First of all, happy St Patrick’s day to y’all! :))
Here’s some music for you that always fills me up with energy, makes me want to jump high and scream of enthusiasm.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaahaw!

I should listen to this tomorrow morning too I guess.
Breathe in, breathe out… I set sail tomorrow – well to be more accurate, I fly away, but still. 🙂
I don’t know if this ever becomes easier… it’s still scary and just because I know that things will be alright it doesn’t mean that I don’t have this strange tension in my chest. Well, the trick is to do it anyway I guess.

So the current plan is to get to Bologna, where a friend is going to greet me at the airport (I’m looking forward to seeing his grinning face :))), then I find my host, who I found through Couchsurfing and who was kind enough to offer to host me for the full 2 weeks I intend to stay in Bologna.
I contacted a few other people who I met there (and stayed with) last year, so one of these days I should be grabbing a drink with them too, but we’ll see how that goes.

Then later comes the actual reason, I’m going to Italy, the Bologna Children’s book fair.
There I’m hoping to show around my portfolio, take notes on what publishers seem to like, dislike, get to know what publishers would I be a right fit for and hoping to gather contacts who I could submit my work to for getting illustration jobs.

After the event, there’ll be a few days of breathing time and then with a good friend, who is also coming to the event, we’ll fly to Cologne and then get to her place. She invited me to stay with her for April, so I’m crashing at her place for a few weeks, hoping that we can gather both our notes from the event and after the overwhelm have passed, we can make some plans on how to move forward with this quest. 🙂 Mutual support and butt-kicking is ought to happen. 😀 It could be also fun to come up with a project together, but we’ll see how things will pan out.

No exact plans are set for my stay in Germany, but in the meantime there are things in motion that are calling me to Ireland again (best thing to talk about on St Paddy’s, eh? :D) so if things go well, I’ll have to look at convenient flight options and find my way back there again. If that happens, I’ll be promptly looking for a job over there and hope for the best. Fingers crossed. 🙂

There are a few plans for the further future as well, but as last year had it as well, I have about 1-1,5 month worth of somewhat solid plan and then the rest will happen dependent on how things keep rolling. The control is not entirely in my hand and that’s fine – I move with the flow of things, see what comes up and what makes most sense at the time.

Thanks a lot for all the great people, friends and family, who support me and allow this to be possible! You are great! <3

So… TOMORROW I’m gonna set off out to the land of unknown experiences.

Now the “I can’t believe this is happening” is mixing together with the “What the hell am I thinking?”.

Anyway, from tomorrow it shall be awesome. No other choice… 🙂

As of now, the beginning seems to be a bit mor complicated than I wished it to be.
I was gonna stay 4 nights at one person and 6 at the other – both being great and kind enough to offer to host me for the full 10 day stay, but I’d really like to stay in Bologna during the Childrens book fair since that the whole reason I’m going to the city.
But life happened and the my host in Bologna cancelled due to the change of his work schedules.
Now it seems like I have a set place for one night at one person a 3 day gap – exactly overlapping with the Fair, and the remaining 2 set with someone else.  Huh, this will be a challenge to not mess up. Oh well, let’s hope for the best! 🙂 Highfive to all the amazing people on CS that put up with my last-minute-panic-organising messages! I’m grateful to all of you! <3

So yeah, on the upside I shall meet an incredible amount of great people!
I’ll be meeting friends who I haven’t seen for ages, people I’ve only talked to online, one of my former teachers will be there, I poked a local art community to make a drink&draw… It will be awesome. The logistics will probably a nightmare, but the people experience is ought to be great.

Wish me good luck!