Eastern Europe Horror + Tiny Update.

Since I’ve started writing this update, a lot has happened. I’m no longer physically living in the exact location as before and can no longer be found spending my time with the same group of people. (My P.O Box stays the same as it’s not yet too much of a hassle for me to drive there.) This massive rift and move, coupled with the incredible stress in my home/family life situations caused by factors outside of anybody’s control and constantly keeping up with news regarding what’s happening in my ancestral home overseas, has broken my brain for a bit. After more months of turmoil and anxiety than I can count on both hands, life has finally offered me a fresh start, so I can now sit down and write for a bit.

It’s been hard trying to get anything done, but you have to keep chugging along and doing at least a crawl on your worst days. When I started this project, I made a pact with myself that I would have no zero-days, and I meant it… even if that means just writing down a tiny note on a napkin for something I have to do later. Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy lately that most of my days have been looking like near-zero days. Still, I have to celebrate even the small wins to keep myself going.

So, since the last update, I’ve added:

• A Music and Audio Roadmap for the project.
• Buttons to help out on all of the roadmaps.
• Added more content in general to all roadmaps and updated all progress bars with new progress.

Now that these snap updates are out of the way, I’d like to talk about what’s happening overseas a little bit and my fears about everything, and how I just tried to do my part.

I’m sure we all remember when we first heard about Russia invading Ukraine in the same way that we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when The Twin Towers fell. Like the shot heard around the world. Same impact. At least for those of us who have family there and who legitimately thought this would signal the beginning of World War 3.

Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. As of me writing this now, the war has been going on there for about 100 days.

The night it happened, I woke up from a crazy nightmare to a series of events that I still clearly remember to this day. It was 3 or 4 am or so, and when I looked at my phone, I saw backlogged messages from my mom throughout the night saying that her car alarm wouldn’t stop going off, and she wasn’t sure what was happening with it. It prevented her from sleeping all night, and suddenly, she looked at her phone and learned that war had begun and that Russia had invaded our brother to the south. Later, they discovered that the windshield had broken on the car with no real reason why, and it cracking under cold/pressure changes all night was what kept setting the alarm off. So maybe it was some omen or something.

I don’t really have a point in telling anyone this, just to share what happened amidst us learning the war had begun.

Since that day, Ukrainian troops have fought back bravely. Many people were lost, and many friends were gained. I’ve watched able-bodied people leave the States to go and fight to help protect their homeland. I’ve watched elderly people who’ve worked their entire lives here in the States to be able to retire back in their home country comfortably, don army gear, and fight for the beautiful land to which they’d returned after a lifetime away. I’ve lost contact with people, with no clue whether they’re safe or not/ alive or not. I’ve watched update after update from people who attempted to evacuate and stand their ground, hiding away in cities and towns amid bombardment. I’ve exchanged words of helplessness with friends and family regarding how we didn’t know what was going on and still don’t. I’ve watched attempts to contact friends and family in Ukraine with no reply. The same with attempts to reach those in Belarus, but this time, with the connection cutting out as soon as any mention of war was made. It’s been a wild ride.

Also since that day, I’ve watched communities here in the US come together in support of the troops there. For safety reasons, I won’t be going into any specifics on anything nor give any correct names on anything. But since that day, the government of Belarus has asked the Belarusian people to partake in something many of the Belarusian people themselves have been vehemently against. I’ve watched people leave here to help out with the war efforts there and I’ve watched them form battalions and fight alongside Ukrainian troops. Here’s an image of such a battalion that recently became incredibly popular online.

The people in this photo are from all over the place, but the guy front-and-center has the Belarusian flag displayed loudly and proudly. Because of his awesome mustache, he became known as “Warstache,” “Belarustache,” or “Freedomstache,” and he’s reached a level of fame that already has artists creating tributes (click here to see an example). If you’d like to learn more about his story and the conversation about everything, feel free to click here.

We here in the States among the community also began helping and supporting a battalion very similar to this one. We can’t do much, but we hold fundraisers every once in a while to help raise money for anything they may need. All we can really hope to do is offer monetary aid. At the latest fundraiser, we held an auction in partnership with a local Belarusan museum and historians’ center (one I’ll get into much later, as I’m actually exploring partnering with them for certain aspects of my project). Representatives from the organization Razom for Ukraine were also there to show their support and friendship with the community. At that auction event, details were given about the battalion we’re sponsoring, their current state of morale, and the exact breakdown of how all of the money was being used. It was incredibly disheartening to hear just how expensive some of the defensive and offensive gear is. I wish I could have given more, but I concretely gave as much as I could afford. I wish I were able to afford more.

All items auctioned off at the event were donated to the museum after the passing of some prominent Belarusian figures here in the US Belarusian community. Many beautiful traditional Slavic embroidery pieces were from their personal collections and pieces they’d made themselves. At least, those were the items that caught my attention the most. On top of everything else, these items belonged to the very same people who helped raise me when I was a child. Who helped shape my understanding of the world and what it should be like and what to strive to make it be like. They belonged to and were made by the people who gave me some of the best memories I’ve ever had in my life. I couldn’t stand to see these items be won by anyone else.

There’s a shirt in there that’s just a regular print t-shirt that I’m not sure if I actually got at the auction or not. Maybe for this one time we can just pretend that I did.

As you can see, the pieces are all absolutely beautiful and masterfully crafted. They’ll all be carefully preserved and digitized in some way or another to be a part of the virtual project here as a tribute to the people who’d created them, as well as the remaining members of the battalion still fighting aggression overseas in the homeland and those of them that have passed. At the very least, the memories they bring forth are absolutely irreplaceable. I just wish I had more money to give to the cause.

That’ll be it for the update for now. I have a lot to figure out regarding many things and a bit of rebuilding and reconnecting to do in my life as a whole.

I wish everyone love and peace.

-K