This is a timeline of my recent years, in continuation of My Areas and Timeline.
My Year 2015
In 2015, I started a full-time Spring semester: Film Lighting, Small Business Accounting, Payroll, and Taxation. I was still working part-time in La Jolla.
In January, I got 97%+ on IRS advanced tax preparer exam. Till April, I volunteered to file taxes for low-income people every Saturday, driving far inland to small towns of San Diego County.
In May, I finished a film lighting college course in downtown campus with an awesome professor of art directing who worked in the industry his whole life. One guy from our group became a rock-star in LA, another transferred to Berkley, one Girl went to a film school in New York, another moved to Arizona, and one became homeless, as I learned later.
Then, I quit the exhausting international customer service job.
By the end of May, I moved from the North Park in San Diego to Huntington Beach, Orange County, California, Adams street area. The beaches were gigantic, and the traffic was awful. People warned me about conservative Orange County, but at first, it seemed cool and promising.
In nearby Costa Mesa, I studied history of cinema for the Summer semester in the well-equipped local college. The professor was a cinematographer who worked with big action- movie makers.
I started making art on the floor of my living room, with teens skating right in front of my open door. I made a couple illustrations, and had long-term corporate German students, and a few travelers and college kids.
During that Summer, I produced and finished editing tree short documentary films, two of which got minor prizes on film festivals. I was also gathering footage for a feature film.
In September, I started more filmmaking and studio-drawing courses, but I was not getting what I wanted, it did not justify my time investment. Life started to feel shorter.
My Year 2016
In 2016, I continued working on water-media paintings during my free time in a tiny quarter-studio in Huntington Beach, Orange County, California. I taught business and beginner German, took some translation work, had a small business, redesigned my investment portfolio, handled the post-election shock, and got married in the beautiful Old Orange County Courthouse.
My Year 2017
In 2017, my last year in Huntington Beach, Orange County, California, I went to Europe in the Spring, to Brussels for a friend's wedding, and then to Düsseldorf and a few other towns. I was hoping to visit my friends in Italy but did not get enough time.
I made great friends in Santa Ana and the city of Orange, California, where a fellow artist in paper collage organized downtown meetings, but also in other neighboring towns. I participated in many discussions on humanism and linguistics, went to fun parties and outdoor gatherings.
By the end of the year, though, I might have come close to a nervous breakdown. I could not relax, my body felt as a string, I cried at strange times and places. Even running along the Santa Ana River, 10K every morning, stopped giving me the same happiness. I still wonder how I came back to my usual self from that.
My Year 2018
In 2018, I moved from Huntington Beach, Orange County, to Oceanside, San Diego County, California. I founded an orchard, with many unexpected problems - most eventually resolved, and set up a new art studio.
My Year 2019
In 2019, I lived in Oceanside, California, and concentrated on life figure and portrait drawing and painting. I fully mastered watercolor, if something like that is even possible.
My Year 2020
This year of pandemic and especially consequential US elections, I spent in Oceanside, in isolation since March. I watched too much news and worked in the orchard too much. My paintings were some complex muted watercolors to deal with horrid fires, deaths, concentration of power, and political agitations.
My husband brought the virus early, in Spring, and took all precautions that my viral load was smaller than his: I had sudden chills for one evening, but was nearly alright the next day, and was able to help him. But during the year, I had two foot injuries, both very painful, especially the first one that involved a toenail, and because of the other - a possible fracture in August, I tripped over a garden hose because my old shoes got caught in it - I could not walk for a while, luckily I had many apples and managed alone for three weeks.
Actually, I spent most of the year completely alone, seeing people behind masks only once a week in a store, and waving neighbors at a distance some time. People here are so nice, they were leaving flowers and vegetables at other's doorsteps. Our awesome next-door neighbors shared their avocados with me. I suffered from luck of available decent fruits, and soaked more nuts and seeds, and made many quinoa-lentil salads. I did not like running in a mask, so I have exercised at nighttime on the streets, when nobody was there, and met an unusual number of coyotes.
I acquired many skills that I always wanted to have, like weaving (including fences), making raw vinegar from various fruits, fermenting, catching wild yeast for sourdough, baking flat breads from unusual things, air-drying (flowers, leaves, and clothing), soldering, wood burning, drilling, polishing, some basic woodwork to use with prunings, new hand and machine embroidery styles, new monotype techniques, eco-printing, eco-dying, paper-making and transforming, bookbinding, junk-mail art-journaling, sewing from reclaimed fabrics, refreshed crochet, macramé and knotting, propagating in sand, building growing containers from recycled food-grade plastic, rain-water gathering (eventually got two recycled barrels), and a bunch of others.
For several months, I turned the veranda into a propagation station and dismantle it later, after planting the seedlings. I could not get any new seeds or compost for the new layer of the soil-building, as planned, so I composted in the ground and made mulch out of anything I could find. I repaired almost all irrigation problems and built new drip lines, so the garden had some improvement nonetheless.
My Year 2021
In Spring, I work in the garden a lot, planted additional trees and vines, and got fully vaccinated. I changed gears an old Singer sewing machine (a present from a dear friend), sewn and bought clothes from natural fibers. In Summer, I started seeing friends. Then stopped because of the Delta variant, and then resumed in Fall: going for drinks and parties outside, and hosting game nights. We flew to New Hampshire and solved some problems there. My close friend could not visit, but they bough a house with a garden back in Germany.
My art became more expressive and dark toward the end of the year.
My Year 2022
This year started with worries about the possible escalation of the war in Ukraine, which then changed me forever with its new cruel, meaningless, and malicious turn in February.
The full scale invasion in Ukraine by RF is the worst thing I ever experienced.
The war started for me in 2014 when my beautiful birth city was violently turned into a military gray zone. And in 2022, the Russian Federation was bombing all cities, letting its brutal army commit atrocities on Ukrainian land, one war crime after another, killing, kidnapping, raping, expelling, and terrorizing my people. I was watching all the footage uncensored.
I could not drive for the first days of the invasion, I was shaking and could barely see. I was crying and shouting into the void every morning for the first weeks or months. I had no expectations to feel joy ever again. I considered going fighting if needed (I could shoot well in military training long ago). I tried doing some helpful things, primarily with money for medical help to soldiers. To save my own sanity, I continued to study full-time, 12 units with labs and exhibits, and the people around me kept me afloat just by their presence and kindness (thank you, everyone).
In the spring semester, I was studying design and color, digital media, was in a professional art practice course, met many practicing artists, got intogroup exhibitions and won a few first prizes. Each Friday, I spend painting in watercolor for 6 hours in a group with critique sessions. BTW, I have almost collapsed in the first days of war in an office of one of the professors who then reffered me to a psychologist, so I had a couple of sessions with a Lithuanian master-student I chose.
By the mid-Summer, I finally saw the way to liberation - hopefully of Donetsk as well - and to victory...
In the Fall cemester, I took antropology from a PhD who turned out not to be a great scientist to learn from, along with human development psychology from another Phd, a catholic and father of many children, who turned out alright. I was doing life figure again, joined a scriptwriting group and another non-credit life-story writing class, both with cool people.
My Year 2023
Almost a year of the war, the last semester before a likely useless art degree in a local college. In the Spring semester, I studied Political Science, Voice and Diction, and take an unusual Landmarks of Art credit course. We went to LA and the desert among other places and had strange art making and bonding experiences with a good group. I made two clay pieces and two dozen Ukrainian dolls - biodegradable "free crazy dancers" - resembling those I did in childhood in Ukraine. Political science was thought-provoking, I debated the professor on most lectures. In the diction class, I was surrounded by awesome future actors with great vocal abilities, and went to their plays in the theater. Somehow, with my accent, I managed to hold on with a lot of work in preparations for recitals, poetry readings, singing, and studio recording. I then graduated with 4.0 GPA in 60 credit units. The college did not recognize any of my previous credits.
The heavy rains in January made pruning difficult. The orchard is recovering after a severe drought since last March. Almost all perennials survived, and the annuals are reseeding themselves.
For the Summer, I studied hip-hop dancing, a long dream of mine. I did not have luck with the teacher, but fellow students warned me about it. The 8 weeks were intense, though.
Then I was solving all teh problems I postponed because of the war and the studies. My eyes had no tears left.
