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Hello World!

Today is 27th April – this is my 30th day on the road, and this is the first rainy day – I had 2-3 days of windy, and bit chilly days before, but nothing really gloomy or annoying to be honest. This morning it was cloudy but still pretty warm and only started raining in the afternoon. Yep, you are free to hate me now (I know it was even snowing back home).

I am currently in Faro (South-Portugal), been here volunteering for shelter in a hostel for 10 days now and will probably stay for 3 more weeks. I came to this area primarily because friends of mine are staying on these parts at the moment, so hanging out with them is much more important then doing the sightseeing one usually does here so I felt a bit guilty about that. I’ve been working here for more then a week and I only went to the beach yesterday and the main motivation for it was that it’s pretty ridiculous that I still haven’t and I knew that rainy days were coming so I decided to make a quick trip there before my afternoon shift. So I said hello to the ocean, walked on the sandy beach barefoot for about an hour, collected seashells and was constantly fascinated about the fact that I am doing This.
What the hell am I doing anyway?

I still have no clue about what is happening with my life right now, but I enjoy it a lot. 🙂
Today my colleague said to me “I hate you volunteers – you come, I get to love you, and then you leave. Stay and work with us!”
I’ve only been here for a week and we only worked together on 2 shifts – this girl is adorable :)))

A few days ago I felt pretty sure that if I wanted I could actually easily convince the owners to hire me full time, and I was toying around with the idea – the owners are great, the team is nice, they definitely need a helping hand since they are reorganising things and opening new parts of the business and the season is just about to start…
I could learn things from them and I could also teach them about some things. They seem to be trusting my opinion in many things, I like the mindset of theirs and I’d be living close by to a friend, hell why not?
Well… because I’m supposed to _travel_ meet more people and not set roots on the first given location for example. 😀

So to kick myself out of this lovely “ohbutIcouldstayandhelpanditwouldbegreat” mindset that I was slowly sinking in, I started researching for my next stepping stone. I will have to be around Ireland in July, but it would be great to stick around this area for a bit longer still. Not having a clear path makes it really hard to figure out where I go next though. But I went ahead and saved many workaway links for folks who I’d potentially love working with and I’m going to contact them next week I think.
Being free as a bird makes me a bit lost as well – no wonder, they say that limiting your options can lead to better results. 😀

 

On:

Heyho!

I’m still alive – my laptop is at a friend’s place and I really don’t like writing on this lovely, useful gadget of mine, so I figure I would write on paper and just upload the photo. Good luck with my handwriting – though this is me trying to keep it readable.

Today I am not a beam of sunshine but don’t worry, everything is good​ – I had some really great days since I set off (almost a month by now…wow!)

 

And here are a few bits of the places I have been wandering around nowadays.

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I’ve been on the road for 2 weeks today.

So far:
– Visited 3 cities (Ferrara, Bologna, Porto)
– Stayed at 5 different people, all of them amazing folks I didn’t know before, plus spent 2 nights in a hostel
– Made about 15-20 plein air/urban sketching pieces, a handful of which I actually like, so that’s cool. If I keep it up I’ll hopefully have a series of good pictures at the end. Levelling up is sure due if I can consistantly produce some sketches with similar qualities.

Random bits of the trip not in chronological order:
– Had a long conversation with a guy who builds robots
– Was given a lift on a motorbike multiple times
– Painted on a naked man
– Met local artists and art teachers
– Went to a house party that due to many musicians being in the group randomly turned into a jam session
– Went to exhibition openings
– Attended the Bologna children’s book fair -went for portfolio reviews, listened to talks, collected business cards, handed out postcards, took notes, then organised my notes to a spreadsheet
…

Tonight I’m taking an overnight but to go to south-Portugal where I’ll be a guest of a friend for aw few days and then go to a hostel to volunteer there for accomodation for a month. (At least I hope so, we agreed on it quite some time ago, but they didn’t respond to my message that I’ve sent them a few days ago about the specific date I could actually arrive. I really hope they are still expecting me even though they didn1t reply :D)

Anyway, if the bus is spacious enough and I don’t/can’t fall asleep I’ll try catching up with some story bits of my trip so far – elaborating a bit on the some of the teasers above. If I fall asleep easily or it seems impossible to whip out my laptop it remains a pending quest. But I did take ‘diary bits’ notes and managed to get my photos to the computer already, so yey for that. :))

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Yesterday I had a goodbye party.

It was a short notice, cause I was swamped by all the things to do and not knowing exactly how I wanted it anyway I just kept putting it off, but it turned out great.

I told a couple of people in person in the beginning of the week that I might pull something together on Saturday, in hope that there was a chance for them to show up plus so that I’m held accountable for actually making it happen. I could have sneakily left without saying goodbye to many of them and I’m sure I would have regretted it…
So on Thursday I finally kicked myself in the butt, reserved a table to Saturday at a pub from the late afternoon, made an open call facebook event with a description of where-when and an FAQ about what the heck it’s all about, where do I go, whats the plan and schedule like.
Many of my friends found it hilarious and typical of me that I wrote an FAQ about my travels, but well… I wanted to spend my time with Them, hopefully hearing about things that go on in their lives as well, so for not spending the night telling the same story of where-why-when over and over again it seemed like a good idea. Especially since the idea was to meet anyone and everyone who is willing to show up, even if we haven’t talked in years, so letting them know whats going on made sense for me. As ridiculous as it may be, it worked. :)))

About 17 people came throughout the night from people I haven’t seen in ages to folks who I befriended not so long ago. Some were planning to go abroad soon themselves as well – all in different ways for different reasons, so we were also aiming to set dates for meeting up in different corners of the continent.

It was a great night, I loved it.

I was surrounded with people I love, we talked, we laughed, we drank, but not to the point of getting drunk (not me at least – I was there to make memories not to loose them), we ate, and talked some more.
I managed to have a one-on-one conversation with almost everyone.
I hugged them all multiple times.

Damn I’m gonna miss these people… and so many others as well…

Getting up in the morning I was wearing a silly grin for hours, just thinking through last night – love overflow.
My mind went off on a ride about all the things I’ve learnt from these people, things I’m grateful for, memories together, why I love them and all the small fragments of life that I treasure.
This is beginning to sound very cheesy, but oh well…

Anyway, so today for the most part of the day I felt all warm and fuzzy and just wanted to hug everyone.

Then I think my mind got exhaused with happiness or something, ’cause after that the lingering panic started to creep in the picture – I’M LEAVING IN 3 DAYS!
That paired up with the I-love-everyone flash and made a gorgeous mix of “what the hell am I doing, I’m gonna miss them so much”. Yes, feel free to laugh at my misery, I’m being entertained as well.

I know that I’ll be really busy being impressed by the world, meeting friends who I’m only keeping contact with online nowadays and just being in ADHD(squirrel!)  mode running around in generall, but still. Now it hit me that I will be missing out on being here for some people that I deeply care about. *sigh*

Hey Self,
Emotion roller-coaster much? 

feel_all_the_feels
Yup, it’s happening, memes are now part of my blog.
It was gonna be an honest corner of mine, so I guess it was inevitable, You probably all knew it was gonna happen.  ¯\_(ツ )_/¯

That’s it about me for today.
But hey, I actually wrote the blogpost instead of just ‘writing it in my head’ as I did with many before.
Achievement unlocked! 🙂

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So I already have 2 blogposts, that I half-wrote, but then never finished, because of the circumstances and so they didn’t get published… ohwell…

Starting the writing habit is a half-failure so far – I did start journaling lately, but as you can see, the blogpost/week had not been happening.
I’m going easy on myself though – I’m not on the road yet so it would probably not that interesting to read anyway, plus other things have top priority now. Like the oh so many administrational wrap-up, the packing and of course meeting friends, hugging people before I leave. <3

That’s just the way it is for now.
I’ll try to get better at it once I hit the road, though the first 10 days will probably be really hectic, but I’ll tell you about that later.

For now, I’ll go back to my corner and work on portfolio things as long as I can cause tomorrow will be all about friends and I should get stuff print-ready by Monday morning.

*hugs to all*

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packing

Slowly but surely I’m getting to the point when there are more closed boxes than open ones.

My space is still a mess and it frustrates me a lot, but bit by bit, I’m making progress.
I wanted to get done with 90% of the boxing by the end of February – meaning I wanted to have everything packed apart from daily used items and drawings. I have 3 more days, haven’t touched the my clothes yet, and I will probably have to go to work on all of these days.

Well…let’s see what I can do!

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In all honesty I’ve felt pretty overwhelmed lately.
I have roughly 4 weeks till I set off and I still have an endless amount of things I should get done. As much as it stresses me, I think I have to accept the fact, that there will be a great number of them that I simply won’t be able to do.
I don’t really have ‘cool off’ days, when I’d be free to completely let myself breather, there are always things on the to-do list. That results in my productivity level being lower and lower in my opinion.
While I’m trying to tackle my biggest monster – boxing up all my clutter, and trashing as many things as I’m emotionally able to, I’m totally unable to create art or finish my portfolio website as I think I should. There are many art-related things I wanted to get done before I set off, but juggling 2 jobs, taking on extra quests, trying to help everyone with everything is definitely not playing in my favor.
I have to learn how to say no, so that I’m not completely flooded with tasks, not to procrastinate with other people’s quests instead of mine.
I have to learn how to actually stick to the lists I create, make progress and then be content with what I achieved and give myself not only credit but breathing time to recharge for the next battle.
Wish me luck to win against myself! 🙂

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Ooookay, so I’ve been caught up in life and also I’ve just been procrastinating on starting this blog I think. I kept planning, writing blogposts in my mind and coming up with different things, series, categories whatnot, but never actually starting it. I had so many “great time to start” moments, connecting it with certain dates, but it never happened. It’s always best to start ‘today’ anyway. 🙂

So here I am.
No more excuses. Getting into the habit of writing things down for real.
To help myself with that I did get back to writing diary posts lately, but that is different. That is for myself only, while this one will be for myself, for my friends, for you, great people out there, who take the time to read it. Thank you for that!

Here is my dilemma for the moment:
I want this to be widely accessible for people,but I also want to keep it personal. I have no idea about how to balance that.
I want this to hold my treasured memories, my experiences, lessons I’ve learnt, inspiring moments.
I want this corner of web to be my experimental space where I get to play around with words, pictures, open myself up a bit, show bits of my life, dare to fumble.

My year’s motto should be “Take the leap” so that is what I aim to do – feel free to keep me acountable for that (within reasonable limits ;D)!

From now on I challenge myself to write at least one blogpost per week.
If anyone is reading already – you are now entitled to kick my butt if I don’t seem to keep that!