Category: reflections

What I Want To Do In 2026

Boris and I spent a lot of time talking about how I should reorganize my life, at least for the next two years. Most of this time was me complaining about the things I feel are important but don’t have time to do.  I know that I am horrible with establishing priorities, and I didn’t make a lot of progress in prioritizing things for 2026.

My most important resolution for 2026 is to keep trying to plan my life better. So far, my progress is rather modest, but here are some things I want to do differently in 2026:

  • Boris and I agreed to try to have him visit Chicago less frequently but for longer periods of time. This might partially address the problem with him having huge difficulties with jetlag, but I am also mindful of the fact that when he is in Chicago, he can’t do many of the things he does in Helsinki, and I feel for him, because that’s exactly how I feel in Helsinki: I can’t do a lot of things I like doing in Chicago. So we will see whether this will work.
  • I thought about all the situations in 2025 when I had scheduling conflicts and/or had to change things multiple times because it was “too tight,” and now I am thinking about them even more in advance than I did last year. For example, I am planning to bake all my international cookies before Thanksgiving. Also, I already planned the dates when Lena can visit me in Chicago in the summer, and when I can visit her in Ann Arbor. I am planning the time when my granddaughters can visit me. All of this is in the calendar, so I won’t accidentally schedule anything on top of it.
  • I still need to figure out how to be more present in my friends’ lives, but at least I am prioritizing this.

I know that, for most people, my life looks too scheduled, even as it is now, and many have told me that living such an “overplanned life” is not fun. But I know I will be much happier if I can do more things from my “I want to do it” list, and I would rather have a rigorous schedule than not have time to do something.

We’ll see how it goes 🙂

And The Last Thing About 2025

One area where I felt I failed entirely is people relationships. I feel acutely that I didn’t do enough to keep my relationships and to reach out to people.  I neglected many of my friends, and I deeply regret it, because I need them, and I feel how much I miss them.

I was constantly in situations where I did not have an extra five minutes to message “how are you doing,” and I did not know what to do about it.

I am unhappy with pretty much everything in this area, and my most important goal for 2026 is to figure out how to change it.

A book About Russia’s Serfdom

Just finished this book (“The Serfdom in Russia”). I rarely blog anything about the books I read in Russian, but I wanted to share my thoughts about this particular one.

In the preface, the author states that “we” do not know much about this period of Russian history and that even progressive historians and political figures have always been non-specific about how and what exactly was going on during this period.

I thought that this statement didn’t apply to me, but I was wrong. I still hadn’t thought through many details, even when I knew them.

The book goes in-depth in describing the unthinkable treatment of serves, even by the “good masters,” but one tiny mention struck me the most. That’s when the author recalls the episode from War and Peace, when Natasha Rostova is ready to go to bed and calls her maid to blow out the candle by her bed instead of blowing it out herself. Perhaps the most striking thing was that I never noticed anything wrong about it before.

2025. Health And Wellness

Health

The most important health-related event of 2025 was regaining sight in my left eye. Just to be clear, my vision is not perfect, and my two eyes still see differently and are still not completely synchronized. But I can get around without glasses or contacts most of the time, and that gave me the long-forgotten level of freedom. My only inconvenience is that because of the lasic in my right eye, I can’t wear a multifocal on it anymore, which means that when I wear contacts, I need to put on reading glasses any time I need to read something, not just some of the time. And unfortunately, multifocal glasses do not help. But those are such minor problems compared to the situation two years ago that I can’t complain. I probably should try to get a better multifocal prescription.

Because of the eye surgeries, I missed at least one routine test, even though I promised my GP I would schedule it. Now I need to have three procedures in 2026 :), but I already scheduled everything, so chances are they all will happen.

I definitely feel aging this year; the first area is reduced flexibility, and the second is facial aging. I think I’ve come to terms with the latter and hopefully figured out how to age gracefully, but the first one is a concern. Last year, I noticed for the first time that if I do not practice yoga for more than a week, I lose flexibility, and if I do not practice specific poses for several weeks, I lose them as well. That was an alarm bell for me, and I am trying to be more consistent with yoga than ever before.

I forget words periodically, but it happens with the same frequency as it has been for the past three years – about once a week on average. I am keeping track of it and checking with my doctor. I am glad I asked to take a baseline test two years ago, so now I can compare myself to myself :).

Other than the above, 2025 was rather uneventful healthwise.

Physical Activity

I am reasonably happy with the level of physical activity this year. The biggest achievement was increasing biking distance (both individual rides and total mileage). This year, Bike the Drive was almost not challenging. All my indoor exercisers are on the same level as last year, although I figured out how to increase the intensity of my indoor biking.

I was not consistent with yoga; there were different reasons for that, but all came down to me not trying hard enough to make time, and that’s one of the things I am trying to change in 2026; I do not want to lose my flexibility.

Update: checking the app, I can confirm that most of my active calories came from more biking, and I was hitting higher daily totals during the biking season, especially in July and August. Funny enough, the exercise minutes were almost the same throughout the year.

Food

I have a follow-up appointment with my GP in February, because I need to figure out the reason for my cholesterol still going up, especially with the changes I made last year. Since it is not a one-time spike but a three-year trend, I want to get to the bottom of it.

Sleep

In 2025, I made serious efforts to increase my sleep duration to six hours. I know that my need for sleep increased slightly in comparison to my lifetime minimum, and I do need to switch from 5 – 5.5 hours to six. I am trying with moderate success, and I especially didn’t like the last five weeks of 2025, when I slept an average of just four hours a night. If not for this last stretch, I would feel more successful in this area.

Update: just checked the health app. According to it, my average sleep in 2025 was 5 h 18 min, with December being 4 h 37 min. Some months, the average was over 5h 30 min, reaching 5 h 40 – 5 h 50 min, but this didn’t stick. Also, I looked at the time when the app recorded “time in bed” in addition to sleep, and remembered that when I was trying to get to bed earlier, it resulted in more time in bed than more time sleeping. So I should probably set more realistic goals 🙂

To summarize: not bad, but lots of areas for improvement.

2025. Part 2

Civic activities

Here, there are more negative than positive results. My biggest regret of 2025 is that I didn’t do enough during the election campaign. To be precise, I did zero canvassing and a very moderate amount of convincing people of what the right thing to do is. I knew it was wrong, but I kept telling myself that organizing Prairie Postgres is more important at that moment, and that I can’t do everything, and… I didn’t speak up enough, which I also regret. I post very little, if anything, political on LinkedIn, where I am most visible, and the list continues. I will never do it again!

I’ve done a little bit better at supporting DEI, regardless of the political climate, but I wasn’t consistent enough, so one of my goals for this year is to always keep this support on my radar.

Even with simple things like attending the rallies, I did way less than I did in previous years. Once again, my excuse was that I was twice as busy as before because of Prairie Postgres and my activities in the professional community. Still, I should always remember that if the country’s civic values are at risk, the interests of my professional community are at risk as well. I want to make an intentional effort to attend rallies when I really care about the cause. I know that society’s well-being depends on each individual’s actions, so I have no excuse. I know that each person matters. Earlier in 2025, I tried to become more involved in local initiatives, but I had to drop these activities because they looked like a very insignificant outcome for the time spent. I will try to get involved again in a couple of years, when I retire.

Cultural activities and reading

According to Goodreads, I read fewer books in 2025 than in 2024, but I believe that’s because I didn’t record books that ended up being a waste of time, and there were more of those in 2025. The majority of books were audiobooks, and that’s something I want to address. I switched to audiobooks because it is easier to listen while I am doing something else, and also because of my vision problems. Now that my vision is better, I am looking to find ways to read e-books again. Today, I realized I have a new option: I started taking the L more often, and when on the L, I can find a place to sit, but there isn’t enough space to open my computer, especially since I switched from Mac Air back to Mac Pro. This is the time when I can read e-books.

As for the other cultural activities, I attended many exhibits, concerts, operas, and different theatrical performances, but I didn’t keep track of them, and that’s something I want to do next year. I am still hungry for more cultural activities and want to see more performances than I have time to see, and oftentimes I feel disappointed because I do not like the show. Next year, I want to get more organized with all these activities, keep track of them, and what I like and what I don’t, so I can figure out how much I really want to see and what exactly.

To be continued

2025. Part 1

2025 was a difficult year, though which year isn’t? I had been through many fights and won many battles, but a significant portion of those victories were Pyrrhic, so by the end of the year, I was not sure whether I had achieved anything. Still, I wanted to write a short summary of what I consider the wins of 2025 (and what’s not), and how I am going to build on them. I plan to have it in three separate parts.

Money

It starts with money, because if you do not have enough of it, nothing else can happen. Everyone who knows me believes my money management is perfect; however, the only reason it appears that way is that I plan with large margins. Last year, I realized that although I was not overspending (not spending more than I make), my budget became rather mythical, and that I lost a clear distinction between what was “necessary” and what was “extra.” I haven’t changed anything in this classification since I first set it up 20+ years ago, and I was wondering why my wealth manager and I couldn’t find common ground. A year ago, I completely redesigned my budget (the totals didn’t change, but everything else did :)), and at the end of the year, it ended up being very close to reality. I didn’t make any major changes, only some minor adjustments, and I consider this result to be one of my best achievements of 2025.

Professional

Many years ago, when I first told Boris what I wanted to do when I retired, he told me it was not a retirement but a change of profession. Although I still have at least a couple of years until retirement, I feel like my profession has partially changed, or rather, I have added something new to it. Speaking strictly about my technical expertise, I am extremely happy that in 2025, I learned new techniques and technologies and became better at what I have already been doing very well. I have been presented with several major technical challenges, and I have resolved them in a new way, not relying solely on my previous experience. I consider it a very important achievement, because that’s what keeps me at the top of my profession, but at the same time, I know I could do more. There are several areas that I have never touched before because “it was not my thing,” but I believe that the time has come to broaden my expertise and not to be solely focused on the areas I am already good at. I have a list of techniques and tools I want to learn in 2026, and I hope it comes true.

For the first time since I started at my current job, I was able to create new open-source projects. My current job does not leave me much time to pursue professional projects outside the job itself, but this year I added one new project and almost added another. Formally speaking, I added it yesterday, but the work was done in Q4 of 2025.

Prairie Postgres

This is part of my volunteer work, but it is so massive that it warrants a separate section. Obviously, that’s the first time in my life of running a not-for-profit, and I still think I had more fails than successes. The level of responsibilities was no less than in my “normal” job, and I was not fully prepared for that. For much of the year, I felt like a complete failure because I didn’t have time to do everything this “other job” demanded of me. My accomplishment is that I was not a complete failure after all; we survived, and we are slowly growing.

The rest of the volunteering

I am not completely happy about it. Firstly, I now strongly believe I took on too many responsibilities, and I am glad I had the sense to drop the Howard-Evanston community board, not without hesitation. But I still have too much, and all my volunteer positions were because I wanted them, not because someone forced me to take them. That was the first year I had more than one professional volunteer responsibility, and they have all been very time-consuming from the start. I know that I do not fulfill my volunteer obligations at least for two organizations, and I need to figure out how to change it.

It’s still a mixed bag with the Night Ministry. I know that I am doing at least something good, and I know that at least some people are thankful, but it has been a very challenging environment during the last year. Several times I thought that I was doing so little there that it would be better to stop coming altogether, but each time, I feel that I would create a void in my heart.

I am happier with Clinic escort volunteering, because of the early morning shifts – I finally figured out how to be useful regularly!

To be continued

Feeling Armenia

Even though I stayed with locals, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions and/or form any opinion about the country after a three-day stay. Still, there are a couple of things I wanted to mention.

Armenia is a relatively poor country, still, the level of mutual trust is surprising and runs counter to my idea that you need a society of splendor to achieve it. One can say that the priest was comfortable leaving his belongings in a wide-open temple just because there was nobody around who could take advantage of the situation. But in the building where my friends live, the front door has no lock and no buzzer. Moreover, they only lock their apartment at night or when everyone is out, just like I do.

Another thing that I noticed was the way people talk to stranges. It was not our regular over-cheerful/annoying American talkativeness, but very calm and respectful willingness to support a conversation, whether it’s a smalltalk, or a meaningful discussion. No pressure to buy anything at the souvenir shop. Only the cab drivers at the airport, looking for clients, were annoying, but cab drivers are always and everywhere cab drivers. By contrast, during the actual rides, cab drivers were remarkably silent.

Calm, peace, and respect – these words defined my stay in Armenia.

***

Yesterday, I was busy finishing baking cookies, packing, and preparing them for shipping. I was very cold, but sunny, and I felt happy staying inside in my beautifully decorated home, surrounded by the smells of baked cookies. I was thinking that overall life is good, and my crazy time at work is about to be over, and how lucky and fortunate I am.

Then I saw a message onmy phone. It was from onw of our condominium board members, and he asked me to call him back.

When I dialed, he said: I have some sad news for you. Then he told me, that one of our neigbors – an absolutely lovely couple in their 40s with no kids and two beautiful dogs were in the car crash. The husband passed away and the wife was in critical condition in the hospital.

And that was it.

I still can’t process these news. Can’t conprehend them. We were not close friends, but we saw each other several times a week, and their “Hi Hettie” was one of these things which are “always here,” and make our community the way it is.

Thankful

I think it was the first time ever that I started my giving thanks with thanks to the US political system, specifically for federalism. Only because of that, plus our still independent Judicial system, that the Illinois government can still protect their citizen and resist the most outrageous thins that come from federal government. I am immensely proud of our state, our governor and our judges, and thankful to them!

I am thankful that I have a job which is, though intense and plainly hard as no other job I had before, makes it possible for me to earn enough money to do good to many people and support the causes that are important to me.

I am thankful to Boris who emotionally supported me through this tuff year more that ever; I am thankful that we still keep the flame of our love for so many years and do not see it fading:).

Thankful that all my children are the amazing individuals they are.

Thankful for my home, my neighborhood, and my city. I am as much at home here as i ever been in my life.

Nova Exhibition

The Nova world-traveling exhibition is now in Chicago, and I visited in on Tuesday.

It was the first time when I understood the timeline of the October 6 events, and saw the footage filmed by the hostages and those who managed to escape. Although the exhibit is put together exceptionally well, and leave a deep emotional impression, I left it with mixed feelings.

I didn’t post anything about this visit for several days, hoping to figure out what didn’t feel right, but still can’t pinpoint it. I hate to sound critical of the exhibit organizers, because they’ve done tremendous work, but I also can’t brush off the unease I felt afterward. Most likely, it was related to the testimonies at the end. It was actually a one testimony of a survivor, and I honestly think it was too much both for him and people listening. Or maybe not.

I might still figure it our later.