So I went to Arestovich’s website and purchased his seminars as a way of donating to the Ukrainian army. I didn’t want anything from the seminars themselves because I hate videos. And recorded Zoom lessons? I’ll be tortured with them in hell.

Still, out of curiosity, I decided to take a glance on the videos. They turned out to be so good that I watched for 5 hours straight (I can watch in one language while writing , grading, and emailing in another). As a result, I feel better than I have at any time since February 23.

Of course, now I feel guilty. The point was to donate money, not to make myself feel better. Maybe I should buy another seminar to learn how not to feel guilty.

One that I watched is about how stay focused and not let anybody distract you from what is important to you. Really good. I also started one on strategic planning.

My agenda right now is insane. I have three public appearances next week, and that’s before I leave for a conference on Thursday. After I come back, there are three more public appearances in the next two weeks. All but two of them have to do with Ukraine, even the conference talk. And the biggest public appearance I’m doing is supposed to be about the future of democracy worldwide, and what are the chances that the audience won’t want to make it about Ukraine?

Most appearances are in person but I’ll probably share a link to one of the online ones later.

The appearances are good for me because at least I feel like I’m doing something. Also, when I’m speaking, I’m not crying or freaking out, so that’s good.

Turns out that Alexei Arestovich, the Ukrainian presidential adviser I listen to daily because he calms me down, is a professional psychologist. I keep saying that this guy has a great future as a psychotherapist after we win the war, and now I discover he already is one. Arestovich can deliver the worst news in a way that makes people feel stronger.

Like Alex Berenson during COVID, Alexei Arestovich is saving my nervous system during the war. And by the way, there’s an easy way to donate to the Ukrainian Army through Arestovich’s school at apeiron.school. It takes Google Pay and Apple Pay.

Now let’s hear about how Russians don’t support the war but were forced to attend and jump up and down with joy because if they hadn’t shown up, the big, scary Putin would have killed them all dead.

Ah, I know. They were saving the grandma by showing up to this event.

What’s happening in Ukraine today already happened in 2014, if at a smaller scale. The murder of civilians, the bombing of peaceful villages, Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble. What was different was that nobody knew or cared. And those who did invariably cheered on the Russians. The New York Times and the NPR were publishing the most ridiculous Russian propaganda about the utterly invented persecution of “ethnic Russians” in Ukraine, calling Ukrainians Nazis, etc.

That was the time when I was going through a terrible personal catastrophe, and then the invasion began. I remember walking around in a daze, petrified by the horror, and nobody around had a single kind word because they read in the New York Times that Ukrainians were Nazis, so it served them right.

It’s tragic that it wasn’t enough for the West to see the destruction of Donetsk, Lugansk and Ilovaysk and that Kharkiv and Mariupol had to be reduced to rubble for it to become unfashionable to cheer on Russia. I’m grateful that now, at least, people have managed to shake off the pro-Russian daze. Not all, of course, but most people have. But the cost of this realization didn’t need to be this high.

It’s a very strange feeling to see a completely correct evaluation of russischen Barbaren in German. It’s weird to realize that russischen Barbaren have finally managed to displace deutsche Barbaren in Ukrainian historical memory as the most recent evildoers.