Musings and misadventures of an expat enterpreneur

I've been in Kiev for a month already

anelson October 11, 2018 #ukraine

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been in Kiev now for exactly one month. Time as flown by, too fast for my taste in fact. It seems like so little has been accomplished so far, but in fact thinking back look at what’s been done:

It’s hard to describe just how quickly one adapts to a new place, even as foreign as this one is to Americans. A month ago I was standing on the balcony in my big, modern, fancy apartment, looking down at the city I was about to leave. At the time, it seemed like I would surely miss my place, my car, my city, all the conveniences of home. Strangely, one month hence, I never even think about my old home. I don’t long for any of it, and I certainly don’t want to go back. I’ve adapted well enough to my life here that I’m comfortable, and I feel fortunate to have this opportunity to build something new in Ukraine.

Another surprise for me is just how quickly I got used to being unemployed. The burdens of my former job were always foremost on my mind, either looming on the horizon as obligations I had to perform, or anxieties anticipating future calamities. That was almost two months ago, and now it seems silly to think about. Why did I care so much about such trivialities? Why mark time doing a job I didn’t like, just because the money was good and I could work from home? In almost every story of a professional quitting or being fired from their high-stakes job, the protagonist inevitably experiences the same epiphany, but for some reason experiencing it myself takes me by surprise.