On:

After weeks of  thinking and internal battles, I allowed myself to make the decision of changing plans and going home.

Yesterday I’ve felt particularly exhausted. As I was looking at flight ticket possibilities as I was still considering going with my original plan of going to London, but I realized that if I had the chance to book a direct flight from Palma to Budapest, I would book it without hesitation. If this is the case, why am I torturing myself with coming up with all the great excuses to still make it to London? I could list all the great reasons on why to do it, I know I could have greatly benefited from it, but the truth is I just couldn’t bare the thought of having to deal with an extra flight and the challenge of having to figure out my accomodation in London. Every inch of me was against having to pack my backpack one additional time. As I acknowledged that frustration I allowed myself to let the opportunities of that extra trip go and booked my way to get home. I am sure that if I would have pushed myself to do it, I could have come out just as happy with my decision, but I am content. Everybody who I talked to told me to follow my gut as I’ve been doing so before, so I did. It’s time to go home and breathe a bit.

Today, after getting over with the ‘stress’ of making a decision, finally having that off my chest, and after a long good night sleep it just feels weird.
It is really odd to know that a week and a half from now, I’ll be home. It’ll be cold and dark, I will unpack my backpack, Iwill not have to figure out my immediate future, and will not have my life depend on the kindness of strangers. I will be back in my known and familiar environment and soon enough I’ll face the challenge of how not to slip back into previous habits that were not at all good for me… That won’t be simple.
After a few days of gathering my thoughts I will catch up with many people and then will be probably get caught up in the craze of the holiday season, and in the meantime I will have the daunting pressure of having to figure out what comes next. Oh well…
That’s a challenge for 2 weeks from now.

Now I’m spending the last few days in Mallorca – tomorrow is my last full day, I’ll fly off on Wednesday (I’m heading to Barcelona for a week before I go home.)
I have a pile of work I owe to people, so today I tried to wrap most of that up, but I didn’t manage to get as much done as I wanted to, partly because some back-and-forth with who I was working for, made me have to scrap a few hours worth of work, but well… that’s life.
I’m playing ‘catch up’ with my tasks, and doing my best to learn the lessons that brings.
I have to learn how to set my own schedule, I’m trying to learn how to have a healthy pace of work, how to get as much done as I can, not get distracted, not hop around with tasks if I can, keep a clear list of priorities and do all this in a way that allows me to have a well-rounded day as well. It’s an interesting challenge. I’m getting used to monitoring my work hours – something, I never really had to do before but something that is definitely very helpful if I want to have a career as a freelancer.
While I’ve been working as a workawayer at different places I always adjusted to the daily pace of my hosts. As I’m travelling around this is the case no matter where I stay – adjusting to whoever is kind enough to host me – but I should slowly start building an effective pace of my own. Due to my randomness and my job before I never really had a schedule of life, which came in handy since during my trip I didn’t feel like I broke out of my natural cycle of habits (I didn’t have them), but now it’s soon time to build that up to boost my productivity.
Well, let’s see what the next chapter is about… 🙂

On:

Heeelllo World!

Sooo, here I am 10th November, day 226, I’m currently in a small town, called Sencelles – still Mallorca.

Right now I’m staying at the place of a very nice German artist and trying to help her out with various thing in exchange for staying at her home and sharing meals. She is a very kind soul, her house is amazing, her cats are adorable – I’m at a good place again, as that tends to be the case…

In my previous post I mentioned that I was soon on my way to my next host, a workawayer with whom I was gonna work on Etsy and online shops in general. That worked out really well and even though there were a couple of challenging moments it came to be that after the originally set 9 days or so I managed to stay there a bit longer, then take a couple of days off to wander back to Palma, return to him again for a week and now I’m going to head back there on Sunday.
That guy is really amazing, I enjoy our conversations a lot, I love his place, the calm and quiet of that home, the rhythm of his days, his bookshelf- I just want to read pretty much every book he has. 😀 I already finished 3 and lately started the 4th one, but damn, I could live off that bookshelf for a year, even though it’s not a wall-wide thing…

The funny bit is the roller-coaster ride that was leading up to me still being here. Even before I went to his place, I felt like I would want to stay longer  (I didn’t know why exactly, although I conjured explanations of course, I’m good at that), but I seemed to hit a wall, it seemed not to be possible. So there I was with a person with whom we were talking about the flow of things, meditation, the purpose of life, the path one’s supposed to walk and the hints, signs and brick walls the ‘Universe’ might throw your way – and as I was trying to plan my way off the island (I did not want to leave but it seemed like I have to) I ran into walls constantly. For a very long time certain websites simply wouldn’t load for me even though they worked perfectly for my friends and seemingly to everyone else on the internet… so I got a lesson of stay put, be present, be patient, let things go, let it unfold… At times I was very frustrated, after every random ‘lifelesson’ bit I would feel like a kid, shaking her fist at the skies, asking ‘okay, was this  the lesson? Can you let me off the hook now?’ or saying ‘C’mon, it’s not up to me, what am I supposed to do?’. Some moments I was really frustrated, some moments I had this deep trust that something will happen… something always would happen. If the control has been taken out of my hands, I can only wait with openness so when the solution arises I’m there. Slowly but surely, bit by bit things shifted, changedand formed – I stayed around for an extra week and a half, I was given the chance to book my flight to get off the island, but then things would become weird again and I was getting the hint that I should still stay around – and I wanted to as well… so here I was, with the desire to stay, the chance not being given, and the ‘universe’ playing along my side, simply not allowing me to look at flights or to check in to my flight…
As soon as we would agree that I might be able to stick around for another week (but I’d have to sort out a gap-week inbetween), the websites I was seemingly blocked from, started magically work again… thank you World. 😀 But even so, just leaving that small town when I was going to seemed to run into challenges – we wanted to drive to the trainstation in the next town so that I can get to Palma and low and behold, EVERY road was closed for just that time when we were trying to get there. Bicycle race… I couldn’t stop laughing in the car. We would wander off to small roads only to find every possible solution to be blocked for the next 2 hours…
I’m not in a storytelling mode, so I’m not giving you a great insight on how this whole thing felt, but maybe one day in another format, or over a beer. :))
Anyway, at some point I just said it out loud multiple times and I wrote it down as well – if I come across a nice place by the next day, that could host me  for the coming week I forget about my booked flight and I’ll take his offer for staying for one more week and then.. well then we’ll see what happens.
Next day, my life was sorted out for the coming 2 weeks, my host offered to pay the price of the lost flight, and well… here I am, still in Mallorca.

The current idea is that after I wrap up the next work-session with him I’d be flying off to Barcelona for a week, and then from there to London for the illustration fair, and then home, but if I’m completely honest with myself I really have no idea about what’s going on now… I’m completely open to trashing all those plans, let’s see what the world holds for me. I didn’t dare to book any flights yet.

 

So anyway, what I hope I’m learning about lately is being present. Also a lot about honest and open communication. Clear, to-the-bone-honest, but non-judgemental communication. Maneuvering various kinds of conversations in a way that everybody gets to express their feelings, needs and preferences without creating emotional baggage. There is a lot of room for improvement, but just by bringing it to the foreground of my mind and reading about it helped a lot already.
Book recommendation:  Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Another thing that was going on is Inktober, and people who follow me on social media probably ran into many posts with ink drawings – many plein air sketches. It was challenging at times, but then looking back it feels really great that I had such a productive month in October, finishing many drawings even if they were not huge, very creative pieces, but they are up to a level of finish, they are not just a pile of loose sketches. I should really try to build/keep the habit of getting things done day after day, cause apparently I am capable of doing so if I commit to it. There were a few days when I fell off schedule, there were about 2 days when I did not draw with ink and I think about 2 more when I didn’t finish the started pieces on the given day but I did make enough drawings for the days of the month plus I’ve made watercolor sketches as well. Also there was a day when I was really unhappy with my original sketch, so I just started over and made a new one from scratch. This is the album on my Fb page where I gathered the images that were dedicated to it.

Also I don’t think I’ve mentioned it over here, so shameless self-marketing time – I’ve opened a shop on society6 with a few designs, so Art prints, notebooks, T-shirts and such are available over there with a few of my artworks. There is many more I need to work on, and based on my newly found knowledge from the recent tasks I had there is an insane amount of things I’d need to do to be playing this online shop game properly, but for now it’s good. Designs are made available, and I’ve seen that they print well – the rest is marketing magic that I have to create headspace for. That is a quest for later.

FeleriSketches - deer - T-shirt
Head over to my shop to check out other designs (click on the image)

So anyway, I’m still here, still happy, still learning and I keep crossing path with amazing people.
I’m grateful for all the help and support of all the incredible people who are around throughout this trust-fall experiment of mine.

I love the whole world – boom de yada :))