Jibber Jabber

[drobicat]

So thank you February for being over. It could have been worse, though. I had my first law-breaking experience which left me with a dirty feeling (and this should mean that there is still hope I will get off this path sooner than make the second step). 

It is snowing and raining outside, although it is supposed to be a day when every one celebrates the beginning of spring (and value of women). I am supposed to be grieving as there is no one to celebrate my value in his particular life, but I am not (which is a true surprise for someone like me). 

Someone has recently asked me if I ever have rest. I do, indeed, but I do not like laziness. I hate lazy people. I do not keep them among my friends. I do not like when people do not know what they want from life, where they are going, and what they wish to get in the end. This aimless wandering around life makes me sick. It does not mean that I am not fun (maybe I am not fun, though, but this is not because of my obsessive goal-orientation). 

When winter ends (especially in a usual ugly way, called "February"), one starts hoping that spring would bring him a world of new opportunities, joy, and happiness, enlightened with sun, love and long days. Well, being pragmatic (NOT pessimist, ugggghr) I think that nothing ever brings anything to anyone. I still have a pile of things to get sorted, and I am not yet sure what I will see under it. 

[drobicat]

February

I hate February. During 30 years of my life experience, I have never had a good February - all bad things that were supposed to come to my life lined behind the door and waited patiently until the clock struck midnight at the last January night and started to come into my life. 

7 years ago I went to an interview which I not only failed, but feel blushingly ashamed to ever remember. One of my ex-colleagues and a good friend says that it has changed my life. It has indeed. Two days before St. Valentines, which I have never liked and failed to celebrate adequately, I came to the bureau feeling devastated after humiliating interview, and thought there was no other person as miserable, unprofessional, stupid, uneducated, and misfit for the job as I was. Two hours later I was sobbing in my boyfriend's car after he picked me from work to go to the movies. That was the last time we ever talked (not counting a zillion messages that followed that day) or met. We broke up then and it took me 2 years to recover after it. 

5 years ago I was planning to stop this "February curse" and was dreaming of a romantic escape in sunny Milan with my next boyfriend, when a friend of both his and mine slipped occasionally that he was going to a romantic trip with his girlfriend (that was me, of course) .... to windy Paris. Ooopsie.

2 years ago I was going through another stressful relationship - that time with my job. Like in any other love affair, there is critical time which tests how ready you are to fight for your relationship. I was not only ready, but extremely devastated and exhausted to carry it further. Every day was an ordeal when my employer asked me to do stuff I did not like or considered useless, and left unappreciated and overloaded with work. When I ended up in tears they called me hysterical and emotional (both of which is true). 

But last year was the biggest. I do believe that whatever we get from the world is suited to test our ability to sustain. Well, I feel like a Greek goddess then. I tried a zillion times to make myself clear to a man, who was (in my careful planning) supposed to be the one and only. And I failed. I tried to explain myself that feeling like a loser does not mean being one. And I failed. I tried to prove to all people around how smart and professional I was. And I failed. 

I still have 23 days to keep up. Good luck to me.

[drobicat]

If there is something undamagemable, undestroyable, eternal in this city - this is glam. In the 90-s the richest people in my neighbourhood either were selling cars or owned a stall at the local market and traded Turkish rubbish there. They had those little man's handbags, which are still the symbol of dubious reputation and bad taste in modern Russia. Then and later Russian rich placed those distinguishing signs of their origins, education and morality on the observation. They never hid them. Women would put on glittering gems as early as for breakfast. They would balance on high heels on icy roads, in the crowded metro or running after the bus. They would put a lot of makeup and wear the latest fashion even if they went for groceries.

I have always thought that it stopped before the recent 2008 crisis. The crisis has not formed their taste, but somehow it became clear that a good restaurant is a place where people primarily go to have lunch or dinner, not to meet sexual partners. That a night club is a place where people go to listen to good music and have fun, not to find a rich spouse. That going outdoors does not mean you are on a fashion battlefield. 

I thought that street photographers, fashion bloggers, travelling across Europe and America - this visual experience added to good education and sincere desire to get further from the generation of people with man's handbags - this would learn Russians to leave with a taste and dignity. 

Yesterday I was waiting for a friend who was running late in one of the best restaurants in the centre of Moscow. The red-lipstick-hostess offered me a table for one hour and a half, and when my friend finally arrived - for another one hour and a half. Friday evening is a busy time - no doubt - but restaurant is not for enjoying your 40-dollar dinner chatting with a friend. It is a place for making money. Isn't one hour and a half enough to eat your salad and desert? With all that nightmare going on in Russian economy, this place in the centre of Moscow will be a true indicator of how seriously we are going to the financial hell. Because glam will be the last to follow us.

[drobicat]

The same time yesterday I was heading to a posh café in the posh quarter of Istanbul for my last Turkish breakfast. For the first time during my short stay in the country the sun was honestly warm. The capital business elite dressed stylishly tied a scarf around the neck and walked London-like for a cup of coffee down the street. Every time I see that FT-and-a-single-espresso-to-go-please morning people, I get sick. I miss it more than sun or tasty food or politeness or single digit price tags (which are now converted into three digits). It was easy to set new goals and to make promises when looking at a clean street washed by the sunlight. When trying to make a to-do list, it took me so long to remember where I left when I left. My friend kept on saying I can't smell the flowers. In Russian there is no such beautiful expression to say you need to learn to contemplate the stuff around you for no reason. She is right-I can not. From being too cynical I have fast developed into too pragmatic. Living in a city like Moscow (and there is hardly any other city like Moscow), you can not survive if you are not either of it.

[drobicat]

What makes you inspired? I love when people who I admire say that they believe in magic. When they say that speaking about the dreams as if they have already came true works. I do not see how it can. I believe that hard and persistent work makes any dream become possible. I spent most part of my holidays flipping through the Pinterest of people I like - through their boards with inspirational quotations. "If opportunity does not knock, build the door", "Be so good they can not refuse you", "This is the beginning of anything you want", "Everything you can imagine is real", "If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something", "Currently making some changes in my life. If you don't hear from me anymore, you're probably one of them", and soooo many more. And my favourite, of course, is posted at the top of this post. I do believe that each of them can be a new resolution for the year. I am having the greatest time right now in Istanbul with a friend, just two days before I get back to my new life in Moscow. New it will be indeed - Russian economy is going to hell, but my life will be totally different. And the first thing I am going to get fixed - is learning to speak about dreams as if they have become true already.

[drobicat]

So this might be yet too early to make a year review, but I might lose that inspiration later. 

365 days ago was an ugly period. I broke up with a person I thought I will have kids with and live together until blah-blah-blah. But we broke up and I could not get used to the thought of it for quite a long time, hoping that there is nothing we could talk over and work through. Ugh.

I went thousands of miles away to avoid being alone for the New Year and ended up feeling abandoned and lonely as I had never been before. So Lesson#1 - Never go travelling when broken hearted. It is a waste of money, and makes you suffer more.

I spent the first quarter working as a horse, almost with no sleep. I saved no money, although I earned a fortune. I have cried a river, and got so exhausted that my Gradma asked if I had a serious illness. 

I thought this would be an awful year filled with tears, depression, sad looks from married friends and sympathetic smiles from people in love. 

12 months later I want to thank everything that I have had in my life during this year. The man who broke my heart, because without this relationship and especially without its end I would have never become what I am now. 

I have taken up running to get ready for a marathon. I can not either train in freezing Moscow or yet run even a half-marathon. But even those 7 km I can do now is a big deal for someone who has always suffered from only thinking of PT lessons. 

I have started writing an art blog. I have put a lot of thought in an art educational project, and I am starting my own course on art investment with the best speakers in the world!

I have my story on Soviet posters published in the world's most important professional media about art - The Artnewspaper.

And people. New students, and old friends returning. Inspirational models. Psychological experience. And so much more.  

And what's more - I am proud of what I am now more, than a year ago, when I thought I was too good to deserve it, or two years ago when I had all the ultimate happiness I could not even wish for. 

This will be a hard year, though. Because it is easier to get up when you are down. But it is hard to climb further, when you are already not in the bottom.

*The pic was taken 5 years ago, and the only REAL thing I miss about that time is long messy hair:)

[drobicat]

When I was 25 I was heart broken, and proudly told everyone that I worked for the best media in the world.

I had long hair and very vague understanding of what kind of future I am going to. 

I knew nothing about art and spent all money on useless stuff that prove I am more shallow than I really am.

Since then much has changed. 

First, I have my hair cut shorter. Second, I have quit the best media in the world. Third, I have become five years older. 

My future is still as blurry as it used to be. My passion for expensive stuff has faded away, but I follow many stylish people on Instagram and dream of a cloak room that will be larger than the kitchen. I still think I know little about art-world, though now I call myself art journalist and write an art blog.

[drobicat]

When I was three years old I already was a bookworm. I got a subscription to the local children's library and whenever I went there, I borrowed two books: a new one and the one I enjoyed most of all. It was about a girl who got into the kingdom of distorting mirrors where all drawbacks were intensified and good people suffered from injustice of the silly king and his evil surrounding.

When I was six, I went out to play with my friends after staying at home for a week. My friends were older than me and already went to school. They asked me what I did while being at home, and when I told them I had read a book, they asked: "How thick was it?" I said it was (let's say) 200 pages. It took them a while to calculate, and they said: "You read a 200-page book during a week?! We do not believe you!" It never struck me before that the level of education could be measured by such weird and pragmatic way, but still I said that I did read the book. Then one of them took a stick and wrote a word on a wet soil. "If you can read that fast - in fact if you can read at all, given that you do not go to school yet - you can read this!" Apparently the word contained at least one spelling mistake, and her writing was bad - anyway, I said, I could not read it. They accused me of being a liar and I left crying. 

I read more than my parents, sister (who does not read at all), boyfriends (apart from the last one, who once told me "You practically do not read at all!!") and most of my closest friends. I faced my defeat from Nabokov, whose "Ada or Ardor" I dared to read in English, and Proust, with who I had more luck while watching in French, than reading in the translation. My university teacher who helped me to write my thesis paper was a translator of French literature, and even though she made me feel as humiliated as I have never been before at my last day in the university, I can not think of another person who makes me love reading as much as she did. I get annoyed when I come to the bookstore because there are more books that I want to read than there is time for them, even if I stop doing everything else. With my last boyfriend (the one, who said that I practically do not read at all) I had a bet that if I read all books I have bought, he will get me a separate library in his apartment.

We split before I got through the half of the book pile. 

[drobicat]

When I was a kid, I wanted so often to cheat the present and peak into the future as they peak into the keyhole. I remember telling myself how much I would give to see what will be happening with me exactly in this second five years from now. Last year this day I went for a walk with my best friend, and we strolled in the streets of Moscow, and went to the posh terrace of one Moscow restaurant where they served Odessa food, and I was saying that it was not the place I wanted to take her to, and then I read that that was the best restaurant in the city last summer, and I was bragging how happy I was with my then boyfriend, and how happy I was having left the office job, and how happy I-was-full-stop. And then I cancelled my appointment and we went to Paul and had a glass of Chablis wine each and made plans for her. 

And yesterday she texted me that she was in the hospital one week ahead of her birth-giving day. 

[drobicat]

i kind of don't really get smarter with every day i live. just the opposite. and being 30 is the right time to understand it. finally! as a normal smart person i always underestimate my potential and abilities. i doubt that i am able to perform well, although i understand that in the end i will - at least - not fail. but every time i reread the articles i wrote or listen to the interviews i took, i am staggered by how good they are. i am better at putting the words on paper than on spitting them out (this is a disease for every journalist, i guess). but my yesterday stories always seem to me better than my today stories. 

i don't like when people yawn without covering their mouth.

i like the feeling you have after taking a run.

[drobicat]

funny enough those three days of unexpected, badly planned, mal-fitted-into-my-budget vacation indeed felt as if it was on Mars or any other planet. as if universe started spinning at some other speed - grief evaporated and i forgot where it was coming from, business proposals were replied to faster than i could have dreamt of. at some point i tried to remember, why i was sad all those months. and when i did, i didn't fall into that canyon again.