Apologies

I owe you all an apology. It has been far, far too long since I have written. On top of winters being hard here, and me personally having a difficult time recently, having America slide into full blown fascism and oligarchy has kept me in a deep depression.

Writing is fickle for me sometimes. I not only need a place where I can sit or lie for long periods of time in enough comfort to not hurt my wrists, and need for that place to have a fairly low level of distractions, but also, when I am depressed, it is very hard to be in the correct headspace to write. Life in the army frequently makes it difficult for me to meet the environmental requirements for me to write as it is, but that, combined with the combination of how things have been going (both for myself, my unit, and Ukraine), combined with having to watch America commit suicide somewhat slowly, and knowing it is going to take the global economy into another Great Depression, was enough to crush my ability to write recently.

I want to thank you all for sticking with me, especially the paid subscribers, and the folks that have sent me packages or helped me monetarily as well. It is all greatly appreciated, and I am still behind on getting out some thanks in those regards.

The good news with the warmer temperatures, some positive things happening, and getting a little sunshine, I feel like I am finally shaking free of my funk. Partially, anyway. For personal reasons, this year is going to be an especially difficult one, and I don’t see that improving until sometime next year. Nonetheless, I am starting to write again, and have some great stories to share, as well as some geopolitical-military analysis as well. I am also going to get on top of getting thanks out to folks and getting back to a few folks whose e-mails have been languishing in my in-boxes for months. Again, apologies. Hopefully, y’all understand. I suspect you do. I imagine that everyone that reads this is struggling with some level of depression simply due to the state of affairs in America and how that does or will affect all of us.

I have a couple of stories almost written, unfortunately those are either going to have to wait until after the war to be published, or put behind my paywall. Some things can’t be revealed due to OpSec (Operational Security), and some things it just wouldn’t be wise for me to share. I can be very critical of leadership. My immediate commanding officer is pretty great in most ways, I don’t have much in the way of complaints there, but my critiques of leadership higher up are blistering, and so shouldn’t be on the open web, where they can be searched for, but may be able to be voiced behind the paywall. I will have to take a close look at those stories and see if they can be shared with you folks here, now, if it requires some editing (censorship) for me to do so (which I really hate to do), or if it is best if I just save them for the book.

That said, there are other stories I can share, unfortunately, almost all of those are mostly in the form of raw notes, and need to be fleshed out, so it will take a few days at least before I can start getting those up here, although there is one that is basically written, but I have to assess it for suitability for publishing at this time. I am torn on that one for a variety of reasons.

I can whip out a geopolitical-military analysis off the cuff, but that also takes time too. I really want to get one of those out there though and so expect one of those in the next few days. There is a hell of a lot of ground to cover, so I may break it into multiple parts.

Again, I can’t thank you all enough for your continued support of Ukraine, your continued resistance to tyranny, in all its forms, everywhere, and your support for me. I couldn’t do this without the help I have received from others. In every form, from words of encouragement, to enough funds to purchase a vehicle, armor it, and equip it as an ambulance, so I actually have the tools I need to do my job here.

Yeah, that happened. That’s another series of stories. The endless quest for the vehicle, and now the lengthy process of finishing getting it modified and equipped, but the short version is, thanks to the kindness of many donors, and one in particular, I am now the owner of an armored ambulance. A modified Toyota Series 70.

My carbine is going through a bit of an evolution, and my living situation is constantly changing and has been interesting at times as well. I will have updates on all those things as well as my being trained to be an M113 driver, so that when our tracked, armored evacuation vehicle is functioning I will be driving that as well. That will probably be at least a piece of writing on its own, there are a lot of angles to that.

Again, thanks to the kindness of donors, I now have neck and lower back armor, and have been able to have better accommodations than a tent in the dead of winter, or very cramped shared accommodations with a weird host, although I did endure that for a time. More stories there, including more transportation and travel adventures.

I did squeeze in a leave during that time. Of course, virtually all of it was spent tracking down a vehicle to use as an armored ambulance, purchasing it, and getting started on the rest of the modifications and equipment it needs.

Someday, I will have a real leave. Probably not this year though.

I was considering coming back to the States on one of my leaves. I would like to spend some time with my father, and maybe have a little shindig so I could see some of you, but I am seriously reconsidering that. I don’t know if it is a good idea for me to fly into the United States right now, given the current regime. I may well risk it though. If I do, it’ll probably be around mid-August, to celebrate my birthday. I might try and arrange it so I fly into the Pacific Northwest and out of California, so I can meet up with people in both places. I will have less than two weeks though, for what should be obvious reasons, there aren’t any flights out of Ukraine, so I will have to once again go through the ordeal that is crossing the border in and out of Poland, and fly in and out of Chopin, as well as perhaps having to cross over a thousand kilometers of Ukraine from the front to the border. When I can, I take my leaves when we are out of the line, but if I do this, it will likely be centered on my birthday, and so it will be the luck of the draw whether we are at the front at that time. I haven’t done that yet, I want to do my job here, and I sure don’t want someone to get hurt while they are covering a shift at the front for me while I am on leave. Nothing is easy or uncomplicated here.

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