Happy new year! 🥳

That time of the year it is, again. Prepare for a wall of text haha.

To me, New Year's Eve is an even bigger event than Christmas or my birthday. It's a time of reflection on self, past and future.

Last year i made 39 artworks. This year only 35. Welp, that didn't improve like i wanted haha.

Last year i said i'm saving up to move out eventually. I can happily say that it's going quite well, i'll be moving out in about 6 months! Finally after that my life as an artist can properly begin haha. But that's where the good news end. A year ago i was in a rather bad mood following the Slovakia's election, where "Smer" (the mafia party) won. Turns out i was quite right to be worried. The politicians have been busy creating chaos and controversies to draw attention from Fico's relentless effort to line his pockets by dismantling our government and stagnating the little progress this country made 4 years prior to that. Few of his biggest achievements include:
- Abolishing the bureau of special prosecution (designed specifically to prosecute the mafia and corrupt politicians).
- Denying any and all protection to witnesses and whistleblowers to corrupt politician's crimes, past and future.
- "Reforming" the criminal law to be "more on level with EU criminal law standards" (despite the EU threatening that Slovakia will be met with sanctions if we do this crazy thing). How does it look in practice? Businesses that can afford lawyers no need to pay any taxes whatsoever. Even smaller ones just simply stopped paying. Crimes that would previously land you 15 years in jail now only carry a slap on the wrist and 1 - 3 years parole. Previously also a lot of the crimes could be prosecuted for up to 30 years after committing them. That was cut tenfold to 3 years in many cases.
And just now few days ago, Fico himself went to Moscow for a private meeting with Putin. Upon returning, declared that Slovakia would cut electricy export to ukraine.
It's not even free. Ukraine is paying for it, and it makes for about 20% of Ukraine's supply of electricy. The only ones who get something here are, you guessed it, the mafia and Russia. Splendid.

On the note of previous year's statements i can't but mention that i have the same feelings towards USA's election where Trump won. Already now i can see a thousand ways of how terribly this will impact the world. I would love to be wrong and witness an economic boom for USA and for the rest of the world to follow suit. Guess we'll see who was right, in a year.

For me, as of now, that was the last drop in the bucket. My last hopes that human progress and decency would win over hate and stupidity are now gone. All i now hope for is that whatever shit that goes on on the other side of the planet, behind the ocean, won't impact Czech Republic *that* much. That's where i'm moving to, hopefully before the double cross on Slovakia's flag, the only part distinguishing it from Russian flag, is torn off completely.