On:

I think I always start writing posts with putting on some music (this time, it’s Radiohead) and starting typing anything that comes to mind… Writing doesn’t really start with what a post would start with, except for this one I guess -I don’t want to edit this out now for some reason. *shurgs*

I’m sitting in a cafe Nero in the southern part of London, sipping on my cappuchino, still savoring the last bites of my slice of lemon cake – the luxury of the week. It was not great.
I’m sitting beside a wall of carefully selected and arranged books. Whoever ordered these books, was fairly particular about what they wanted . books of similar size, with black cover and golden or silver typeface. For the color pop, you gotta have a few red books too though and then to make it look a little bit less forced, you can buy a couple of random ones, but make sure they are the same size. For I moment I wondered if they were real books at all… I’m one table apart from the wall so I won’t check – the question will be there, hanging in the air, unspoken, unexplored. Oh the great mysteries of life. 😀

I’ve been meaning to post something for way too long now. I have many ideas about well-constructed posts, with messages, advice, funny stories and many great things, but when I sit down and start to write, it becomes and endless rambling without any sort of structure. It’s more of a diary than a useful blog and a sloppy one from that category as well. Flow of consciousness. Random things….

Anyway, I decided that today I’ll not only get out of the house, but brink my laptop with me, find a cafe, sit down, start putting words after one another and here I am, doing so…

After spending around 2 month back home, I now came to the UK. I’m in the midway of a 2-week internship at an illustration agency, before I move on to meet up with some great friends and then with them, buzz around in Leeds for the Thought Bubble Festival. Good times!

The things I’m doing is a two week unpaid internship where I’m just helping out in the office doing whatever they need me to help out with. I get some travel and food costs covered at the end (hence my luxury day – yay!), so with that I can hopefully manage to get my 2-week time mostly free of cost. That is only possible, because of a friend that offered to host me who happens to live a 20 minute stroll away from the agency. I’m lucky in many ways and I feel incredibly grateful for that.

I haven’t made it to the city center this time either and I probably won’t do while I’m here. I have no reason to, unless some local friends want to meet up.
Funny how this is my 3rd time to London and I still barely did any of the touristy things. That’s just not how my travel works at the moment I guess. Nor what my wallet is prepared for…

But I totally act like a tourist in another sense – I walk around on my way to or from ‘work’ and I stare at the world around me with an awe and I take photos of pretty much every blade of grass. English houses amuse me so much. I love the bricks fences, the variation of doors, window types, the lush greenery in the front gardens. *Click* Photo taken of a patch of moss here *click* photo taken of cool-looking house number *click* a pretty flower *click* a porch… People on the street must think I’m totally crazy for stopping at every door and to be fair, they are probably right.

The weather has been really nice too, so I’ve been sketching outdoor every day since last Monday and I decided that I’ll keep this up for the rest of my time in town. I’m 6 drawings in and still happy with it. I’m not putting a lot of pressure on it – they are just 15-35 minute sketches with one marker (an a pencil undersketch if I feel like it) on a small, postcard sized paper. I think my marker will give up tomorrow though, so I’ll have to switch another one. I still don’t want to allow myself to buy art supplies so I’ll switch to one of the big permanent markers I have…

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What else is going on?

Well, a month before I came here, I applied for a job back home and they were supposed to get back to me at the end of August. I guess that means I’m not hired. In that case, the plan was, that after my trip to Poland, which wraps up after the first week of October, I was going to go home, find a place to stay, a job, and give myself half a year to breathe, build things, settle down a bit.

Yesterday it hit me that I’m not sure if that’s the right plan. Finding an affordable apartment back home is not easy. A random job I could probably find easily, but it probably wouldn’t be easy to put money together. Why do I want to go home?

Do I want to? It seemed like a good idea, but I’m not sure anymore. There are a couple of things that it would be worth being home for – there are many interesting, exciting things happening, projects building, friends getting closer, inspiring people popping up on my radar. I want to touch base with people, I want to nurture myself, learn new things and give myself the space to create. But these latter things I can do without settling home.

What made me start re-thinking this again was that I realized that if location didn’t really matter, than maybe I should be in a country that either pays me really well for a random job (to save up to buy myself flexible time afterwards), or has a good potential for appealing work opportunities or pays fine and allows me to gain language skills. Or somewhere where I Know, that Good, Inspiring friends are around. Surrounding myself with great people is still very high on the priority list – if any of such friends would say, let’s move together and support each other, building something up, I’d be very eager to make a move towards that…

On the top of the language list is spanish and french I think. I haven’t been to France yet though and I have no language base so I wouldn’t be confident in moving there straight away, cause I don’t have enought mone at hand I think I couldn’t find a job straight up…

Then would come portugues and italian. I’ve been meaning to really learn languages for so long now and I’ve made so little effort and progress on that field for a long time now it feels like I wasted something… I either need to make enough money to enroll in a course or put myself in a different language environment. Otherwise I won’t do it…

So yeah, there is that…

Where should I go? What should I do?

While pondering about these things I’m also trying to figure out my path with art. Next week, I’ll have a portfolio review with the manager of the agency I’m interning at, so yesterday I’ve been putting together a pdf with my images that I see as a potential fit for their company. I have a pile of questions swirling around in my head and I realised that I’m eager to hear what they think. That might help me pick a direction for now – maybe not a geographical one, but at least an artistic career path. We’ll see.

On:

While posting the previous wall of text I realised that there’s a loose thread I should tie up.

I obviously did not get the training opportunity in Madrid. Which is in a way great, cause otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I’m fairly happy here as it probably came across from the previous post. 🙂
The world knows better – this way I have a chance to survive the summer (I’d probably melt and die in Spain :D), and I’m meeting best friends and other great people. :))

And since we’re at loose threads… another thing came up now. I applied to a workaway option in Dublin and got a “maybe” as a reply. It is a household of various artists and creative, who occasionally get volunteers to help them with all kinds of projects. Though they are now prooobably not taking people on board, we started a conversation and there might be a chance. Even if not, I might try to meet up with them when I’m in Dublin, cause they sound awesome.

Anyway… so things are happening, the game is on, and I’m looking forward to every day. 🙂

On:

I applied to an animation “cleanup” training program because the opportunity just showed up on my newsfeed. Hell, why not? Well, because…

1. I have no backgroun in animation, and I definitely don’t have the kind of work they would be looking for
2. The training is in spanish and my language skills faded a long time ago
3. It starts in July in Madrid, which means if by some kind of miracle I would get accepted I would not be able to make to Ireland as we agreed with my friends.
4. Also I’d be in Spain for the summer which I wanted to avoid, cause I am really not a summer person.

Well… Thankfully this thought process didn’t have much of a weight in my head, the little voice was either tired or left behind lost somewhere.
It might be the travel and freedom mindset, I just didn’t really allow myself to think about it. I saw it, read through, looked at all the comments to see any additional info the main post might have been missing and went straight to writing an email and linking my portfolio. Even though I know it’s not fit for it… or the company. It’s a _trainging_ program, not a job – that doesn’t sound that dangerous.

But to answer the little voice and the worries, I have all the replies… here it goes:

1. The application process is there for a reason, they can just decide for themselves if I have any skills they find value in or not. I just have to be an okay student material I guess.
2. If I have the chance to prepare for a month I could just try to pressure myself hard enough to brush up my spanish and I’m sure it would work out then. It would be a great motivation to actually jump back on track with it – nothing works better than having something at stake. Being upfront but enthusiastic about the issue again allows them to decide for themselves if they take the risk or not.
3. My friends are great and not only will they understand, they’d be cheering for me in the front row.
4. Bad excuse, I’ll adjust. 😀

Anyway, according to the automatic email that they will get back to us with the results on the June 7th latest, so if things go according to the plan – I will get to know . bwaaaaah! 😀

I will be happy either way. I’m already proud of myself for just sending the email without spiraling down in pointless overthinking. If I get accepted, I will be filled with panic (spanish? living in Madrid? Training??) and excitement (learning opportunity on so many levels & meeting great people for sure).

If I don’t get accepted – the original plan of spending July in Ireland with the most amazing people will be back on the board.

I am incredibly lucky to be able to do all this.

On:

Seeing the gorgeous colors that the setting sun paints on everything makes me want to rush out there and paint – to try and capture the soft gradients on the sky, the warm touches of light on the otherwise painfully bright white buildings. Photos just don’t seem to work…

But honestly, I should really stop myself from painting at sunset, cause it’s the most frustrating thing I’ve been doing lately :DD I’m chasing cast shadow that slip away and meld into each other within twenty minutes. Colors change so fast that by the time the first layer of paint is down on the paper, the colors I’d put down as second layer don’t make sense anymore. Everything is changing and I’m on a constant race to try and match what I’m seeing but by the time it’s down on paper it is too late.

I’m doomed to failure.

I think for now I should stick to _enjoying_ sunset scenery, trying to capture it in my mind, study and absorb what I’m seeing. I need to level up many skills till I have a chance. :)))

 

(I wanted to upload a couple of photos for you, but the wifi is so slow at the moment, that it was a struggle to open the dashboard, so I guess you’ll have to do without the photos for now.)