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 sangría 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 checked  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 a 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 I 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:

Today is the first day when it smelled like Autumn outside.
It’s a cold, rainy, grey day.

We’re flying to England this evening with the two friends who I was staying with for the last two months.
Two months… I can’t believe time just flew away like that.

Now comes a bit over a week’s worth of buzz and activity with a fair few friends and a convention, and then I’m going to Spain to visit a friend from back from and see if I can catch the last breath of Summer, over there…

I wanted to write a long, heartfelt post about all the things I’ve learned about and thought through during my time here, but there was always something more urgent, something more important, so that’ll have to wait. Or it will just remain unwritten like many other things I was planning on putting here.

Either, today is a day that feels unreal again – my bags are packed, and in 20 minutes we’ll be off to the airport…

171 day passed and still going. 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, I’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  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. 🙂
  • 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.  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. 🙂
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…  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.  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 café, 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 the 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. 🙂

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  altogether  21 different housing locations.  6 of those were CouchSurfing hosts , 2 Workaway place, 1 random person, 4 different paid accomodations (hostel, apartment, hotel, airbnb) 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 – 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 🙂
– 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: https://www.instagram.com/feleritravels/

Have a great day everyone! *hugs*

On:

Social batteries recharged!

So being fairly antisocial in real life for a bit, staying in and just working on designs, reading, painting and reconnecting with some friends online did some good. I feel like a human being again and I’m ready for the challenge of pulling people together again.

I’ve been meeting with people, contacting others and picking on folks one by one privately to have the chance to meet them before I leave London. Trying to pull out meeting them all last minute is a bit of a challenge, but I think it’ll work out. Whatevere may happen will be great.

I’m leaving the city on Tuesday evening, and have no real plans apart from meeting a few people so it should be fine.

People over places still… Today I did Some “touristing” though, with two artist friends we went to Tate Britain and wandered around examining art before we sat down in the cafeteria and talked forever. It was a nice day. 🙂

 

Sidenote: I still can’t believe that this is my life at the moment. I wonder if that feeling will go away or not. Usually it is pretty normal and natural, but then sometimes it just hits me when I’m walking or sitting on the bus and I can’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot.  I’m sure it isn’t real… is still the matrix… it can’t be real… also, there is no ladle in this household, so that goes to the #thereisnospoon collection. ;D

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:

How can it be that I’ve been London for a week but still haven’t seen Anything?

Depending on how you interpret the question the answer could be – because London is HUGE, you can’t see anything in a week, which is kind of true, but in my case the answer is completely different.
I really haven’t seen anything.
At least apart from some parts of the Natural History Museum and the immediate environment of my accomodations.

So… why?

On one hand – overwhelm. I’ve been on the road for almost 3 months now (whaaat? Yeah.. I don’t believe it either) and as you can imagine it is a lot to process, even though it’s slow travel, I take my time, I don’t rush to see everything, do everyting, but still… it is just a lot.
I popped home for a week when it was the convenient next step in terms of reorganising myself and in terms of travel route as well, so that gave me a very brief breathing moment, but it was merely a jumping board… so as it was expected – travelling is tiring.

But more importantly it is because sightseeing is absolutely not in focus.

I’m very certain, that once I get home I will repeatedly take part in conversations when people will sit in front of me with their eyes wide open, telling me that I’m a bloody idiot if I’ve spent x days or weeks in Bologna/ Portugal / Zagreb / London etc and I haven’t seen a list of things mentioned by them. In part, they will be right. I sure am an idiot, but that’s fine. 😉

So how does this makes sense to me?

When I’ve set off on this trip I had a very vague idea about what this is going to be – reading all the articles about how you should have a goal in mind when you plan a long-term trip to make it doable and having many friends and family members asking what my aim is, I felt anxious about the fact that I didn’t really have a plan or set goal. I knew that one of the most important things for me was to meet people. I wanted to deepen relationships with friends I’ve gotten to know, become friend with online acquaintances by actually sitting down over a cup of coffee, meeting new intersting people from various fields, working on things with them, getting to know fellow artist in all kinds of different environments.
Getting connected to a web of great people. Real connections.

This part was fairly easy  – I told my friends that I want to meet them, I shouted out on social media, that I’m travelling in Europe and if they want to catch up, let’s talk about it, plus the way I find accomodation (friends, Couchsurfing and workaway) pretty much takes care of the “meeting random folks’ as well.
On top of that, most often when I walk around anywhere, I go without headphones, I have a smiling eyes, I look at people and I very frequently spin a flower stick to entertain myself further. I must seem like a fairly approachable person, cause no matter if I walk around or  sit down on the ground to take my time with drawing something, people often come up to me to have a brief chat. It’s amazing. I love it.

Attending two big events (the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the Independent Festival of Creative Communication) also helped a great deal with this issue – I met a lot of people from the art realm. A LOT of people – particularly amazing ones. But oh man, afterwards I felt like a hundred trucks drove over me. I consider myself a fairly social person, but this was welcome to Social Exhaustion zone. 😀

Anyway, back to my original point… so apart from meeting people I was not really sure what other goal do I have.
Am I off to “see the worl” as in sightseeing? Well.. up to a level, but not really.
Am I away to make money? No.
Am I looking for a job or carreer opportunities abroad? Not in particular, though if something comes my way, I’m open to it.
Then what the hell? Well … don’t know.
Let’s see what will happen!

There was a friend who really applaused my travel plans and introduced me to a quote: “The one who dies with the most anecdotes, wins.”  That sounds awesome! Okay, let’s do that! Gathering memories. The best anectodes usually come from very challenging situations. So while I’m definitely not seeking out opportunities to do something ridiculously stupd just for the sake of story, but when something comes up, after the obvious – is it dangerous? is it stupid? do I like the idea? etc. round I very often measure it on that scale. It might be a strech from my comfort zone, but however it turns out – it can go in the anecdote folder, it would be an Experience.

And where that leads me is that basically I’m in it for learning at the moment.

I’m learning about my own limits (e.g. how much social interactions can I handle?) my preferences (I’d rather sit here and draw for another hour than move on and see the x other things), about social interactions, I learn about ways people work at certain organisations, learn about different ways people put their lives together to be happy/successful and many random bits.

So right now, in London, I am offered something that I craved in the week before I came here – having an “art retreat” basically.
I’m staying with a family where my task is to design and paint a mural for them. I live in the extra room they have and sometimes they share their meal with me as well.
The place is calm and nice, they are kind people, they have a lovely garden, I got a whole room for myself and I’m given a creative challenge. It is perfect.

To take it even higher, my host is a coach which is a something I recently became very interested in.
So instead of running around in London, seeing all the places and going to all the events, I find myself building a daily routine of reading a book on coaching, working on a mural design (while listening to another book about talent being a myth), catching up with people online and strenghtening friendships there, enjoying the lovely weather (yup, I’m in England and not a drop of rain fell since I’m here), cooking, scribbling, making notes and getting my head straight. It is absolutely amazing. could spend weeks like this.

I realised that I need quiet time, and I am given the chance so I take it.
I realised that coaching is something that interests me – and I landed at someone’s place, who is a coach. I’ll take that too!
He gave me a book to begin with, I’m going to read through it while I’m here, and bug him with questions if I have any, and then ask for another book and tips… 🙂

So now the plan is that when I move on to the next location, the next crazy time or island of calmness I will make the most out of That specific experience, whatever that time, place and people have to offer.
I’m not a tourist wanting to go through the sights, I’m not an adventurer, trying to get myself into all the crazy situations or seek out challenges everywhere, but I am on a journey and that feels pretty amazing.

Thank you all who contribute to this!

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:

I’m writing this on my way to flying home.

No, I am not “going home”, but I am flying home as part of my trip.
I have the chance to volunteer at an event in Croatia so I scrapped all my plans last minute and booked a flight to Budapest and then to move on to Zagreb.

I managed to jump on board with someone to an airbnb place for just 5 euros per night for the time of the event, so I’ll get to know new people and have a nice place to stay. Can’t wait.

Oh wait… actualy I can’t believe. 🙂

Every time something like this happens, I am just sure, that this is not happening. My life is sure not real, this must be the Matrix – things like this don’t happen to people. Except it does, apparently.

I was spending 5,5 weeks in Faro (Portugal) volunteering in a hostel for accomodation, and while I was spending time here I accidentally saw a message from a former teacher of mine (from College, studying Tourism) who just posted a line on Facebook asking if any of her friends are in south-Portugal for the summer and could help out some of her aquaintances. I “raised my hand” saying that well I won’t be here in the “summer” but am currently staying in Faro, so if there is any prep-work I can do to help, I am happy to do so. Turns out they were coming on a week that is still within the reach of my stay, so I agreed to help, even though I tried to hint that I am not a tourguide and I don’t want to lead sightseeings or such, so I could just help with other things.

Scared to death, I went for it anyway, cause I agreed to help and felt like not only do I not have a choice all that much, this year is about taking the leap anyway. Worst case scenario, I spend one of my free days with something I have never done before and that I was once interested and than later most afraid of going for. Now I tried and learnt some lessons.

Anyway, so they were really sweet and even though I feel that I was absolutely horrible (at living up to any expectations of mine anyway) I had a good time, I think they were really generous and also invited me for lunch.

What are the odds for me even seeing that facebook post? I don’t have Fb on my phone so I only see what’s going on there when the wifi and laptop constellation aligns. Then since she is not a highlighted close-circle friend or anything I had to be online in a very good time to actually see that post. And not only did I see it at the right moment, was at the right place (just 1 hour away from their booked resort) but even the timing was perfect – I was sure to stay until the 17th May, but I was in no hurry to leave, so staying until 21-22 was totally okay.

Then came the feeling of not knowing my next stepping stone. My boss started to ask me when do I leave, until when can she count on me and I didn’t have answers, but the question kept creeping in my head – I had to figure out where I go from here and when.

I started browsing for options, since the plan is that I will meet people in Ireland in July and I have friends all over the UK and even a friend who lives back home was going to visit UK I was mostly looking for flight options there. I gathered a lot of info, asked around and slowly and very unsurely made the decision to head to England. I was very hesitant, I didn’t want to book a ticket, I felt like something is going to hit and I will make the wrong step. But then I talked to a beloved friend, who was more than happy about the idea of me visiting, I found a flight ticket for a really great price and being scared of getting stuck and missing the beat I made the decision and booked a flight.

As usual, it didn’t feel real, I didn’t believe that I am doing this, but was excited to see so many friends who we were planning to meet up with.

Two days later (24th May) the expected “hit” came. I got an email, that stirred everything up – seems like I can actually be on the volunteer team of IFCC the first event that I have put on my list when I was starting to gather ideas for my travel plans and making a spreadsheet for all the events that would be great to attend. I repeatedly tried to figure out if I could or couldn’t attend before, I was even tempted to go to Zagreb in case I could not get to the event itself, just to have the chance to meet all the amazing people that will be there.

Staring at the email I didn’t believe that it was happening and I had no idea what to do. I just booked a flight ticket to England… and the event is next week. How do I even react to this? Should I go for it or should I jump?

Looked into my options and after researching my travel possibilities and finding out that I could actually book a flight to Budapest and then take an early bus to Zagreb, I gave the team a call to confirm that if I arrive on Sunday, they can sure get me on board with the team. The answer was yes, just make sure I write them an email. Okay… now let’s see if I could find accomodation. Bugging all my friends who were attendees, groupchats and facebook groups, browsing hostel options it seemed to be very likely that I will be able to find something.

Okay… you can do this. JUMP!

Airplane and bus ticket bought – let’s go for it!

Just to make things more interesting, yesterday (26th) I got an email from the bus company that due to technical issues the ride I booked got cancelled. Ain’t that great news?

Shrug… see the plans burn, remains get carried away by the wind and let’s keep moving. Messaging, researching bus schedules again, checking train prices, talking with multiple people in the end I managed to book a place for carpooling. I really hope this one will work out well. 😀

As of this point I still have no schedule or further info on what will I actually be doing at the festival, but I am most likely to be working 6-8 hours per day and hopefully be still able to enjoy what the festival has to offer. Worst case scenario I will still get to meet a lot of amazing people.

It would be great to befriend the team, meet with friends of mine, who attend and hope to get to know many other great folks.

I am terribly under-prepared for this one – I have never been to the event, nor to the city, I barely know anything about it, have no business cards ( though I have a few postcards that will be an okay substitute) and the portfolio I have is not exactly fitting this field. Oh well. At least I have nicel printed works of mine with me. That’s something, right?

Man this will be another round of “overwhelming, but amazing” stuff 🙂

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.)