Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. I’m a product person and an entrepreneur. I’ve been working in 🏙 govtech for eight years and currently work at a UK-based 🏦 fintech startup Silverbird while building a new company in 👩🏼⚕️ healthtech on the side.
Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, digital healthcare, working on startups, productivity, some nerdy stuff and an occasional share of reflections on the Ukraine war and how it feels being Russian at this moment in history.
This issue was sent out to 230 subscriber (-1 from the previous week). Last week’s issue received 291 view.
Hey there. Before we jump into this week’s issue, just a heads up – there won’t be anything related to tech, startups, and productivity this week. It’s all my personal news and how recent events in Russia affected me. It just feels completely out of place to write about async communication, how I manage my calendar, which iPad apps I use or why I believe Telegram is way more superior than WhatsApp when for the whole past week, my head was in a completely different place. I’ll cover all of these great topics, but not today.
📰 Some personal news
It’s been a rough and eventful week. One I will probably remember for the rest of my life.
Wednesday. Putin announces mobilization (and practically escalates the war).
Friday. I leave home and take a flight to Istanbul. If I were to guess, I would give it a fair 90% chance that I won’t see my home for at least a year now.
Then, I spent the rest of the week in Istanbul, collecting myself to catch up on work, and in the evenings, meeting up with other male friends who made an emergency escape from Russia, leaving all their lives and possessions behind for an unknown time (maybe even forever). That still feels surreal, and I have a hard time comprehending that all of this is real life happening to us. Oh, not to mention a constant feeling of guilt that I’m complaining about any of that shit when people in Ukraine are still dying every single day.
Fortunately, I still maintain an optimistic view most of the time. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, that kind of thing. I’m safe now, have a fairly decent action plan in mind for me and my family that we are committed to, and I’m slowly recovering from that shock and getting back into my routines.
Recommendations of the week
🤡 Mobilization in Russia: panic, protests and people leaving (video)
Found this particularly funny YouTube commenter from Russia who covers Russian stuff for an English-speaking audience. If you were wondering what the fuck is going on in Russia right now (it is super close to 1984, I’m telling you), that one video would be just enough. Enjoy it!
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻
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