TPing a house was all about. I was supervising my contractor and engaging in profound philosophical talks with him. And N forced me to erupt in a string of ““WTF STFU LOL KGB FSB USSR but WTF???”

August 2014: I threw my very first party and it was a great success. The party made me think about social graces a lot. I also wrote about the disease of patriotism.

September 2014: I tried to get in touch with Anastasia Stogova but it didn’t work and tried figuring out the collapse of the nation-state.

October 2014: N and I attempted to celebrate Halloween but failed abjectly. But I also analyzed Putin’s extremely important speech and excelled. We also had an interesting discussion of corruption.

November 2014: I suffered because of looking like a vampire. My new phone was starting to learn my language and Kuzechka explored Amsterdam.

December 2014: I started answering questions on the USSR and shared the uplifting story of the heroes of Donetsk Airport.

This was a great blogging year. The blog readership grew by the standard 40,000 hits this year (that’s how it is every year since I stopped doing any self-promotion or commenting on other blogs), reaching 693,000. We gained some really great regular readers and commenters and lost a single reader to a ban. But this is something who had been asking for it for years. Smug, condescending folks without a trace of self-irony annoy me. 

My blogging goal (not for next year but eventually) is 1,000,000 hits per year. We are at almost 700,000 as it is, so it’s definitely doable. I’ll try to think of ways to bring that goal closer.

I’m sure the next blogging year will be even better. Happy New Year!!!

I have a cool party trick. I can guess how people vote based on the way they relate to me. Right now, Ukraine is constantly on the news, and there are two kinds of reactions I get when people hear I’m from Ukraine.

1. “Ah, you are from Ukraine! Can you tell me what is going on there?” (This person always turn out to be a Republican).
2. “Ah, you are from Ukraine! Of course, what’s crucial to remember is that. . . [a long lecture ensues.]” (And this is usually a Democrat. If the lecture is especially long, loud, and obnoxious, it’s a Libertarian).

This started back in grad school. People who treated me like a regular human being all voted for Bush. And people who either ignored me or condescended to me all didn’t vote for Bush. This was a complicated situation for me since I detest Bush.

In general, Republicans are more comfortable with me as an immigrant. I can’t think of a single insult I got from them as an immigrant. But there have been many insults – and I mean, many – I got from Liberals. Strangely, the more Liberal they are, the more aggressive their insults get (“You are trash,” “immigrants like you are infecting the water supply in this country,” “you are a mail order bride,” “go back to your country,” “we didn’t ask you to come here,” “you are a tool of capitalist overlords,” “you don’t understand anything,” “it’s because of people like you,” “try to read something to get educated about our history,” “people in your country keep breeding without any concern for the environment*,” and my absolute favorite “you have no idea what things were like in the USSR” from somebody who obviously never visited the USSR or even the continent where the USSR was located).

There is this common misconception that Liberals support immigrants. The thing is, though, that many of them only support those immigrants whom they see on TV weeping at the border crossing. They don’t like us if we can’t be pitied or lectured to. And if we are confident, mouthy, successful, and unlikely to work for them as maids or gardeners, then they don’t really like us. And this is precisely why the cause of giving work visas to graduates of Master’s and PhD programs is championed in the Congress by Republicans. 

I’m a citizen of Canada, so I don’t vote in the US. But if I did, I would obviously vote Democrat. What is sad, though, is that many among the people I’d vote for and with have a visceral rejection of me and my way of being as an immigrant.

* Birth rates in Ukraine are lower than in the US.

Dear friends,

here is a little problem I keep having with the comments. I see comments on this blog from either my app or my WordPress Dashboard.

I don’t see them nested the way you do when you go to a specific thread. As a result, I have absolutely no way of knowing what it is you are responding to when you post things like, “What do you mean?”, “Are you serious?”, “Can you explain that?”, etc. I don’t even know who the question is directed to.

So if you want a response from me (which you might not, and that’s perfectly fine), put the words you are commenting on in quotation marks.

As for the commenting policy on this blog, there is none. And I think that’s a good thing.

Thank you for commenting and have a really amazing New Year’s Eve!