A neoliberal government doesn’t seek legitimacy in the eyes of the voters by improving their standard of living. Instead, it offers to protect them from unseen, diffuse, deathly and global threats.

Terrorism, pandemics, global warming, disinformation. The funny thing is that this is precisely the kind of threat that a national government can do absolutely nothing about. They exist beyond national borders and cross them easily.

We are supposed to be so grateful for the promise of protection from these unseen dangers that we’d happily agree to the drop in our standard of living. It’s a bad bargain but we agree to it because we are scared.

Here’s a great exercise to learn important stuff about yourself. Many people try to wrestle themselves into activities or lifestyles that aren’t for them but they have convinced themselves they need to be following this erroneous path. It helps to track one’s natural inclinations to figure out what the correct direction is.

The exercise: give yourself 6 hours of solitary, guilt-free do-nothingness at home. Set aside those 6 hours as the time when you’ll do whatever you fancy at that moment. No work, no chores, no to-do list. Only the pleasing, enjoyable stuff.

Caveat: If all you want to do is scroll social media on your phone, lock the phone in a time-release jar. If you find yourself unable to do that, it means you are living in a way that your brain finds intolerable, which is why you use the phone as a coping mechanism.

The result: Usually, the real you starts to emerge by the end of the second hour. People often say, “if only I had time, I’d go back to the violin” or “I’d learn to cook” or “I’d read all day”. But they are wrong. What they actually want to be doing is something completely different.

Important: Pay particular attention to which part of the body you engage in this activity. Is it the hands? The ears? The legs? The eyes? Which of the elements are you trying to gorge on? Air? Water? Earth? This is what you are getting in insufficient quantities and need to integrate into your daily life. On some level, we all know what we need but we turn away from that because we pile on received opinions that hide reality from us.

The new hire asked me where she can see the descriptions of the courses she will teach. I strained my brain to the maximum capacity and realized they must be listed in the catalogue.

It never occured to me to read the descriptions of the courses I’ve been teaching. I teach what I feel like and don’t bother not only with descriptions but with the titles. The first semester in this job I was assigned a course titled “Learning a Second Language.” I taught it as “History of Ideas in Spain”. Students were mildly confused at first but it’s a great subject, so why not? I had brilliant reviews in that course.

This coming semester we’ll be teaching that poor old “Learning a Second Language” course as “Ukraine: Language and Culture”. Again, so what? I feel like doing it, so I’m going straight ahead.

For people who don’t know: it takes years and 13 levels of bureaucratic review (literally, 13 levels) to create a new course. And then you have to promise to teach it forever. I don’t want to teach anything forever. I get bored. So I teach what I want and pay no heed to what anybody expects.

People should be freer in what they do.

A new austere religious scholar has dropped, and it’s a doozy:

These people, honestly.

Girkin was the Russian gauleiter of Donetsk in 2014. A blood-soaked murderer and warlord. An FSB colonel. He’s responsible for shooting down the passenger flight of Malaysia Airlines. He’s been found guilty of the murder of the 298 passengers of the flight by an international court. And he actually openly accepted responsibility for downing the civilian aircraft. He’s got a warrant against him outside of Russia for war crimes.

From the headline, one might gather that Girkin is some sort of an anti-war peacenik when in reality he’s a murderous bastard of extreme proportions.

It’s midnight, and I’m at the airport waiting to collect a friend arriving from Athens. And tomorrow morning I’ll have to collect a new hire arriving to sign the contract.

I’m way too elderly for all this upheaval.

I hit 60,000 words in my Ukrainian book today. I started on April 4, and yes, this is taking an enormous effort, especially since I’m still struggling with the language.

But 60,000 words, OMG, this is actually happening.

And of course, there’s the very American touch of placing free fresh produce for people to pick up in even the most techie and contemporary places:

God, I love the co-working space. I don’t mind people being around when I work. In fact, I prefer there being people. But I need them to not know me.

It’s completely free to work at the co-working space. And there’s free coffee and even free beer of many different kinds. Free excellent Wi-Fi. Table tennis. Isolated, quiet spaces for zooming. Meeting rooms. Sofas, armchairs of every kind. And it’s huge.

Of course, instead of “accelerator” I could say “co-working space” but I only come here to work alone. My nervous system is collapsing under the weight of the secretary wriggling in discomfort 5 feet away from my door. At the spacious accelerator, nobody knows me or wants anything from me.

I’m back at the accelerator, this time without a group. But before I begin to accelerate I want to share a grievance. Yesterday when I was paying for this original collapsible bag, the store owner who looked like she is in her early sixties brightly informed me that her mother has one just like it.

I still bought it but I feel completely ancient.

Hopefully, the youthful environment of the accelerator will help. On the other hand, I took a vacation day at work to be able to come here and… work. That’s not very youthful.