On:

I think it’s no news to any of my friends, that I would say I have too many things in my life and I refuse to give up any of them.

I’ve been home in Budapest since mid-October – started a part time job (the one I mentioned in my previous blogpost as one I probably didn’t get).
Now I have that 3 times a week and they just recently asked / offered a full time position (with a shift into a coordinator / project manager role). I’m not sure if I should go for a full time job or not…
Cause apart from that, I’m also a host at a co-working place which I really enjoy, it’s 2 shifts per week (4-5 hours/shift). By default it doesn’t pay, but grants me access to the space, the community though if I’m being honest I haven’t really been using those benefits all that much. But I take on extra shifts every so often and that pays, plus I adore the people I met there, it’s a really simple, low-pressure environment and I like that. I get to meet people I otherwise wouldn’t and I also got some work (art commission) through that gang.
Lately they half-seriously asked if I would be interested in actually working for them, running the place – funny enough that question came the same day when my workplace folks told me that they’d want me full time. Choices oh, choices.

Plus there’s the event organizing thing that’s been on my plate for awhile now and since I’m home I was trying to be more active – especially since so many people from the team became passive. If I had the will to pour more energy into that, I think we could start turning it into a business too, but right now, that’s pretty stagnant. It’s still experience on a few fields.

For the next few weeks I’m also helping out my drawing teacher on quite a few weekends, which is cool, cause otherwise I don’t really meet him, but the work itself doesn’t give me a lot of boost…
Aaand on top of that comes the fact, that I would be an artist or what. I usually don’t have a lot of mental capacity to learn and improve, though I really should be, cause my eye is so much better trained nowadays than my hands and it’s a really frustrating stage to be in. I’m not happy with the things I make most of the time, I see soooo many mistakes, but I’m not yet able to fix them. Gotta deal with that…

As for the job offers, I decided, that I wouldn’t make commitments before I come back from Bologna, since my mind was full of what I could potentially want to get out of the Bologna Children’s book fair. I got home yesterday.
The last thing I expected to happen during the event was the husband of my friend telling me that if I wanted to live in Portugal, I could work as a project manager at their company or if social media might interest me more, there’s room for that being a position too. šŸ˜€ But at least that’s an easy “no” at this moment. I’m settled in Hungary and for now I’m staying here. I need some stability, I’m finally starting to have my room set up well and I have a lot to learn in my current life. I’d only give this all up for a Good offer from something that is really appealingĀ inĀ both personal / career growth and money. I’m not running anywhere. I was wide open for options a couple of months ago,now at least the location is set, to make choices easier.

Anyway, after a week of whirlwind and runaround in Bologna I’m back to my little nest and I have no idea what I’m doing. I want to draw a hundred different things, I want to paint, I want to do nothing and everything. So many things are rushing around in my head that it’s hard to just start anything and stick to it.

I have a commission I should also be working on, but I couldn’t get in the mood of that piece the whole day, so I was messing around with other things…

But at least I started reworking my website, made progress with that. I’m more happy with the current setup even though there are still soooo many things that should be reworked and well, so many things I should be writing, scanning, editing, uploading, painting for it too.

One step at the time I guess.
For now, I’ll give myself an hour and put on some pain(t)ing music and get back to a weird, creepy unicorn painting I started yesterday evening.

Let’s see where that takes me…

On:

Here we are again…
I’m going to set off 2 weeks from now and step into uncertainty. I have rough ideas about where I should be in the second half or March, probably in April, where would I want to be in the end of May and then the second half of September and early October.
If I go with these ideas, it seems like I’m not really sitting still again this year.

It’s still all too vague and doesn’t really include a clear plan about how on earth will I be making money, but just gotta keep going.
The good thing is, that lately there seem to be more and more opportunities arising. I didn’t manage to land a gig yet, but friends link me things they come across and I get connected to people who are looking for illustrations. Then some of these people actually contact me, which means my work seems to be ‘good enough’. Quoting a price is hard, but in the past few weeks I’ve been gaining some experience in that. No jobs so far, but I’m waiting to hear back on a couple of things. Hope one of them works out. It’d be good to kick in this freelancing thing.

I’m also veeeery slowly building a body of work that I hope to turn into something.
Last year before I was setting off I thought I’d make an exhibition when I come home from the works I did on the road.
I didn’t do that… Not yet anyway, but looking back on many of the travel sketches, I believe that to be fine. I made a fair amount of bad sketches…
There is a pile of works that I’m happy with or proud of, but I didn’t have the power, nor did I think it would be a good investment to organize an exhibition. Maybe a little bit later… I’m going to gather myself together. The thought that appeared in my head is that I’d probably organize something like that once I have a small space of my own, although I have no ideaĀ how doesĀ that has anything to do with this… I’m going to think about it further…

For now it’s prepwork for the first jump. This weekend I’m supposed to wrap up the portfolio I want to get printed for the Bologna Children’s book fair. I aim to send it off to be printed on Monday. We’ll see how that goes. Most of the material is done, but there’s quite some adjusting to be done and I want to finish a couple of more little paintings as well. We shall see. I’m not going to beat myself up if I push it back a day, but I want to get done with it as soon as possible, so I can move on with other things.

I have to put some of my stuff back in boxes, buy a couple of things for the road, tidy up my laptop, finish a painting for someone, meet quite a few people.
Just keep going.. one step after the other. You’ll get there, wherever that is.

On:

Hello 2018,

I still have no idea of what I’m doing, I’m still battling with crazy thoughts, indecisiveness, too many ideas, no commitment, fear of growing roots and all the other lovely things.

I’m still at home, less of a hermit these days – managed to catch up with some people and reach out to others – I’m trying to push myself to be productive as well as social.

So what comes next?
As usual, I’m juggling a few things, not committing 100% energy to anything (I’m not sure yet if that out of fear or if that’s just my wiring… we shall see), but at least now I sort of have a main focus. I booked a flight and arranged a host – I am going to Bologna again this year.
I’m going to attend the children’s book fair and I really hope that this time, being a bit more aware of how things work over there, I can perform a bit better. Right now the primary goal is to rework my portfolio for that event and I aim for contacting publishers with it before I get there.
Ideally I would be able to set up interviews with places that are interested in working with me and arrange the rest of my attendence around that. I don’t know what are my chances, but I’ll give it a go. If nothing works out, I can still just go, queue up for portfolio reviews, try to make connections.

This time I will hopefully be less overwhelmedĀ to begin with – not having the pending issue of “where the hell do I sleep” that I had last year would be great. Fingers crossed.

The ticket I booked is one way only…

I don’t yet know if I’m staying longer, if I move on from there or come home. I contacted one person on Workaway to ask about their availability and also browsed around a bit for interesting projects in different parts of Europe as well as a few flight options. I don’t know what I’m up to yet…Ā  Probably I should have a bit of “breathing time” after the event, organizing my notes, contacting the people I meet there, taking their advice and applying newfound knowledge, but doing so could be possible in a work-for-shelter environment as well if it’s the right one.

…

The other stable point of the year is that I want to go to Leeds again. I had such a blast at the Thought Bubble festival, that it is a MUST… I talked to a friend and we decided to apply together for a table to exhibit. In all honesty, I’m scared as hell.. I never did anything like that… But I applied and they shall decide if I’m a right fit for the event or not. If not, I’m going to be a jolly little volunteer again. And even if they accept it, I want to work on the setup and wrap up process – it was just too much fun not to do so… plus if I have to table, it will be great to take my mind off the stress of that with having things to do šŸ˜€
But I should know more about that sometime in February. Until then, that quest line is back in the shadows. šŸ™‚ I’ll deal with it when it comes forward…

What else? Humm.. not sure.. I’m sketching, painting, getting in touch with fellow artists, try to poke both myself and other to stop overthinking everything, to dare to try and to startĀ getting things done. It’s alright… we can do this! šŸ™‚

Jump!

On:

 

Here I am, being back home, living mostly like a hermit – barely leaving the house. For now, I’m being quite okay with that to be honest.

I spend most of my time with being online, listening to music, while doing some remote work and painting. I feel like the days are rushing by incredibly fast, but that is the nature of things when the days are mostly uneventful.

There are things, plans and ideas swirling around as I’m catching up with people and we discuss the potentials of collaborating, living together or just shaping our lives in a way that it overlaps more. Nothing is set in stone, but many things seem to be slowly set in motion.

As many times before in my life, I feel like I’m vaguely presented options and everything comes down to if I’m willing to put energy in it or not – others don’t seem to push these things hard enough to set them in motion, but I know that if I dedicated my energy to it it could be something awesome. Now comes all the measuring of everything. How can I put my life together so that everything I want to fold into it, has it’s space?

The most frequent question I get from people is along the lines of ‘now what?’.

Of course. I’m still not sure.

Truth to be told, I can’t bear the thought of the hassle that finding an apartment would be. Figuring out where do I want to live for the next *insert long term stay duration* feels scarier than going back to a state of living where I constantly had to figure out my daily whereabouts. Having the life I had for most of the year was exhausting, but now those challenges are the familiar ones – growing roots is not something I’m used to doing. Siging rental contracts, moving and trying to build up my life is not something I feel ready for… Being on the road showed me that there is an amazing amount of things “out there” that I could be doing, learning, connecting with and being free to explore those options is amazing. It is extremely hard, especially since this year I’ve been living off my bank account, now it’d be time to earn money on the go as well and ideally not just get by but add to my savings. I can’t imagine it to be easy, but it would probably be worth it.

I feel the longing to have basecamp for myself and my mental image of an ideal home is slowly shaping in the back of my head, but it doesn’t have a weight to it yet, I don’t know if that’s due anytime soon…

There’s a conclusion I arrived to in the past few weeks – while this year was all about the ‘trust fall’ (with heart and mind open, I leaned back and the world caught me), next year I want to take an actual ‘leap of faith’. Not just allowing myself to fall and hoping for the wind, the flow to carry me, but taking action, aiming for something and gathering my strenght to go for it.

There are many things I could go for, many things I’m scared of, but I know they’d work…

Time to take action – Jump!

On:

So here it is… the first Week I started back home.

I got back home on Wednesday (which was Day 245 of the ‘living out of a backpack’ quest)

Many people asked how it is being back and most of the time my answer is, it’s odd.
It truly is… but the really weird thing is how it is completely normal.
Last week I was walking on the seaside in a sunny autumn day in Barcelona and yesterday I was walking around the neighborhood to stroll while it’s snowing,Ā and it feelsĀ absolutely natural. Sure the most useful skillset I had during the trip was adjusting to the new scenes of my life very quickly, but still…
There are sooo many things that are different in this daily reality from the one I had on the go for most of the year and switching back to this makes the whole trip feel like a dream already. This is the 5th day since I’m back and it already feel like it was a long time ago… or rather, it wasn’t even true. THAT is weird.

Anyway… here I am now. Tomorrow I’ll be catching up with friends from here and reconnecting with many beloved people – I’m sure that meeting them will make me more grounded and I’ll be in the state of overflowing love just as much as I was on my farewell party. I’m grinning already just from the thought of hugging these folks again.
I’ve been a hermit in the past few days, just breathing, working on things, painting, reading, and reconnecting with people from other places over the web and trying to gather some of my ideas on the ‘now what’. I know that soon enough I’ll have to answer that question for myself. Others have started asking me that already and I’ve been asking myself as well… I have many ideas, many dream-bits, but no plans. There are a few things I’d need to know more about before I can pick a path. I want to talk to people and explore ideas further before I commit to anything.
I love the freedom of choice, but, man, when I have toĀ makeĀ that choiceĀ I realize how much I struggle with making decisions. Haha šŸ˜€Ā  Ohwell…

For now, one of my quests is to make sure that as I go on with my daily life, I identify the habits that are connected to this place, this reality. Habits that I managed to change when I was at other places, surrounded with different people. I catch myself falling back to bad habits and as I realize that I try to make a conscious effort to hold on to new ones or at least making a mental note to bring the new ones to thisĀ rhythmĀ as well later on if I can.
ThereĀ wereĀ some precious little rituals in my life that I grew to like a lot and there were things, that I experienced through living with certain people, things that I want to bring into the life I build for myself. For example having a daily routine that includes quiet time, eating better, going outside more even when I don’t have a “reason” to, approaching communication differently, develop a better sense of listening and building relationships in which I also feel heard.

The logistics of life will have to be put together as well of course – income, home and such quests, do I stay at home, do I look for opportunities elsewhere? Do I look for a job or do I try to build myself one? Do I look for an apartment here or in some other country? Do I want to set out travelling again? If so, would I do it the same way?Ā  Many questions that I honestly don’t know the answer to yet…

Let’s just breathe and process things for another week, shall we?

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. šŸ˜€ 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 longerĀ  (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)Ā 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, wasĀ thisĀ  the lesson? Can you let me off the hookĀ now?’Ā 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 thatĀ 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. šŸ˜€ 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 meĀ  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 toĀ 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 beingĀ present.Ā Also a lot about honest and open communication. Clear, to-the-bone-honest, but non-judgemental communication.Ā 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:Ā Ā 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 :))

 

 

On:

Today was the 200. day since I’ve set off to travel.

My last (very brief) update was about how I am on my way to Mallorca to get some summer feeling. I’m happy to stay that I have managed to get that – it’s nice and warm over here, but not boiling hot. I’m not the kind of person who would go sunbathing to the beach for days, but I did swim in the sea, I walked on the beach, collected pebbles, seashells. I ate tapas, paella, drank sangrĆ­a and in general I’ve been having a good time here so far. I’m probably staying on the island until the end of the month, but I don’t have a set date yet of leaving. I’ve checkedĀ  some flight ticket prices today, so I have ideas, but it will be decided over the next week.

The odd thing to think about is, that now, going home came to the horizon. Based on the flight prices I checked and my current ideas of how I would want to do things, a month from now I might be home. I can’t really imagine that. Especially since I don’t have a “home” to go back to – when I set dates I will quickly have to start to arrange things so that I can have a home base somewhere, since I want to stay home for the winter, but only so much of a base, that I actually probably want to keep my mobility to set off somewhere for the spring again.
I don’t know what I want to do, but many things came up and there are events that I want to attend and people that I will have to see again. We were talking about art residencies, working together, camping together, seeing places, doing things. Many-many plans, but all of that is in this weird non-realistic realm.

Sometime soon, I will have to figure out a reasonable next step. I’ve spent most of this year wandering around, catching up with people, making new friends, gathering random experiences, observing myself and constantly thinking, evaluating, breathing. Next year I’m going to have to start to make things happen, and more importantly also have to make money. I will have to find jobs here and there, take on projects, figure out income streams and actually really start building up a path that will allow me to do all the things that I would like to be doing, learn all the things that I want to learn and be with the people that I want to be with.
I have a few ideas, but I don’t have aĀ plan. I’m going to have to start planning towards the end of the year and then pull things together.

For now I will try to make the most of my time here – I’m going to a workaway host tomorrow and supposedly I will learn a great amount of new things of etsy and online shops and more importantly I’m going to meet new amazing people. As much as I’ve been in a socially exhausted state in the last weeks, I also keep looking forward to meeting people. Sometimes it is hard to actually pull myself together to set off, but IĀ do go and I am happy that I get to know more and more interesting folks from all around…

But now I’m just rambling – forgive me, it’s almost 2 in the evening over here. I’m going to stop typing now and instead of going back to editing or saving this for later, I’ll just hit publish and go to sleep. Otherwise this would land in a pile of posts that never made it to the surface.

Bottomline stays the same as ever: I’m still alive.

 

On:

So … I’ve set off 150 days ago.
That is almost half a year… How the hell did this happen?

Setting off feels like so long ago but still it just happened… it’s confusing.

I wanted to write about many amazing things but now that I actually set down to write, I feel blank. I keep wanting to sum things up, to show how things come full circle or highlight the best moments, but it’s hard… it’s a flow of events, and truth to be told I don’t even know what I did and didn’t write about earlier. I talk to so many people and write to so many places nowadays that I loose track of what I communicate where, when it comes down to talking about my travel experiences. …

I’m horrible at blogging here though so I guess it would be pretty safe to just assume that whatever I wanted to write about I probably haven’t yet said here…

Anyway… let’s make another list – things I’ve learned (+ context and lifebits)

  • People are Nice
    Not like I needed a life lesson in that, but I definitely get more and more affirmation about it. I have many-many memory bits that are generally strengthening my belief of this. I walk around on the street anywhere, and people smile at me (I often believe it must be the magic of my hat…), or I sit on the ground, drawing, painting and they walk up to me kindly, encouragingly, saying a few words about themselves, or painting, or anything.
    In Ferrara a couple of guys parked a guy somewhere in front of me and they asked if it’s okay, if they ruined the sight for me – I didn’t even realize they parked there until they started talking to me – I was painting a window high up, but I was totally blown away by how considerate they were.
    Then in Bologna when I was sitting on the ground in a square painting a clocktower and after sitting there for an hour, two girls walked up to me and one of them said, “Hey I just wanted to say thank you, Iā€™m glad you are here“. I still can’t process that. It made my day.
    The old guy in Portugal, who gave me a lift when I was going back to work from the beach – we’ve spent more time trying to find a common language, than we chatted cause we got to my bus stop fairly quickly, but it was such a treasured little life-slice there.
    The friendliest englishman in Portugal, who I’ve met in the hostel and who was always a joy to talk to because of his never-fading enthusiasm, who to this day keeps encouraging me and spreading the word about my artwork online.
    The man at the train station in England who enlightened us that not only did we miss the train, but there is not another one for 2 hours because of a strike. And while my friend spent some time fuming and trying to ask around for cab services in the middle of nowhere, I chatted with the guy and came to the conclusion again, that nothing matters, the sun is shining, the skies are blue, the air smells like trees – life is good. We ended up starting to walk to the nearest city by the road and got picked up after 15 minutes of walking by a very sweet couple.
  • People are Helpful
    Again, I had no general doubt about this, but experiencing it over and over again is Ā amazing.
    Back in the beginning, my first host cancelled the last part of my stay with him, because of family issues, so I’ve spent a fair few hours on the internet, trying to find a host for myself. I ended up getting in contact with a helpful stranger that offered to ask his friend who lived in town to host me. And he did – so I ended up in someone’s house, getting a hot meal, a tour around the city, a nice place to sleep and great conversation, by randomly asking in travel groups on the web.
    Similarly – I got to know last minute that I get to go to Zagreb to IFCC and I just messaged people who I knew would attend until someone got me in contact with someone they knew that had a spare bed in the airbnb he was staying at. He was the most amazing flatmate – awesome conversations, playing music and singing late at night and in the morning after waking up. I loved it.
    Then after the event, I once again was planless and ‘homeless’ – a friend from there offered to host me at their airbnb for their last night and then I was on the internet-couch-hunt again. I managed to get a couchsurfing host last minute, saying that I really didn’t mind sleeping on the floor, and promised to be a good guest. I got saved – and 2 days later another person, who saw my post in the last-minute couch request group reached out to me asking if I still wanted a place to stay. Sure I do. So I stayed with her a bit as well – and though it started out as just a day or two, after the first night-long conversation she said I could stay as long as I wanted. I didn’t end up staying all that long, but I felt that she really meant it. She was so cool.
    And just recently I called out for help for September in Leeds, cause flight prices are tricky things and if we went 1 day earlier than our booked accomodation, we would save a pile of money. Within half a day someone showed up with the offer to host 2 people and after talking with her briefly, stretched it to hosting all 3 of us. People are great.
    Wide smile, trust, honest and openhearted call for help. It is magical.
    Don’t get me wrong, you have to be smart about it – you have to measure things up and watch out for suspicious things, not to get yourself into trouble. But finding yourself in unexpected situations with incredibly kind people that help you out is most frequent than not if you have the good attitude towards things.
  • I can do it!
    I have a growing confidence saying that if I dare to step forward and there is someone that is willing to show me how, I could learn and do pretty much anything. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary, or that I would want to do anything. I sure wouldn’t, but now I have the slowly growing confidence that says that I could learn it. Show me how it’s done and I’ll do what I can.
  • Tour guiding is hard
    The scariest thing I ‘ve signed up to do during my travels was being a private tourguide for a day for 4 people. I was scared as fuck, I didn’t want to do it and I did everything I could to make it clear to everyone I talked to that I am _not_ a tourguide, I have no idea about how to do it, so they shouldn’t expect anything other than me showing them to a couple of nice places. The way I tricked myself into loosening up about it was saying that I have no fee – they should decide at the end of the day what it was worth and that’s it. So I thought, worst case scenario, I get nothing, but at least I stretched. If I were to do it again, I would prep differently, push myself more to do the things I knew I should do, and when on sight I would actually try to step up more and present all the info I prepped. I chickened out so many times on actually giving a brief talk, because telling them the facts wrapped in a conversation felt way more natural – but this way, those who wandered off, missed out on them that made the experience weird. If I were to do it again, I have a list of things not to fuck up again.. .but many of those are things that require hard work to master, so I’m not sure I’d stand a chance upon second attempt. Oh well… if I could do it right, it would land me a very helpful skillset though.
  • Standing on a stage doesn’t have to be scary
    On IFCC there was a part where people could go on stage and in 5 minutes, present their portfolios. I thought that it’s not only scary, but it would make no sense for me to do it in front of this crowd, because I’m not aiming to be hired by game /film industy people. I have nothing to show to them, that would interest ’em. But after seeing so many people fumbling around, showing amazing work, but presenting it in the most awful way, I realized that public speaking is not only a skill that I have no experience in, but is something I should probably test in environments with little to no risk involved. Can I talk about my own work in front of people? Yes and no. What can I loose here? Nothing – this is not my field anyway, so if I present myself badly I will probably not loose a chance anyway. So on the second day of the show-off I convinced myself last minute to go for it, because why not. Experience. I made a mental note on everything people did that looked totally off to me, and mistakes I didn’t want to make when I went up there. My goal was to go up there and show my work without committing any of those mistakes. I succeeded. It felt way less scary than I thought it would be.
  • Baking skills
    As stupid as it sounds, I felt uneasy about cooking and baking. I had often made myself food that I was happy with, and I enjoy making biscuits and cookies, but I had close to no experience with making bakery products, or things in general that you’d make with yeast, waiting for it to raise. That is some magical, mysterious thing…
    Also my ex took cooking very seriously when he had the chance and he had pretty high expectations towards food, so I was pretty intimidated to make a meal at home. It’s a stupid thing, I should have just went for it, not fearing critique and have a learning attitude towards it, but I couldn’t, so I mostly just avoided it…
    Anyway, so that said, I had no problem with cooking, but had a pile of stress related to cooking for others, but here where I stay now with two amazing friends of mine, I had the experience that they were pretty enthusiastic about whatever they got, if they had a hot meal. They are working hard every day, so someone else taking care of food and them having a plate when they were getting hungry is all kinds of wonders. So that encouraged me a lot. Also in the very first days it came up that we should have pizza, and facing the prices of pizza over here – even the frozen pizza sometimes as well, shocked me – I decided that I’m going to Make pizza.
    There are many things that can go wrong, so I thought that to test my baking skills and my friendship with the oven, I should probably try something else first. I decided that a messed up bread is less sad than a bad pizza, so I set out to do that first. Having no bread at home one day and me feeling really lazy to go to the shop resulted in my first bread attempt. It turned out okay and about a week later I gathered my courage one day and made pizza. It turned out nice! Yeeey! I managed to make pizza! They were happy, I was happy and the pizza vanished. Level up!
    Also baked a sponge cake last week, cause we all felt like having cake, but again – prices are ridiculous and I said well I have the capacity to make a cake – give me whatever you want in it, and I shall bake a cake. And so a coconut&chocolate cake happened. It was yumm.
  • Monitor my expenses #adult
    Ever since I’ve set off, I put down a note of my spendings. I put down a note whenever I pay for something and every so often I copy those notes to a big spreadsheet where I can look back on what do I spend on and how much money have I spent overall. It’s crazy… I never did anything like this. I had the intent to do so, but I was just never organised enough to keep up with it – it was never a priority. Now that I have the quest of not spending more than 10 euro/day on average, I had to somehow keep track of my money flow to see if I’m succeeding or not. Taking a quick look at my expenses now says that I’m not doing bad. I haven’t updated it in two weeks, but I’m doing okay. šŸ™‚
  • Setting goals #adult
    I’ve always sucked at setting goals. That means commitment, focus, it means that you rule out other things in favor of your prior choices. Choosing things and making decisions is hard. Ā I also had this horrible habit of halfheartedly decide on doing something and then doing everything else but that thing. That is not really a good way to go about things, so I knew I had to grow out of that habit. The change is slow, but it is a growing process. Last year I went through the book called The power of habit, this year through the Talent is overrated and these pushed me further. Learning more and more about how people set goals, reading all the articles about how you should do it didn’t get me to actually do it though. The way it started to work is that two of my friends had a meeting every Monday, setting goals for the next week and telling how much of last week’s goals did they achieve. This sounded intimidating for me when I first got to know about it, but I wanted IN, so I wanted to build myself up to it. After awhile I gathered myself up, came up with a few things I actually want to work on and jumped on board with the Monday ‘office hours’. It works. Recently I also made a spreadsheet where we put down the goals, whether they were achieved or not and I also make sure to write down the ‘achievements’ of every day, even if they are not related to the weekly quests. It’s cool. ‘ been at it for a few weeks now, and it works so far, so I’m pretty content with that. Now the next step would be coming up with longer term goals and plans, then basing the weekly ‘schedule’ on those. Bit by bit, I learn how to be an organised person if I need to be. (And well if I want to manage projects, get things done for myself and do freelance work, then I really need to be.)

Now this came to be a huge wall of text, but I guess whoever is around is used to those by now. šŸ™‚
Thank you for reading my randomness!

On:

I’m so great at this blogging thing that another month has past since my last update. So reliable, much wow!

Oh well… I was planning on making a nice summary post of my travels for the Day 100, but that happened to be a fairly busy dayn and also the first day of a small period of internetlessness (what a lovely word). And as I’m obviously great at creating contenti in advance, that never passed the early-early draft phase. Oh well… Ā But now here I am, kicking myself to do it, so as usual, putting word after word until something comes out of it.

So guess what, this is Day 127…
That is incredibly weird to think about. I have packed up and started living off my backpack 127 days ago! O.o
Factoring in that I jumped back home on the road for a week once, cause that was the most convenient stop and I really needed a break, we can still say that I was abroad for 120 day up until this point. That is freakin’ crazy.
Day after day what I’m doing feels completely natural and normal. And every once in a while it just hits me in the face – I either just marvel at it or grin like an idiot. It wraps around me and I don’t believe that this is happening to me, here, now, still. Ā It hit me when a bit over a week ago I was walking on the street on the outskirts of Dublin with 4 amazing friends of mine. We just walked on our way to get to a cafĆ©, and as I was strolling a bit behind them, listened to them chatter and observed the sunny street it just hit me. I love these people, this feels both unbelievable and perfectly normal. I love my life. I’m incredibly grateful for being here.
Another moment of sudden realisation was a few days prior to that, when we were in England, on a sandy beach with perfect, mild and sunny weather, and ran to theĀ sea, splashing around in the shallow water like kids, drawing patterns in the sand with seashells and talking nonsense.

Right now I’m after a few weeks of being highly social and this is quiet time again. I met with a lot of people on the last week of stay in London, and a fair few after that and then it was the 2 weeks of greatness, reuniting with friends. Now I’m catching up with people online and with being so lucky to be in an inspiring environment, I’m sinking in the learning and creating mode. There are many things to do, both exciting and boring things, but all of them are important. The soulsearching and path discovery is still on the board – I’m easily distracted, I want to change my goal everytime I hear about something shiny, but thankfully there are many overlaps among things that interst me so I guess if I keep thinking, learning and processing about most of them, they will build up into something that I’m really happy with. We’ll see. Life is a non-stop self-discovery anyway. šŸ™‚

So here is a pile of numbers and random bits of thing that I’ve done so far:

During my trip so far I have stayed in 5 different countries (Italy, Portugal, Croatia, UK, Ireland + popped home for a bit as i said, but that doesn’t count) in 15 different cities and Ā altogetherĀ Ā 21 different housing locations. Ā 6 of those were CouchSurfing hosts , 2 Workaway place, 1 random person, 4 different paid accomodations (hostel, apartment, hotel, airbnb)Ā and 8 friends.

I managed to meet 21 people from the amazing community of the Oatley Academy, some of them people who I befriended last year, some of them I’ve never met before.

Gained about 130 new facebook friends (not like FB friend is a measure of anything, but oh well), depened friendship with numerous people and built trust with people who I have not really talked to or with whom we were only on casual terms before.

I went to 2 international events –Ā Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and the Independent Festival of Creative Communication (where I was on team as a volunteer).
And I’ll be going to Thought Bubble in September as a volunteer as well – woop-woop!

And here are some random things that I did (/that happened to me) that make interesting/treasured memory bits in no particular order:

– drank wine with new-found friends, sitting on a pier in Portugal
– showed around my portfolio asking for feedback of professionals
– had pizza in a park with friends, talking nonsense and laughing a lot
– played hug delivery service, making sure that whenever someone tells me that I should hug someone they know and I’m around I actually go up to them and give them a hug šŸ™‚
– was talking on a live stream – about sketchtravelling
– tourguided 4 hungarian people in Portugal (this was the scariest thing I’ve done this year so far)
– went up on a stage and presented my art pieces on an event
– applied for things I earlier would have dared to apply for (events, training programs)
– walked barefeet on the beach in the ocean
– hugged parts of a stone cirlce
– dined in a sushi restaurant
– gave a hug to someone I admire and who I thought I wouldn’t even meet
– made people open up by asking honest questions and listening carefully
– engaged in conversation with strangers
– did tai chi with friends
– dared to reach out to people who I am intimidated by
– sang out loud with people around
– went to life drawing class in a foreign land
– learned about coaching and realised another path I’m interested in
– had a burger that was served a glass dome filled with smoke
– listened to irish music in a pub in Dublin

and many-many more… so many treasured memories, so many amazing people.
Happiness overflow.

Sidenote: I started an instagram account where I post some photos – not really a “travel album” as such, but it has random bits of places that I find visually interesting, check it out if you want to:Ā https://www.instagram.com/feleritravels/

Have a great day everyone! *hugs*

On:

Some people say that if there is a repeating pattern in your life, the Universe is trying to teach you something. If you fail to learn the lesson, it will become more and more intense, until you break or finally get it. When you pass the test it will still come up every now and then, checking if you really understood the message.

I think with this particular bit, the Universe didn’t have a hard job – setting off travelling long term, being away and not having an idea where I land and what the next step is, pretty unrealistic already. Before setting off I didn’t believe it was going to happen and on the go, day after day, living it I still don’t believe it.
This is must not be real.
The message was clear for it’s first appearence already: This is not real. This is the Matrix. There is no spoon.

When I set off on my travels, the first stepping stone was Bologna.
I went there to attend the Children’s Book Fair, which was great, overwhelming and very inspiring, but there should be another blogpost to cover that.
During my 10 day long stay in Italy, I stayed in a hostel for 2 nights – by the time I got there, I was exhausted. A full day of wandering around on the Fair and then walking with my two way-more -heavy-then-healthy backpacks made me really grateful for the pack of ramen I had which meant that I didn’t have to pull myself together to go for a grocery run.
I went to look for the hostel kitchen to enjoy the graceful “budget tourist” moment of eating my dinner. The kitchen was huge – there were multiple stoves all over the place, several sinks, a few fridges, many tables and chairs.
I was really impressed – back home I worked in a tiny hostel that had a kitchen & common area that felt packed when there was 10 people in it.
This could easily host 80-90 people.
So I went to look for some basic stuff in the back corner – a kettle, whatnot, and going through the different cupboards and drawers I found that not only there is no soup bowl (or anything similar) but in the whole huge complex of kitchen I couldn’t find a single spoon.
What the hell?
…I’m sure that the sight of me trying to eat a ramen with a fork out of a teacup was rather entertaining for whoever might be randomly checking on the different scenes of the matrix.

Anyway, on to the next stop – I flew to Porto, to stay with an awesome guy from couchsurfing for a couple of days and enjoy the first few totally stress-free days since the beginning of my trip.
I had the greatest time just wandering around in the city and sketching a lot.
On the afternoon of my first full day in Porto, I decided to cool off a bit, have a few hours with just my laptop, catching up with messages and such – so I went to the tiny, messy kitchen of my host, to make myself a coffee. Yep, you guessed it… no spoon. Except for one big one – pretty unhandy when it comes to stirring your coffee, but oh well. Hint taken… I know it’s not real. I don’t care, I’m having a good time.

The next stop was a cheat, cause I stayed a friend’s house, where I felt so much at ease and at home that I can not thank her enough for it. It’s “sacred ground”, the Universe left me alone for a bit – except not really… On my first night we went to a restaurant and at the end we asked for a shared dessert. Guess who didn’t get a spoon? Yup.

Then I came to Faro, where I’m set out to stay for 4 weeks – working in a hostel in exchange for my accomodation. My first workaway spot. Yeey! So here I live and chill and actually start the real “slow travel” mode.
The hostel all in all is bigger then what I’m used to, since it has rooms in 4 separate building, but it’s nice and the main building has only a four private rooms and two dormitories so it’s a handleable amount of people. There is a rooftop terrace, a small patio, a common room, so there is space to mingle. The kitchen have a nice big table that could seat up to 10 people I believe, the counter is enough for about 3 people to comfortably work on their stuff side by side. Nothing huge – compared to Bologna, it’s tiny, compared to what I had in my homes, it’s spacious.
So here I finally started actually cooking proper meals for myself and that is when the next round came – we have no wooden spoons. None… and nothing even resembling the thing.
I’ve told my boss on the second day of my stay, that if we don’t want the nice, new pots and pans ruined by forks and such, we should get woodens spoons. She said okay – it was almost 3 weeks ago and we still have no wooden spoons.

And then today on a day-trip to a closeby town with a friend, we went to bakery and when buying my takeaway coffee, the lady at the counter gave me an apologising look and a straw to stir my coffee with cause they ran out of plastic spoons…

 

. . .