I talked in a past pubski about how I felt a general lack of purpose and desire to do more. The feeling has gnawed at me for ages... I lost all interest in medicine and have quite my program. So I returned to Ukraine about a month ago. The sense of purpose is back and I feel more content than I have in the past 6 months of comfy living going to school in San Francisco. It's been a great time, working with interesting people for a shared positive reason. It's a completely different vibe than the last time I was here-the country (at least the area I am in) has settled into wartime in a weirdly easygoing way. There are plenty of oddities- I watched a Kalibr missile fly past me the other day, just cruising along at an incredibly low altitude. That being said I know I can only do this for so long. This organization has zero ability for forward progression and the work is very repetitive. For my actual career I have no idea what I truly want to do. I want to do more and achieve more but hell I have no idea what that would look like. I have the conflicting goals of wanting to work in remote areas/emergencies and building a family with a solid home life. I've been advised to work with a career counselor, which I guess can't hurt. After a decade of being so sure of my path it's a weird place to be.
Ukraine is about to be absolutely flush in cash, as foreign companies and governments come in to rebuild what Russia has destroyed. And once Crimea is back within Ukraine's borders, there will be a huge amount of work to do there, too. I was in the Balkans after the wars there, working with the peacekeeping forces. Many many people got absolutely filthy rich, by providing things to the foreigners coming in to help. A fleet of 10 Toyota Land Cruisers - each one rented to an NGO for $5k/month, for 4 years straight - was enough to set up an entire family for life. A welder with his own equipment could charge literally anything he wanted - $1000/day - when he showed up to a site that needed him. Then they'd refer him to someone else. He lived out of his truck for a year, and made enough money to retire for life. And then there will be the companies that want to move operations into Ukraine to take advantage of the newly built infrastructure. For example, if you manufacture automatic transmissions, a BRAND NEW factory in Kiev with skilled Ukrainian workers is a VERY tasty investment for Mr. CEO at big-name-car-brand. That building needs staff from janitors to senior managers, and everything in between. Staying in the Ukraine, being social and connected and helpful to people around you, will lead to opportunities you simply couldn't conceive of today. My friend Mirsad in Sarajevo had a small company making trophies, and engraving plaques for trophies for local kids groups and sports teams. He made some stuff for us, and we got him connected to the US Military, and he began making plaques and commemorative coins (souvenirs soldiers trade and cherish) for the military in country, which led to a contract with AAFES worldwide, which required him to build an entire factory and employ over 50 people!! Countries recovering from war - especially when they are victorious - are rich lands of opportunity for any smart person standing around. Stay there. Do the work that interest you, and that you enjoy, and talk to everyone. Be helpful. You never know what will come of it... ... but I know those same opportunities will NEVER arise in San Francisco, where you'll just be another cog in someone else's machine.
In the immortal words of JP Morgan Chase, "natural disasters are great for GDP and terrible for the economy." It's not money you would have spent, given a choice? But there's no longer a choice. When I visited London at 13 I asked our hosts why the place was half skyscraper, half thatched roof. "Because the Blitz didn't bomb everything," they said. The opportunities present in Ukraine have come at an unforgivable price. That price is only going to go up. But for people of character and ability, there is likely to be an opportunity to reshape destinies. I think both goobster and I can agree that a career is that thing you get when you move from opportunity to opportunity. If you're somewhere that inspires you, doing things that reward you, the absolute best thing to do is to keep doing that to see what opportunities open up. Worst case scenario you end up with a blank spot on your resume where, if they ask, you say "I was fighting the Russians and rebuilding Ukraine."