{"id":44746,"date":"2026-03-10T16:14:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/de\/?p=44746"},"modified":"2026-03-10T16:33:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:33:06","slug":"i-had-good-luck-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/i-had-good-luck-today\/","title":{"rendered":"I had good luck today"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"project":[],"project_type":[],"class_list":["post-44746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":{"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","custom_color_css_variable":"","content_type":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"bgcolor":"","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

I had good luck today<\/span><\/h3>\r\nWhen the Russians fire ballistic missiles at you through the night from Saturday to Sunday, you usually think, \u00bbThank God, that\u2019s not a bad option.\u00ab This might not be obvious to newcomers, so let me explain.<\/span>\r\n\r\nYesterday turned out to be very inconvenient. The first to arrive were Iranian Shaheds \u2013 small flying bombs each packed with around forty kilograms of explosives, their engines buzzing like lawnmowers. They whirr over the city at night to scare people and keep them awake. And today they came again, as they always do. At that moment, I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 on my Xbox.<\/span>\r\n\r\nOn a rain-flooded side street in Night City, neon lights flicker over slick, cracked cobblestones as I creep toward the boss\u2019s hideout. I prepare for the fight, check my cybernetic implants, and finally I see him. The boss \u2013 a huge figure composed of patches of gleaming chrome and mutilated flesh \u2013 stands in the center of a dark courtyard, surrounded by his thugs.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWhile I\u2019m playing, I hear music in the yard. Under my window on a bench, teenagers are crowded together, laughing; someone says, \u00bbI know a foolproof method \u2026 turn up the sound louder so the cops won\u2019t show up.\u00ab I try to listen, but then he speaks quietly and indistinctly.<\/span>\r\n\r\nFrom afar comes the sound of \u00bbpam-pam-pam\u00ab automatic bursts, and the approaching roar of a \u00bblawnmower.\u00ab The air-raid siren blares. I jump from my chair straight to the bathroom. I sit there while a Shahed buzzes around, like a mosquito in the room \u2013 bzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz \u2013 then it flies by. I get up and sit back in my chair, but the boss of course killed me long ago. The kids on the bench laugh. They don\u2019t react to the Shaheds. Almost no one reacts, even in the cities away from the front line. If they did, it would be hard to live here for three years.<\/span>\r\nThe fight? I start over.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI grab my plasma pistol and take aim at a couple of thugs. The mercenaries scatter sideways, giving me time to close the distance to the boss. My vision switches to focus mode, and my implant highlights the weak spots in his armor. I lunge forward, weaving between bursts of fire from the rest of his guards.<\/span>\r\nThe boss parries my first blow with his blade, sparks flying from the collision. I counterattack with a series of rapid strikes, empowered by my cybernetic arms. At the decisive moment, when he swings his sword too widely, I activate the neural accelerator, time slows down, and \u2026<\/span>\r\n\r\nI hear a buzzing outside the window again \u2013 bzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZ \u2013 something new is coming from the direction of the suburbs. An automatic burst of \u00bbpam-pam-pam,\u00ab BAM \u2013 one of them was shot down. I\u2019ve been sitting in the bathroom for a while now. Whenever Shaheds fly, I always remember that family of elderly professors \u2013 biology lecturers at the national university \u2013 who were killed by a Shahed in winter in their downtown apartment. Such a pity, a wonderful family. Then the social media outrage began because the newspapers reported \u00bba professor and his wife perished,\u00ab even though both were professors. And it\u2019s an important story, certainly important. If the female professor were still alive, she\u2019d probably appreciate it. But she was killed by a Russian drone. And the bodies from the impact sites always look so disrespectfully like heaps of rags. That\u2019s all that remains when a Russian drone \u2013 with the sound of a lawnmower \u2013 kills you. I don\u2019t mean to devalue feminism here (I\u2019m a feminist myself), but it seems we have a damn huge problem with Russian drones killing our professors, both male and female. It feels like we shouldn\u2019t lose sight of the main issue.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI come out of the bathroom, and on the screen the boss is laughing \u2013 looming above me on the gray screen of death. My phone buzzes. A colleague texts that I haven\u2019t sent the revised training plan; I promise to send it in the morning. She doesn\u2019t believe me \u2013 says, \u00bbCheck the Telegram threat channels; the Russians have raised their strategic aviation, so there will be a missile strike tonight, which means you\u2019ll be sleeping in the morning.\u00ab<\/span>\r\n\r\nIt pisses me off when Russian planes fly to the launch pads while the city remains on alert for Shaheds. From the launch to the missile impact takes about four to five hours, and there are still many Shaheds on the map, so the alert will last a long time. I\u2019d love to go to sleep peacefully, thinking that when the missiles come, the alert will wake me up. But I can\u2019t, because if the alert is on, then there won\u2019t be an alert. Logical, right? I set my alarm for the estimated time of the missile\u2019s arrival \u2013 thankfully, that time is posted on Telegram channels. I even have an entire folder of such channels on Telegram for convenience during the shelling.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI should have slept for three hours, but I wake up to the siren. I calmly grab my phone, thinking these missiles must have crossed the border about a thousand kilometers from here. But this one is ballistic, and it\u2019s already flying past the neighboring region. I gather my entire family into the building\u2019s common corridor \u2013 just in our underwear, holding our clothes. It\u2019s safer there; it\u2019s just bare concrete with a few exits. Anyone who has ever seen how a tile or a bathroom mirror can decapitate a person starts to appreciate the virtues of concrete.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI hear the launches of our air-defense missiles. It\u2019s strange to recall that just three years ago we couldn\u2019t distinguish them by sound. They sound completely different. The launches of the defensive missiles produce a pleasant \u00bbbam-bam-bam,\u00ab while the incoming ones go \u00bbdisshhhh.\u00ab<\/span>\r\n\r\nA Russian ballistic missile is already descending, as the monitoring channels report. The missile is descending and counting:<\/span>\r\n\u00bbEenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a tiger by the toe!\u00ab\r\n<\/span>\r\n\r\nThis time, it\u2019s not our turn, I think.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI hear the incoming \u00bbBIDIYISH!\u00ab \u2013 but these are already farther from my area. From the siren to the first explosion, barely two minutes pass; there\u2019s no time to reach the shelter. And that means that for the entire following week I won\u2019t be able to drive because I\u2019ll be terrified that a bombardment might start at any moment, and I won\u2019t be able to handle steering from the shock of the strike \u2013 I might even injure someone. But then, in the second week, I\u2019ll steel myself. I\u2019m very skilled at pushing myself, rallying, and putting myself together.<\/span>\r\n\r\nWe wait a bit; no more missiles are flying, so we go to sleep. But an hour later, another alert \u2013 the missiles from aviation have crossed the border. That\u2019s normal now; everything here goes according to plan. We dress up and head to the shelter. The missiles flew in the opposite direction, so we went back to sleep.<\/span>\r\n\r\nI woke up at twelve, and because it was Sunday I didn\u2019t have to work. I thought how good it is when there\u2019s a missile strike on the night from Saturday to Sunday. I got lucky today.<\/span>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content_txt","_acfe_flexible_layout_title":null,"bgcolor":"has-bg-grey","bgcolor_custom":"","layout_col_size":8,"txt_cols":"is-1-txtcol","txt":"

Alina Sarnatska<\/strong><\/span> is a playwright, writer, radio host, and war veteran based in Ukraine.<\/span>\r\nHer plays have been shown in multiple theaters in Ukraine and deal with resilience, trauma, social justice, and communities and women affected by violence and war. She combines testimony, research, and community-based practice.<\/span><\/p>"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44746"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44920,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44746\/revisions\/44920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project?post=44746"},{"taxonomy":"project_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.akademie-solitude.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_type?post=44746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}