When renting an office in Kyiv today, one factor that makes an office desirable and the rent higher is whether it’s located next to…

Can you guess?

I heard this today from people in Kyiv. And please don’t say “bomb shelter” because I wouldn’t ask if there weren’t something curious about the answer.

Amazing news! Arestovich says he’s willing to run for president of Ukraine if Zelensky decides not to seek second term. If you think Zelensky has balls, Arestovich has mega balls. And he absolutely despises wokeness, #MeTootery, and all that garbage. He makes fun of that crap so well, it’s a delight to listen. If I ever come across a video of him in English, I promise to link but his audience right now speaks Russian and Ukrainian.

Arestovich is a man with a vision, a founder of his own school of philosophy. It’s as if Zygmunt Bauman came back to life as a young, good-looking military guy. To have somebody of this intellectual caliber as president wouldn’t be new for Ukraine. Back in 1918, the president was a professor of history and the prime minister was one of the best writers in the world.

Why the US can’t come up with a presidential candidate who is a young, good-looking family man, father of 3, and a patriot who defends the nation-state, I don’t know.

Oh, wait…

Of course, Arestovich has an incredible charisma. He often jokes that men keep telling him, “My wife doesn’t go to bed without you.” But it’s true because millions of Ukrainians, including me and N, can’t fall asleep without Arestovich whispering in our ears that everything will be OK.

I’m so happy to be from a country that produces people like Arestovich.

Today’s challenge has to do with developing tolerance for boredom. Stimulating boredom away is a bad habit that often gets in the way of deep work. Or deep life, deep relationship, deep anything. So here’s the task:

Make an effort to notice 3 separate occasions during the day when you felt bored. What was your first impulse when boredom presented itself? Give yourself a couple of minutes to inhabit both the boredom and the feeling. Do you feel restless? Panicky? Angry? What does this feeling most remind you of?

This is a very easy exercise that takes no extra time and practically no effort. All you need to do is notice and explore.

The “COVID statement” we have to include in our syllabi this semester is very crazy, even for an already bizarre genre. It starts by saying that we have no COVID requirements. No social distancing, no mask mandates, no testing. This is all well and good and reflects objective reality, albeit quite needlessly because what’s the point of listing the limitations that don’t exist? “Please note that on our campus it’s not forbidden to eat lunch and there’s no requirement to stand on your head for 3 hours in order to do it.” OK, good to know, moving on now, you cray-cray clowns.

However, after the short paragraph on the lack of COVID reqs, the statement goes nutso-cuckoo-boom-boom and lists, in an increasingly shrill tone, the punishments that – wait for it! – you would receive if there were a mask and testing requirement and you broke it.

Three pages, people! It goes on like this for 3 pages. I changed the font to Times New Roman 9 but it’s still taking up more room that the rest of the syllabus.

It’s as if once people said the word “COVID”, they simply couldn’t stop. They have to go on and on, praying to their one true god.