rhiaro 2020: I have exactly one 35L backpack of stuff, am attached to none of it, and the idea of more is horrifying.
[ [ pandemic ] ]
rhiaro 2021: would you like to come and look at my collection of oil paintings in the flat that I am renovating?
(I don't actually have a collection of oil paintings.. yet.. I'm thinking about buying a couple though.)
Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary
In 2019 I zigzagged around Europe and even further afield. I thought this year would either be much the same, or completely different. It was completely different - but in an entirely different way than I what I expected. But that was the case for everyone, right?
I posted to my site 4,394 times. I posted 6,017 individual photos into 11 different albums.
Goals for 2021: Make the most of Fife. Spend time with my IRL friends again, IRL. Try to make myself useful in the local community, and online communities.
I wrote 345 things. On my site I posted 282 short notes or commentary with photos, and 63 longer articles. I also logged non-blogpost writing 29 times. These all comprise approximately 59,593 words in total (9,010 off-site). That's a mean of 162.82 words and 0.94 posts per day.
I wrote about 156 different topics, with the most common being life (122), travel (74), week in review (49), food (40), albania (34), hacking (31), vegan (29), ods (27), coronavirus (27), crochet (24), covid19 (21), and uk (16).
My NaNoWriMo project was Dumping Sky. I didn't write anything else, or finish any previous projects. Again.
I stopped in an all-time nomadding low of 6 different countries, none of which I had never been to before. A long stay in Albania was a goal I overachieved on, with 149 nights in total. Pre-lockdown I spent 13 nights in Turkey, 2 in Greece, 3 in Bulgaria and 16 in Switzerland (11 of these on a Vipassana meditation retreat). And 177 in the UK by the end of the year.
I spent 6 nights in total sleeping on public transport (long distance buses). Apart from that I slept in 25 different places. I spent the most time in short-term rental accommodation - in Albania and the UK - which was 246 nights. I stayed with family for 52 nights, friends (including couchsurfing and housesitting) for 34, in Vipassana accommodation for 11 (but moved rooms twice..), hostels for 9 nights, and hotels for 8 nights.
Not the most effective year for travel. I'm pleased I was in Albania in March when the European lockdown hit, because it meant I was stuck in a sunny place, in a nice apartment, right by the sea. I try to avoid touristy hotspots or 'seasonal' towns in the main season, so I was also very privileged to enjoy Sarandë in the middle of summer but without the usual masses of tourists.
After overstaying my Albanian visa, I did make an attempt to get overland to Greece, and considered trying for North Macedonia. But ultimately I finally had to return to the UK; the unpredictable border closures (oh and the rampant coronavirus) meant travelling overland was next to impossible, so I had to fly.
In total I spent 1 month, 1 day, 7 hours, 9 minutes and 25 seconds in transit (this includes walking between places), logging 82 journeys. I took 34 train journeys, 34 local or long-distance bus journeys, shared a rental car 3 times (I didn't log car trips with friends and family), bought metro/tram tickets 3 times, took 2 ferries, 1 cable car, 1 taxi, 1 flight, and bought a bicycle!
When I wasn't on the move, I spent:
Work hasn't changed much. I still work 3 days a week with Open Data Services Co-operative. I started trying out different patterns of engagement with internal Co-op-running work vs. development / client work and found that if I spent larger blocks of time on each rather than the 50% split each week I function a bit better. I was fortunate to see my colleagues in person in January, because all of our other in-person meetups were cancelled after that. I'm also fortunate that we collectively acted fast to enstate special provisions when lockdown started: including unlimited paid leave for any reason related to the pandemic and a guarantee not to reduce pay or cut jobs for a period of time. We were also fortunate to not have to transition out of an office like many people did, so for a lot of the time it was just business as usual (besides the baseline anxiety we all had).
I also continued to contract approximately one day a week for Digital Bazaar, working on things related to the Decentralized Identifiers Working Group. As last year, this came in bursts. This year though there were no conferences or face-to-face meetings to attend :(
I joined the W3C Inclusion & Diversity Community Group - which I'd been in before, but was booted when my affiliation changed and I forgot to re-join - and went to some meetings. I also started to get active in the Social Web Incubator CG again, and did some infrastructure/admin for the Credentials CG.
Github counted 946 'contributions'. This was 64% commits, 13% code review, 6% issues and 17% pull requests. I don't see any patterns or anything significant. As usual you can see NaNoWrimo in November.
I purchased or otherwise acquired something on 495 occasions, spending a total of approximately €10,653.71. I used 9 different currencies (GBP, USD, ALL, EUR, HRK, CHF, RON, BGN, TRY). This is an average expenditure of €29.11 per day, €204.88 per week, or €887.81 per month.
I spent €5,021.09 on accommodation, and €1,449.62 on transit. I spent €1,557.15 on groceries, buying them 121 times. I bought food that was ready to eat on 147 occasions, spending €1,589.74; 56.5% of the time this was in restaurants and 42.9% to take away.
I gave €465.99 away in donations, or spent it on gifts (but I didn't log this accurately; only occasionally when I gave cash to people on the street, or my Patreon payments which is about $15/month). I stopped counting donations under my monthly budget, so they are not included in the overall total.
Some things I acquired the most often were food (147), groceries (121), restaurant (83), transport (79), takeaway (63), and accommodation (58).
On 35 occasions I got something for free. I expensed €109.13 of stuff for work. The most expensive thing I bought was One month's shelter in Kirkcaldy (€611.73) and the cheapest thing (which wasn't free) was - just like last year - toilet use in Arad bus station (€0.21). I spent on average €21.52 per purchase.
Money saved on eating out and living cheaply in Albania was rapidly reclaimed by the cost of living (and partially supporting my brother) in the UK. Even so, I came in under my €1000/month budget overall this year.
I spent the new year with new friends in Bursa (Turkey). After staying up all night, I got the worst cold I've had in years and couldn't get out of bed for a few days. The weather was cold and my house was freezing. Instead of going south, I went north back to the UK. First I met my Co-op colleagues in Manchester for our quarterly meeting. Then I arranged and attended a pre-wedding get-together (a "stag don't") in Perthshire. I found out one of my friends needed a kidney, and began the process of finding out how I could donate mine.
All January posts. Weeks in review:
Then I was the Best Man at K and M's wedding in Cornwall.
I headed back to the continent again, stopping in Switerzland for a Vipassana retreat, and then spent some days with friends.
I had a route south planned through Italy, but diverted through Croatia at the last minute due to the impending lockdown in Milan. A good decision. Little did I know what the rest of the year was bringing.
All February posts. Weeks in review:
Not long after I made it to Sarandë, Albania, the pandemic hit Europe. I had been expecting to stay for a month, but when April rolled around borders were closed and curfews were everywhere. I consider myself very fortunate to have been in a lovely apartment, right on the sea, in a fantastic climate. I managed a couple of relatively local adventures, and met a nice expat community.
There I stayed. I got back into crochet, and started baking a lot. As spring set in, I swam in the sea every day.
Finally, in July, my appointment for tests for kidney-donor eligibility was rescheduled to August. I broke the no-fly rule to return to the UK (if not foolhardy, it would have been impossible by land at that point, anyway).
All March posts. Weeks in review:
All April posts. Weeks in review:
All May posts. Weeks in review:
All June posts. Weeks in review:
All July posts. Weeks in review:
I spent precisely the last two weeks of my twenties in government-mandated isolation at my Mum's house in the Lincolnshire countryside. Turned 30, and reviewed the last decade. Then I spent a day at Nottingham Renal Center, having lots of tests.
During a window of eased lockdown, I spent more time in Edinburgh, house-sitting and visiting friends. Expecting to need to stick around for kidney donation, but needing to be by the sea, I made plans to move to Fife for a bit.
Then my friend got a kidney from another source. This was great news! I could leave, but.. European unpredictable border lockdowns made travelling more complicated than I fancied, and family concerns made me want to stay in the UK for longer.
All August posts. Weeks in review:
All September posts. Weeks in review:
So I rented a flat with a (medium-distance) sea view in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and my brother moved in with me. I bought a hammock stand again, and had to get a bit of furniture. Fortunately the secondhand shops and Freegle network are here are great! We went on loads of hikes, and enjoyed surprisingly glorious weather and a coastline that leaves me regularly breathless. Bonus: I started to meet the local eco communities here, and have really fallen in love with the place.
My Mum has sold and is in the process of moving out of my childhood home. So I'm glad I got to spend some time there earlier this year, as lockdown means there's no way I'll be able to go back again before she hands the key over to new owners. I'm not that sentimental about it, anyway. I might have been not long ago, but these days I am an unfeeling orb of detachment :)
I took lots of time off in November to make more time for NaNoWriMo, and though I didn't end up writing much, having more time to rest after an a hectic and/or anxiety-filled few months was amazing.
Discovering newly available headspace, I stood for election in the W3C TAG, which turned out to be one of the most competitive elections ever. At the time of writing, voting is still open.
It got cold quite sharply mid-December, but an advantage of being in Scotland over Turkey or Greece at this time of year is that the housing is actually designed to handle it.
Renting for and feeding two has taken me regularly over budget in the latter part of this year, but it was offset by how little I spent in Albania. I'm working on a plan to rectify this in the medium-term.
All October posts. Weeks in review:
All November posts. Weeks in review:
All December posts. Weeks in review:
Maybe next year I'll make this table into a pretty chart.
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Posts total | 4,656 | 4,817 | 4,974 | 4,394 |
| Photos posted | n/a | 9,520 | 9,032 | 6,017 |
| Coffees (total / mean per day) | 471 / 1.3 | 431 / 1.2 | 484 / 1.3 | 462 / 1.3 |
| Nights on transport | n/a | 31 | 17 | 6 |
| Nights with friends | n/a | 56 | 60 | 34 |
| Nights with family | n/a | 24 | 24 | 52 |
| Time in transit | 1mo 13d 23h 15m 45s | 2mo 26d 6h 56m 21s | 2mo 10d 14h 9m 12s | 1mo 1day 7h 9m 25s |
| Time in restaurants | 17d 2h 37m 3s | 21d 17h 44m 22s | 26d 16h 16m 9s | 5d 20h 30m 19s |
| Time exercising | 4d 9h 26m 58s | 2d 1h 10m | 2d 20h 8m 10s | 4d 4h 6m 59s |
| Time in meetings | 3d 1h 28m | 6d 4h 45m 59s | 19d 0h 13m 12s | 22d 3h 12m 0s |
| € per month | n/a | 923.39 | 1,074.90 | 887.81 |
| € accommodation | n/a | 4,175.61 | 5,080.86 | 5,021.09 |
| € per night accommodation | n/a | 11.44 | 13.92 | 13.72 |
| € eating out | n/a | 3,012.56 | 3,367.91 | 1,589.74 |
| Words | ~159,492 | 122,401 | 95,722 | 59,593 |
| Topics (by tag) | 237 | 217 | 153 | 156 |
| Countries visited | 13 | 24 | 22 | 6 |
| New countries visited | 4 | 13 | 8 | 0 |
| Nights in the UK | ~month | 34 | 37 | 177 |
Exercise was up but transit and eating out was down... for some reason. Sarandë and Kirkcaldy got labelled 'home' pretty quickly, as is my Mum's house (where I grew up), explaining that massive bump. I started logging long hikes as 'exercise' so there may be a historical underreporting error rather than an actual increase in exercise. Because I certainly dropped the ball on running and yoga this year.
At this time last year, I was looking forward at 2020, expecting to either visit many new places around Eastern Europe, or go back to the UK to donate a kidney. I was not expecting to stay virtually stationary, make a potentially significant career move or find somewhere to invest all of my savings. Everyone who had plans for 2020 found their lives completely upended this year. I've got off pretty damn lucky.
Though I find myself pining for travel and idly browsing wikitravel or airbnb every few days, I also appreciate the extra mental energy I've gained from not constantly planning and moving. I am grateful for having been able to see friends and family this year, and in particular for being able to spend more time with my brother than ever before. I can hardly believe my good fortune at the geography and community I find myself amongst in a place I chose to move to fairly arbitrarily.
I've been able to live more closely in accordance with my values here: minimising waste and shopping locally. This can be hard in the Balkans, when there are limited grocery options, fewer recycling facilities, and old ladies at markets who force upon you plastic bags at every turn. It's also harder when moving frequently as I'm less able to buy in bulk. Shortly after moving, I got a supply of empty jars from Freegle and friends, and shop almost exclusively at the zero-waste shop in Burntisland, and the local high street market. Okay, I go to Morrisons as well, but only for absolute necessities (and cheap vegan cheese. Nobody's prefect alright).
I'm not sure if I've particularly missed eating out. It was quite a significant hobby when travelling, but since I also love to cook I haven't noticed much. I get takeaway from the local vegan-friendly cafes here sometimes because I don't want them to shut down. I've resisted the urge to look up how my favourite vegan places around Europe are doing because I expect to be distraught and find out lots of them are gone for good.
Last year I wrote that I wanted to start logging my journeys properly and generate a map. In the last week of this year I finally found time to tinker with sloph, and have done it! Data is up to date for 2020 and a smattering of existing logs from the past. It helped that there wasn't a huge amount to backfill for this year.. When I'm low energy I'll be filling in gaps from previous years, using my ActivityPub C2S-ish travel logging client.
I hestiate to make predictions! Realistically I'm probably not going to be able to travel again until I can get a covid vaccine, though it worries me a bit how long that might be. And my brother isn't going to be able to go back to Japan any time soon I don't think. So I'll make the most of my time in Fife for a while longer. I've signed up to volunteer at the local community kitchen with Greener Kirkcaldy - I really hope that can start this month.
I'm going to move again, not far, but closer to the sea and further from town.
Whether or not I get elected to the TAG, I forsee my W3C related activities increasing a bit. I'll probably do more to help with infrastructure of the Credentials CG, and take a more active role in reviving the Social Incubator CG in coming months.
Hopefully as the vaccine gets taken up by the most vulnerable it will be safe to travel locally again, and I can hop on trains to explore more of Scotland. Even better, maybe I can spend more time with friends who I am now finally in the same country as.
Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary
I found a really nice flat to rent in Scotland and called to arrange a viewing and it was already taken over the weekend. Then I looked at a tenancy application form which has many questions about address history I can't answer helpfully and remembered about utilities and internet and stuff and now I'm lowkey stressed out about the whole concept of renting in the UK and yeah, moving once a month between hostels and short term lets in the Balkans is vastly preferable.
Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary
The Estonian Digital Nomad visa is cool and all but the income requirement of €3.5k per month means it's only for one kind of digital nomad. I've met many digital nomads who teach English (or other languages) online who would be excluded. Even in tech, those who work for nonprofits or other public-good type organisations, and for companies in regions with lower market rates, part-time workers and freelancers with variable income are all not going to make the cut. Pretty disappointing.
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I haven't written a post about everything I carry around with me since I, Nomad, when I gave away everything I couldn't carry and left the US for Japan. Since then, I have downsized considerably, and became a bit hooked on the idea. I left the US with a 52L top loading backpack and a 40L side loader. In Malaysia I gained and lost stuff, but gave away more than I gained; in Australia I swapped the side loader with my cousin for a more compactable (and tattered) 35L rucksack; by the time I got back to Europe the 35L was about empty and I left it at a hostel in Croatia. Then I spent eight months in Sarajevo getting more things, winter clothes, awesome boots, etc. The whole lot, filling up my 52L bag, I left to my yoga teacher, and packed the rest into an orange 40+5L I bought for €30 on amazon. I love the orange bag. For a cheap knockoff it's done very well. It's front loading, has an expandable front pocket, lots of places to attach stuff, and I can tighten many straps to size it down when it's not full. It probably has another couple of years of use in it, though it's starting to show wear; one of the straps is splitting away, and it has a lot of soy sauce stains on the inside.
I backed the RiutBag kickstarter last year, after extended questioning and personal video replies from Sarah Giblin, the designer, on twitter. They were due to be shipped in October, when I had a trip back to the UK scheduled anyway. In the end I fouled up putting my address into kickstarter properly, and it didn't get sent out with the first batch. Racing an uncertain brexit at the time, I left it as late as possible to but eventually gave up on the bag and booked last minute travel to Bulgaria. The bag arrived the day after I left.
My Mum unboxed it in a video call for me, and I spent the next few months thinking about how great it will be to have a smaller bag. The orange bag lent itself to downsizing well, as whenever I gained space I could pull in the side and bottom straps. Mostly I ended up filling the space with groceries though.
So when I got back to the UK again, it was time to find out if I'd really managed to lose 10L of stuff. This time I'd have no spare space for homemade Greek fig syrup, loaves of Balkan bread and Turkish soup mix.
pro The RiutBag 35L at full capacity, and folds into a 10L day pack. I'll be using it at full capacity most of the time. con The 10L transformation still seems a bit big on me, because I'm small.
Reservations I had were around how easy it would be to attach things to the outside. This is one of the things Sarah reassured me about, by showing the various clips and buckles on the prototype. However, con they're not really designed for attaching stuff to like a normal backpacker backpack would be, more incidental fastenings intended for the 35-to-10L transform, that are available when it's at full size.
Since one of the main design goals of the RiutBag is to be super secure pro, all of the openings are against the wearer's back. It certainly serves that purpose very well, but sets up a bit of an inconvenience for someone who is used to being able to quickly stuff into and grab from outside pockets con.
However pro there are tall pockets on both sides, made of a very stretchy fabric so a lot can go in there, but they spring right back to flat if they're empty. One will always be for a water bottle, and the other offers many opportunities for holding whatever I couldn't/forgot to pack. They also seal with a popper if the contents don't stick out the top which is a nice touch.
I took it for a practice run over Kit's wedding weekend. It wasn't stuffed full, and I didn't need to attach anything to the outside, nor have fast access to any contents, and it was pretty great. It fits at my feet on UK trains, and National Express didn't try to take it off me to stow when I boarded the nightbus to Cornwall pro.
The main attraction was the laptop compartment which sits against the back (pro good for stability) and zips all the way open for easy laptop access pro without having to unpack, move, or accidentally drop anything else on the floor. I can't stress how great this is. Even cramped up on a bus I can slip my laptop out with minimal fuss, and - and this is the kicker - get it back in again. With my last backpack, to keep my laptop in the pocket at the back, I'd have to unpack and repack an armful of stuff, and it'd usually get stuck on something on the way in, so it was impossible if I didn't have a lot of space. This meant that even when everything I had did fit in the backpack, I'd end up splitting the laptop and stuff into a small daypack so the main bag would go in the storage compartment when in transit. The RiutBag laptop compartment is also divided into two sections, so I can slip my laptop into one and keep my notebook in there too pro without the laptop tearing pages from it every time it goes in and out.
An annoyance that is never going to go away is that con the straps are always in the way of the opening. If I was bigger and they were pulled looser, this would be less of a problem. But I'm not, so I'm always poking them out of the way to pack or unpack.
The waist strap, which is pro detachable - yay - is like a seatbelt, con completely unpadded. Since I'm carrying my fully packed backpack a lot, being able to take the weight on my hips is pretty important. It remains to be seen if this will be a huge problem, but I expect I'll look into customising it with some padding at some point.
All of the buckles are a bit slidey con. The waist strap quickly loosens up as I walk, and tightening it on the fly is uncomfortable. The straps that keep the main backpack straps in place are sliding about a bit too. This was a problem my orange bag developed after about a year and a half of use which made me happy to be replacing it.
The raincover, which is pro reflective on one side to my mother's delight, just kind of came con by itself. It's also con super bulky. con It doesn't even have a clip on it. Most backpacking bags I've used have a little slot for the raincover on the very bottom, and a popper that attaches the cover to the inside of the slot. So you can pull it out and stretch it over when needed, and stuff it back in really easily, and it won't go wandering off on its own. So to keep the raincover I have a new thing to store, in my already newly limited space. In the end I hung my waterproof jacket - which folds into a little pouch - across the back of the RiutBag, and stuffed the raincover inside there. If I'm pulling out my waterproof, there's a good chance I'll need the cover at the same time, so it won't ever be in the way and I should have minimal chance of losing it. Still, I'm concerned there's no way to clip it to the bag when it's on. Hopefully I won't get caught in any particularly strong gusts of wind. I presume the bulkiness of it means it is pro very robust as well. My last one, as nicely as it stuffed away, did also develop some holes and was never properly waterproof. I mainly employed it to deter bus drivers from grabbing non-weight-bearing straps when they went to sling it under the bus; you wouldn't believe how common this is, and I've had several bag straps broken this way.
I backed a kickstarter tier that got me not only the 35L bag, but also a RiutBag Crush and a sling. I'd imagined the sling to be like a running belt, but it's actually pro huge and stretchy and designed to go across the body rather than around the waist. It's pretty cool. I tried out the various combinations of things I could stuff inside it - it takes my hammock and hammock straps perfectly. In the end I packed it full of tea, which was what the overflow flexible front pocket on my last bag was used for. With the sling strap open quite wide, I can clip it across the top of the RiutBag with the poppers that hold it in its 10L form attaching it on either side. It's pretty secure and doesn't flap around, while being really easy to remove. I hope those poppers hold up. I discovered even full of tea, there's still space to stuff an emergency sandwich in there too. I love flexible containers that can adapt to their contents; I'm gonna have more fun with the sling than I expected.
On the other hand, I'm a bit disappointed with the Crush. My last two crush-style backpacks collapsed to smaller than my fist, away into a little pouch with a drawstring loop and a popper clip. I could clip it to a belt, or it could hang on the outside of my main bag for easy access, and I'd barely know it was there. The RiutBag Crush on the other hand folds into its own front pocket, a semicircle about the size of, uh, con my face. It also isn't a negligible weight con, and it takes more time to pack it because it needs folding con rather than stuffing. Worst of all, it has no kind of hook or clip or any dangly things on the outside at all con. Once again, I can't attach it to anything! How can people live like this? Okay so the two zips are still visible, and I've put a carabiner through them, and clipped it to the top of my RiutBag that way. We'll see how that goes. All that said, my last-but-one crush backpack (from Japan) ended its life when the zip spontaneously fell off at a train station in Poland. Its replacement, a Karimor branded one bought new because I was about to go on a hike and didn't have time to shop around secondhand, lasted about 4 months before dissolving at all the seams. The RiutBag Crush is certainly better made pro than these. It also has pro more useful compartments and padded straps. So it'll definitely last, even if I use it for my laptop, but whether its lack of outer attachments or sheer size when folded will drive me mad first, stay tuned.
Above the main compartment, there's a zipped slot which opens into a pocket filling the whole top of the bag. It's a good place to put things you might need to grab without opening the main compartment pro. It seems like a very spacious pocket, but it is competing with space from the main compartment on the inside. The opening is not particularly wide or flexible con, which limits the size of things you can put into it, or constrains wrestling them back out again if you fill it up. And the main backpack straps inhibit access as well. But it is good for not-too-big things that are the wrong shape for flat pockets, and are good to have handy. So far in there I'm keeping:
I tried out my kindle in there, but it's hard to get in and out when there are other things there too. I suppose I could stuff the Crush in there, if I pack things in the right order. There's definitely space left over; the top of the bag is collapsed and I can see the corners aren't being occupied.
On the inside of the laptop pocket are two flat mesh pockets. They're good for flat things that you don't necessarily need access to often or quickly, but it's handy to keep them separate from everything else. In the bottom one:
On the bottom of the portion against my back, there's a small pocket as well pro. This is a good home for:
The main compartment is pro a good size. I like that it's square pro, so you don't loose space to curves. And that it's pro blue-green inside. The sheer black of the RiutBag doesn't match my personality con, but at least I know there's colour somewhere. The opening is narrower than the space inside, but not so much so that packing is frustrating. It unzips all the way around of course pro - fully front-opening backpack is a dealbreaker; top-openers are the most frustrating thing in the world when you live out of one.
In here, goes everything else:
My hammock straps used to be attached to the outside of my last backpack. They're pretty bulky, but this worked well, except for being a pain in the ass to remove or reattach. I discarded some of my miscellaneous junk (I honestly don't know what all this stuff is, but I swear it's all useful enough to keep) and repurposed the little sack that some part of the Riut assemble came in, to hold the misc junk and the hammock straps. I decided to pack them inside instead of trying to find a way to put them on the outside, because there are more useful things I can put on the outside, that I actually need to access regularly (ie. tea), and also because of the aforementioned pain-in-the-ass-ness.
There's a mesh front to the main compartment that zips on pro, and can also be rolled up and clipped away. This is handy if you're half or three-quarters opening it while it's upright to get to something in the laptop section, to stop the contents tumbling out.
Finally, I clipped my running shoes to the buckles on top. The buckles are to help with the 10L version, and they super annoyingly don't extend con. But apart from that it works well. Having the shoes on top-front is better than dangling around on bottom-front like I used to, they get caught on less stuff. Also since the buckles pro aren't being used for anything else (last time they were functional in adjusting the size of the bag, or in the way for accessing the bottom zip), I don't end up having to remove the shoes to do other things.
The great test will be if bus drivers think it's too big for me to take to my seat. It's usually their discretion whether they make you stow large bags under the bus, and I've had mixed experiences with my non-full, strapped-to-compress orange bag. It's definitely small enough, but it looks bigger on me than on a normal-sized person, and all the stuff strapped to the outside might exaggerate that. If I end up having to stow it a lot, I'll have to get really fast at whipping out the Crush and my laptop, valuables and snacks.
I'm off now, to Switzerland and then Albania, back to full time travel with the RiutBag 35L as my new house.
Addendum: My old backpack came low enough to take the weight when I sat down without taking it off my back; the RiutBag doesn't con but pro I took it on the London underground and it's the perfect height to rest on the little padded shelves near the doors without taking it off.
Addendum againdum: By the time I actually published this post I had made it to Switzerland, and indeed the Flixbus people did not stop me from taking it on board. It's a squeeze at my feet, but I only have small legs and mostly occupy the nightbus curled up in a ball so I don't really need that space anyway. It's also a bit tight to get the laptop in and out, but still doable!
In 2018 I travelled all over Europe, mostly alone, and got to know myself better than ever. 2019 was a continuation of this, with a few unexpected twists, new lessons, and reinforcement of things I discovered last year.
I posted logs or photos or blogposts to my site 4,974 times and posted 9,032 individual photos.
Goals for 2020: more of the same really. But with more solitude.
I wrote 321 things. On my site I posted 261 short notes or commentary with photos, and 60 longer articles. I also logged non-blogpost writing 34 times. These all comprise approximately 95,722 words in total (52,001 off-site). That's a mean of 262.25 words and 0.88 posts per day. That's less than last year; missed my 'write more' goal.
I wrote about 153 different topics, with the most common being travel (99), life (69), week in review (50), nanowrimo (29), writing (21), food (15), tourism (13), vegan (12), Bulgaria (10), ods (9), montenegro (8), and hiking (8).
My NaNoWriMo project was Quest for Brothers, but I didn't write much else.
I stopped in a total of 22 countries; I visited 12 countries for more than a couple of weeks, 5 of which I had never been to before, and passed through (with a stop of 12 hours to 10 days) 10 others (3 new). I failed my goal of not flying at all, having taken an unexpected trip to Zimbabwe in May, but within Europe I stayed ground- and water-bound.
I spent 17 nights sleeping in transit (on buses, ferries, trains, etc). Apart from that, I slept in 62 different places. I spent 151 nights in AirBnbs, 60 nights at friends' places, 57 nights in short-term rental accommodation, 37 nights in hostel dorms, 24 nights with family, 10 nights in hotels, and 9 nights shared AirBnbs or hotels covered by work.
In total I spent 2 months, 10 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes, and 12 seconds in transit (this includes walking between places), logging 201 journeys. I took 109 bus journeys (local and long-distance), 16 long distance trains, and 18 ferries. I bought tickets for local bus, tram or metro 27 times. I also travelled by boat 6 times, took 12 taxis, and made 8 journeys in a car (either hitchhiking or a ride with a friend). I took 4 planes: two each way to Zimbabwe and back. I utterly failed to ride a cable car in 2019. I'm not sure where all those taxis came from.
When I wasn't on the move, I spent:
I still work 3 days a week with Open Data Services Co-operative! Go me for keeping the job, and enjoying it. Co-op life involves a lot of meetings, and if you're comparing this year to last year, see above, you can see I spent considerably more time in meetings. I ended up going to more Co-op events in the UK than expected, again. Usually because they lined up with other reasons to go back.
I also contract approximately one day a week for Digital Bazaar, working on things related to the Decentralized Identifiers Working Group. This came in bursts, with busier times being during and after Rebooting the Web of Trust conferences. W3C WG and CG meetings add to my meeting count.
This is my Github commit log:
Github counted 783 'contributions'. This was 62% commits, 19% code review, 4% issues and 15% pull requests. I can't be bothered to list all the repos. This is a little bit less than last year. There are absolutely no patterns. Obviously you can see NaNoWrimo in November.
I purchased or otherwise acquired something on 879 occasions, spending a total of approximately €12,898.77. I used 14 different currencies (TRY, GBP, EUR, BGN, USD, RSD, CZK, MKD, HRK, BAM, ALL, PLN, HUF and Zimbabwean Ecocash). This is an average expenditure of €35.34 per day, €248.05 per week, or €1,074.90 per month. I logged 1,340 meals or snacks, an average of 3.7 per day.
This includes most donations to charities/organisations/people, gifts, and buying other peoples' food or bus fare, but I didn't log it all well. This does not include ATM fees, bank fees and loss through currency conversion or the GBP diving.
I spent €3,006.08 on transit/transport and €5,080.86 on accommodation. I spent €849.34 on groceries, buying them 120 times. I bought food that was ready to eat on 339 occasions, spending €3,367.91; 78.2% of the time this was in restaurants and 22.7% to take away.
Some things I acquired the most often were food (339), restaurant (265), transit (200), transport (193), groceries (120), bus (109), and takeaway (77).
On 85 occasions I got something for free. I expensed €2,455.32 of stuff for work. The most expensive thing I bought was Asus Zenbook 14 (Cex) (€856.14) and the cheapest thing (which wasn't free) was Toilet use at old tree place (€0.15). I spent on average €14.67 per time.
I came in well over budget. I added a setting to sloph so I could track purchases I expensed for work without them adding on to my own expenditure totals. I used this for my new laptop as well (I didn't expense it, but it doesn't come out of my normal montly budget). Even excluding all of that (€2,455.32 worth), I spent €898.77 more than would have been ideal (about €75/month extra). It's easy to see how though. In August I spent about €300 in Split, feeding Dave and Juri on whatever their hearts desired, and another €100+ on my travel and accommodation there. August + Croatia (Split, of all places) + two kiddos with a taste for fancy seafood, steak, beer and ice cream = bankrupt big sister. That's okay though, it meant they could enjoy their holiday without worrying about money, because - despite my warnings - Split was more expensive than they'd expected as well. The other half of that was another €400 on flights to Zimbabwe, which was sort of offset by staying with Elizabeth and low cost of food there. Whenever I meet friends for a meal who I know don't have as much disposable income as I do, I pay for the food. Finally, I gave quite a lot away; to people begging on the internet, and IRL. I bought several strangers' bus or train tickets and if I have it, give cash to anyone who asks me for some, which I'm hit and miss at logging.
My gut feel was that I spent more on accommodation than I probably should have - €5,080.86 in total - more than last year's €4,175.61, but this still averaged out to less than €500 per month, so that works out. I spent a bit more on eating out than last year: €3,367.91 compared to €3,012.56. So I guess what really did it was transit: €3,006.08 compared to €1,891.64 in 2018! Is the cost of things going up? Am I getting lazier and taking easier/faster options instead of cheaper ones? Am I leaving it last minute to book and missing good prices? Probably a combination of these.
I started the year where I'd ended the last one: on the island of Lesbos, Greece. From there I moved to Syros, and spent even more time alone (besides the company of a fluffy cat, Zizi). I slowed right down; my apartment was comfortable, I had a proper toastie maker and a source for vegan cheese, and it was easy to be lazy. I had a good view of lightning storms over the bay. I did manage to join a local hiking group though, and went out with them a few times to explore the island.
All January posts. Weeks in review:
Arriving in Athens was a shock to the system. A huge city after two months on quiet islands. I socialised; I met people from Mastodon and friends-of-friends in Exarchia squats, and Jane and Felicity came to stay with me for a week. This helped me to ramp back up a bit for impending conference chaos. I dyed my hair light green, with purple roots.
All February posts. Weeks in review:
From Greece I took the direct route to Barcelona - two ferries (Patras to Bari, Civitavecchia to Barcelona), three buses (Athens to Patras, Bari to Napoli, Napoli to Rome) and a train (Rome to Civitavecchia), with as little time in Italy as possible. My first Rebooting the Web of Trust conference was great and productive. It was nice to see old friends from the W3C Standards circuit, and make some new ones. After that I made my way back east overland via the sceneic route: stops in Spain (Girona), Andorra, France (Nice), Monaco, Slovenia (Ljubljana), Hungary (Budapest).
All March posts. Weeks in review:
I met up with Felicity again in Krakow for a bit. I love Warsaw, and was super happy to have the opportunity to stay in a squat there as a guest of someone I met in Athens. I made the snap decision to visit Elizabeth in Zimbabwe, and fly out of Vienna. The stars aligned, and H (who I met at the Vipassana retreat in Austria last year) and B invited me to house- and pet-sit for them for two weeks in the woods of Dubravka, near Bratislava, in their homemade container house. Water came from a spring in the woods and wifi came from taking a tram to Bratislava. I took a few daytrips to Vienna as well.
All April posts. Weeks in review:
I stayed with Elizabeth for two weeks in Harare, Zimbabwe. Bussing was not feasible, so I had to break the no-fly rule. I got chased by a rhino, lost Elizabeth's sunglasses and almost died, but it was worth it. I dyed my hair bright green. I returned to Europe and made a beeline to the Adriatic coast, socially exhausted and in desperate need of some alone time.
All May posts. Weeks in review:
I lived in a tiny studio in a small town on the Montegrin coast, a few minutes walk from the sea. Which came in handy as the temperature skyrocketed, and my AC cost extra so I didn't use it. I swam almost every day, and dried off in the sun, getting heat-induced migraines far too often. I daytripped to different cities in Montenegro, and at one point got lured to Sarajevo for an extended visit as well.
All June posts. Weeks in review:
I reunited with Aida again for her annual yoga retreat on the island of Iz, just off Zadar in Croatia. This time I explored the island more, and meditated in the pyramid every morning. I was the only non-Bosnian speaker (though my time in Montenegro increased my level of ambient understanding greatly, that is, if someone interjected a conversation with "does she understand?" I could understand enough to say "no I don't"). We did TRE too, and a few of us took a wee boat to a wee island to swim naked.
I transited through Albania, stopping at Dubrovnik (ugh) on the way, and spending a week in Skoder which was lovely, and a weekend in Tirana.
In a misguided attempt to reduce the sun-induced migraines, I moved on for my next long stay to the landlocked city of Skopje, Macedonia. The upshot of this was I was perpetually too hot with very little opportunity to jump into water to cool down though. The city center has fountains for frolicking in, along with other general weirdness. I hiked to the nearby canyon for swimming and kayaking in its icy depths was a great relief. So was going to the air-conditioned mall to see movies.
All July posts. Weeks in review:
A full 50% of Skopje's vegan restaurants were closed during my planned visit, so I extended my stay further into August in order to visit them. And also because I planned a couple of extra trips out to nearby places, and my house in Skopje was a good base to keep. I went to Pristina, Kosovo for a couple of days. I trekked to Sarajevo again, to pick up my new laptop from a colleague (and see friends of course), and then to Split, Croatia, where my brother and J were holidaying, so I could pay for all their food (half a month's budget in 4 days.. *poof*). And squeezed in a trip to Lake Ohrid too, for hiking and swimming.
I went to Bulgaria for the last week of August, better than not going at all, because the city of Plovdiv had been calling to me for no particular reason for months. It's lovely, and I had a restful time. Enough to charge a little before the next batch of conferencing. And I dyed my hair pink, purple and blue.
All August posts. Weeks in review:
Prague, I can take or leave. But RWoT and the first ActivityPub conference were there, so I planned to stay a month around those. Since my last visit, there are even more great places to get vegan food, and I had a lot of fun organising the rebel conference dinners. RWoT was cool, we advanced some Encrypted Data Vaults work, and I got to see old friends again; and more at APConf.
Prague also has a good connection to London, with the RegioJet bus.
All September posts. Weeks in review:
Two Open Data Services Co-op events had been scheduled a week apart, and one more got set up a bit later when it looked like I'd be coming back for them. In between work trips to Nottingham, Sheffield and Stirling, I visited family in Lincolnshire and Brighton, and friends in Edinburgh.
All October posts. Weeks in review:
I made it to Bulgaria in time for the start of National Novel Writing Month, with an urgent need to deflate after two hectic months of people and moving a lot. Sandwiched between week-long transit through Varna and Burgas, the 'big' cities of the coast, I found a lovely apartment with a sea view in the resort town of Obzor on the Black Sea Coast. Resort towns in the off-season are the best; there's nobody in them, nothing going on, and the beaches are gorgeous and empty. My hosts had a tiny but powerful dog who I looked after for a while. Other than walks on the beach, or occasional bus trips to other coastal towns, all I did was Co-op work and writing. It paid off: I wrote more than 50,000 words of Quest for Brothers! My first NaNoWriMo victory in 10 years.
All November posts. Weeks in review:
A long weekend in Istanbul removed the inditimidation factor that has had me always avoiding it; it's busy but quite manageable, with good public transport, and really great historical touristing opportunities. I took a ferry to Mudanya, near Bursa, and stayed in a small, old village called Misi (or Gumustepe) outside of the city. From my house I could hear chickens, goats and the Mosque. But the house was too big and too cold and the wood-burning stove and I did not get along. I moved to another house, around the corner, with central heating, but it wasn't warm enough for me to sit still in there all day. So I spent more time in the city than expected, which was busy and smoggy and so enormous; but the two vegan cafes were warm and friendly. I looked for meetups on CouchSurfing, and found the Bursa English Speaking Club, and people weekend-tripping to Uludag mountain. I joined them, and got roped into social event after social event, including New Year's Eve, until I somehow had some new lifelong friends. Turkish people are inspiringly hospitable and welcoming; I was blown away time after time.
All December posts. Weeks in review:
This is the third year I've done a comprehensive summary from my logs, so now I can make a comparison table!
| 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Posts total | 4,656 | 4,817 | 4,974 |
| Photos posted | n/a | 9,520 | 9,032 |
| Coffees (total / mean per day) | 471 / 1.3 | 431 / 1.2 | 484 / 1.3 |
| Nights on transport | n/a | 31 | 17 |
| Nights with friends | n/a | 56 | 60 |
| Nights with family | n/a | 24 | 24 |
| Time in transit | 1mo 13d 23h 15m 45s | 2mo 26d 6h 56m 21s | 2mo 10d 14h 9m 12s |
| Time in restaurants | 17d 2h 37m 3s | 21d 17h 44m 22s | 26d 16h 16m 9s |
| Time exercising | 4d 9h 26m 58s | 2d 1h 10m | 2d 20h 8m 10s |
| Time in meetings | 3d 1h 28m | 6d 4h 45m 59s | 19d 0h 13m 12s |
| € per month | n/a | 923.39 | 1,074.90 |
| € accommodation | n/a | 4,175.61 | 5,080.86 |
| € per night accommodation | n/a | 11.44 | 13.92 |
| € eating out | n/a | 3,012.56 | 3,367.91 |
| Words | ~159,492 | 122,401 | 95,722 |
| Topics (by tag) | 237 | 217 | 153 |
| Countries visited | 13 | 24 | 22 |
| New countries visited | 4 | 13 | 8 |
| Nights in the UK | ~month | 34 | 37 |
It sure felt like I travelled a lot this year, but I spent less than half the time sleeping in transit. Maybe that's how I spent so much more on accommodation? Time with staying friends and family was about the same. I did more exercise! And spent even more time in restaurants! As well as in meetings, as previously discussed. Fewer new countries visited I guess means I'm running out of new places to go in Europe... Not really, still plenty left, it was just circumstance.
I didn't get as much alone time this year as I'm used to, nor as I need. There were tradeoffs, there always are, but ultimately the pros of travelling completely alone outweight the cons for me. I love having a place to come home to that has nobody else in, and am finding it increasingly difficult to share my space. Nothing beats being able to change my mind about plans at the last minute without having to consult anyone else; deciding where to eat without having to compromise; to stay in bed or go on an all-day hike depending on how I feel when I wake up without worrying about how someone else feels. To bring enough snacks just for me; to budget according to my own priorities; to do only the amount of logistical labour needed for just myself. I have figured out my balance between planning and winging it, and discovered it doesn't always match up with other peoples'. I sometimes found myself taking care of other peoples' tickets or accommodation simply because I got around to looking up the information first. I'm frequently the only person in a group who bothers to look at a map or remember the names of metro stops, so I always end up navigating. It's several times more exhausting than when I'm doing it only for myself, because I have to keep other people apprised as well. And more often than not, nobody else contributes, not without being asked (also exhausting) and even then not effectively or efficiently. Even when someone else is in charge of the day, I can't help but need to know where we are and how we're getting there. If everyone around me suddenly disappeared, or had their memories wiped, I'd be able to get myself home again. It's exasperating that some people aren't doing that automatically. Anyway, enough complaining. All that to say, I'm a selfish traveller, and I know what I want, and I have little patience for other people getting in the way of that.
There's also nothing quite like experiencing the world, new places, new people, without the buffer of someone else. I focus more on my surroundings when I'm alone. And other people treat solo travellers differently. When I'm with other people I vocalise how I'm feeling more; whether I'm hungry or tired or my feet hurt. Which means I focus on it more. When I'm alone, that stuff falls into the background and I'm less likely to remember any discomfort from a day. When I'm eating with others I inevitably end up talking, and lose track of the food. Food is an important part of any experience for me, and I'm disappointed when I realise I'm not paying attention to it. Not that having conversations is bad. Just, tradeoffs.
My compulsion around a tidy kitchen has got worse. If I know there's a mess in a kitchen such that if I suddenly needed to cook something I wouldn't be able to without cleaning first, I have to clean it up, or I can't focus on anything else. Even if I can't see the kitchen. In hostels this often means doing other peoples' dishes, which I don't begrudge; others come and go, it's not a long term thing. If I'm sharing a space with someone else for a while and I end up constantly keeping on top of their mess, then I get annoyed. I know some people just have differently cleanliness standards to me. I've lived with plenty of other people in the past. And my preferred solution is to just not live with other people any more.
I stayed on top of my logs, but I dropped well behind on blogging about places and vegan food. I have a few half finished drafts. I was hoping to get them wrapped up and published before this post, but I'll get to them eventually.
Some things I thought I'd do this year that I didn't, include:
Some things I did that I hadn't expected were:
I'm continuously astonished and thankful that my travel experiences are always so seamless. Especially as I hear stories of the bad things that happen to other people. I've never been robbed, or left my backpack on a bus. I have incredible luck with finding great places to stay for good prices. When I miss connections, I usually get where I'm going anyway, and don't lose a ton of money in the process. How can this be? I plan well (not too much, not too little), learn about places ahead of time, and am laid back and positive-minded (I naturally forget or downplay negative things where some people - I've noticed - really fixate on them, which affects how they react in the moment, and their perception of how a trip went after the fact). But there's an element of luck with all of this. Fingers crossed it keeps up.
I found a new pleasure this year in familiar places. I passed through a lot of cities I spent longer in the year before (or even earlier this year) - like Split, Sofia, Bratislava, Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Vienna. It's nice to already know the route from the bus station, and where some vegan cafes are and how the public transport works.
Whenever anyone comments on my lifestyle - whether to say they couldn't imagine living on the road, or that it would be their dream - I always say I can't imagine living any other way. It's true. So the easy thing to do for me is to keep travelling. To keep bouncing, month to month from place to place, selfishly looking out only for myself on my own schedule, committing to nothing and no-one that I can't just do online. But for a very good reason, I would stop or put things on hold for a year. Such a reason is currently rearing its head. So the default is to keep travelling, but there's a small chance I might pause.
Going with the default, this year I'd like to spend substantive time in:
More time in Croatia and Slovenia would be also welcome. Another visit to Greece might also be on the cards. I have a feeling the call to revisit people in places I now know will be strong.
Once again, I'd like to not zigzag. There are no RWOT conferences or W3C meetings in Europe that I know of this year, so they shouldn't be pulling me off track. If Aida runs another yoga retreat in Iz (Croatia), I'll try to go. There's social pressure to visit Ayvalik (Turkey) and Lesbos (Greece) in the spring this year, so we'll see about that. I'll probably need to go through one of the Baltic countries to get a visa for Belarus, so I might spend some time in Latvia or Lithuania.
Again, I aim to complete least one more Vipassana meditation retreat. It's cheating to add this as a goal right now because I registered back in October for one in February in Switzerland, but it hasn't happened yet so I guess I could still fail to go.
I want to log my journeys properly, with start and end times, and make a visual map of countries I've visited. I have the backend data to do this, but the logging is arduous. I've also started work on a timeline view of my logs; maybe I'll finish it!
I've gotta stop staying in places where AC and heating cost extra, or are ineffective. Though I avoid AC unless I'm dying; actually I'm more likely to head to places this summer that don't get so hot so that shouldn't be an issue. I definitely will be triple checking the heating situation when I'm likely to be cold though, because I've been freezing in my home far too often this year and it just ruins everything. Also I need to remember to check the location of the fusebox at every place I stay before there's a power outage. And sort out a backup wifi option before that's an emergency too.
I've got to invest some of my savings into something. It's not that I am particularly interested in making the number go up, but the money I have sitting uselessly in the bank right now could be being used by someone to do some good in the world. There are lots of investment schemes for giving loans to co-operatives, housing projects, social enterprises etc. I'll be looking into that.
I've got my new backpack, a 35L RiutBag, which I'm excited to downsize my life into. It's hopefully small enough to go at my feet or over my head on a bus; not having to pack it under gives me one less thing to worry about, or potentially forget.
But on the plus side we're close enough to Greece that I can get real freddo espressi and also close enough northern Balkans that lemonade is just squeezed lemons so I'm drinking a lot of those.
Packing for a big trip is easy when you own hardly any stuff. And getting my backpack down from 45l to less than 30l compressed to airline carryon size was pretty easy and fun. Just need to get rid of 1/3 of my stuff so it's this small all the time..
(Some things I'm leaving behind temporarily included my hammock, kitchen supplies, and my bag of misc random shiz that comes in handy from time to time, so they can't really go long term... but I'll figure something out. I'm leaving my jeans (they split) and winter coat for good though.)
I consider air travel only for emergencies and I generally have my own travel agenda, but what's the point of having me as your attachment-free digital nomad friend if I'm not going to drop everything and fly half way around the world to see you sometimes?
In 2017 I finished my thesis in Malaysia, flew back to Europe, got a job in Sarajevo and settled down there for a bit. It would have been easy to stay. Too easy. Being comfortable makes me uncomfortable, so in 2018 I became once more an everything-I-own-in-a-backpack no-fixed-abode full-time digital nomad.
I posted logs or photos or blogposts to my site 4,817 times and posted 9,520 individual photos.
Goals for 2019: Proceed on current trajectory, but write more.
Skip to:
I wrote 437 things. On my site I posted 350 short notes or commentary with photos, and 87 longer articles. I also logged non-blogpost writing 34 times. These all comprise approximately 122,401 words in total (47,804 off-site). That's a mean of 335.35 words and 1.20 posts per day.
I wrote about 217 different topics, with the most common being travel (181), life (89), food (46), week in review (44), vegan (38), hacking (26), Georgia (the country) (13), sloph (13), tourism (12), Sarajevo, Bosnia (10), Poland (10), and nanowrimo (10).
My NaNoWriMo project was Birds, and I also wrote small bits of Quest for Brothers and Offcast.
I stopped in a total of 24 countries; I visited 9 countries for more than a couple of weeks, 7 of which I had never been to before, and passed through (with a stop of 12 hours to 10 days) 15 others (6 new). I achieved my goal of not flying at all, and have way better travel stories as a result.
I spent 31 nights sleeping in transit (on buses, ferries, trains, etc). Apart from that, I spent 77 nights in short-term rental accommodation, 71 nights in AirBnbs, 69 nights in hostel dorms, 56 nights at friends' places, 24 nights with family, 23 nights at Vipassana meditation centres, 8 nights in hotels, 5 nights shared AirBnbs covered by work, and 1 night camping.
In total I spent 2 months, 26 days, 6 hours, 56 minutes, and 21 seconds in transit (this includes walking between places). To travel long distance or internationally, I took 52 bus journeys, 18 long distance trains, 9 ferries, and made 8 journeys in a car (either hitchhiking or a ride with a friend). I also bought tickets for local bus, tram or metro 44 times, took 10 taxis, and had 3 rides on a cable car.
When I wasn't on the move, I spent:
I worked remotely one day a week for W3C through January, in-person 3 days a week for OCCRP from until February then remotely for OCCRP from February until May flexibly between 10 and 40 hours per week. I joined Open Data Services Co-operative at the end of May, and work 3 days per week with a fully remote team, with a couple of trips back to the UK for in-person meetings. Towards the end of December, I picked up an extra one day a week of spec-writing contracting work with Digital Bazaar.
This is my Github commit log:
Github counted 790 'contributions'. This includes commits over 27 repositories, 10 of which I created (in 2018).
This is significantly less than last year. Which I think means I successfully did less work, which was one of my goals.
Here is the list of repos (expands inline). I'm too lazy to link them. Some of these are private.
I purchased or otherwise acquired something on 928 occasions, spending a total of approximately €11,080.72 for the whole year. I used 13 different currencies (EUR, RSD, BAM, PLN, GBP, CZK, UAH, GEL, TRY, BGN, HRK, USD, HUF). This is an average expenditure of €30.36 per day, €213.09 per week, or €923.39 per month. My rough budget for everything has been €1000, so I call this a success.
This includes donations to charities/organisations/people, gifts, and buying other peoples' food or bus fare. This does not include ATM fees, bank fees and loss through currency conversion. It would be too depressing to try to add this up.
Naturally the things I acquired the most often were food (435 times), restaurant (345), transit (147), groceries (143), takeaway (98), and leisure (75).
On accommodation, I spent €4,175.61 in total, averaging €11.44 per night, and €347.97 per month. I spent €1,891.64 on transit (buses, trains, etc).
I spent €763.49 on groceries, buying them 143 times. I bought food that was ready to eat on 435 occasions, spending €3,012.56; 79.3% of the time this was in restaurants and 22.5% to take away.
On 43 occasions I got something for free. The most expensive thing I bought was 20 nights shelter in Tallinn (AirBnB) (€597) and the cheapest thing (which wasn't free) was Old Oyster card refunds (x3) (€-27.49). I spent on average €11.94 per time. 97.4% of my acquire posts have photos attached. You can see them all at /stuff
I woke up on the 1st of January 2018 in Malta, with a resolution not to fly at all this year. I made my way back to Sarajevo by two ferries and four buses, over three days, via Catania and Napoli (Italy) and Zagreb (Croatia). Did some touristing in Bosnia, this month, in the environs of Sarajevo (Goat's Bridge, Bobsled track), and to Visocko pyramids and Mostar. Watched a lot of Star Trek the Original Series, which was a slog. ActivityPub finally made it to W3C Recommendation, and so did WebSub.
19 January posts. Weeks in review:
My last Sarajevo adventure was to Vrelo Bosna. I convinced nice people at OCCRP to let me go remote, and said farewell. I made plans to head south to Montenegro, then promptly changed them and went to my Mum's for two weeks. There was a wee bird and a Grandma who needed a bit of looking after, and I got to catch up with old friends and deflate a little. And let my Mum cut my dreads off, and then shaved my head. I saw Bown, Laurel and Jamie in London and Pete and Alan in Lincoln.
I took a bus to Prague (Czech Republic) via a day in Amsterdam, and spent the final few days of the month freezing my ass off there.
24 February posts. Weeks in review:
The month started with a long weekend in Ljubljana (Slovenia), visting Elizabeth and her family.
Then I headed to Budapest (Hungary) for the rest of the month. Naomi came to visit, and we went to thermal baths.
23 March posts. Weeks in review:
From Budapest I got a ride to the mountains near Mariazelle, Austria. I served on a 10 day Vipassana retreat, working in the kitchen to prepare food for 175 people every day, which was some of the most fun I've ever had. I got a ride back to Vienna, then took a bus to Bratislava (Slovak Republic), where I spent a week. I had a comically tiny flat, and immediately fell in love with the city.
My sister turned up for the weekend, and then together we went back to Vienna. She had a conference, and I bummed in her university-sponsored AirBnb for a week. I dyed my buzzcut purple, blue and green.
After that, I headed to Brno by bus, and met my roommate Petra from the earlier Vipassna retreat. I stayed for a week with her and her family in South Moravia, in the Czech countryside. We meditated and did yoga and went on walks in nature and that was lovely. We spent a night at her friend's in Prague, and then I caught a bus to Lyon (France).
I stayed there for TheWebConf, chaired the Developers' Track, and helped out with the Researcher Centric Scholarly Comms workshop. It was nice to not be seeking something from the conference, no need to further my academic career or make certain contacts. I could just hang out with cool people, and complain about the food.
I bussed from Lyon to Munich (Germany) and spent a day there before continuing to Krakow (Poland).
Then Open Data Services offered me a job, though I wouldn't start til June. I thought I might take a month off, but worked another month for OCCRP anyway.
43 April posts. Weeks in review:
I spent a couple of days in Krakow, before taking a train to Gdynia in the north. Here I settled in a shared flat for a month. There was a heatwave, and I got to spend my downtime hiking astonishing white sandy beaches, dunes, and wild pine forests. I walked the Hel Peninsula. I also learnt more about the history of Eastern Europe from museums in Gdansk and Gdynia than I ever learnt at school.
I met Adam at a CouchSurfing meetup and he drove me far enough that we could walk along the beach to the Kaliningrad (Russia) border with Poland, we got caught in a rainstorm, and then I introduced him to the marvels of vegan pizza.
I bussed back to London (via Amsterdam where I saw the Soton crew at WebSci) for my induction into ODS and some training.
42 May posts. Weeks in review:
I spent a couple of weeks in the UK, met ODS colleagues in London and saw family and Tigo and Laurel, TomSka, Polly, Chloe, Doc, Oli. I went to Edinburgh to catch up with friends as well.
I went back to Sarajevo via Vienna and Prague for a couple of weeks. Handed off some work, swapped my work laptop back for my personal one, and of course saw friends and enjoyed Sarajevo in the summertime. I spent the last night on the sofa in Prana Yoga Studio, then rode with Aida (my yoga teacher) and others to Croatia.
29 June posts. Weeks in review:
The first week of July was a yoga retreat with Aida on the beautiful island of Iz, just off the coast of Zadar. It was hot, the sea was clear, and the hotel was all vegetarian and there was no wifi in the rooms. I took most of the week off work and relaxed, and talked about yoga and veganism and Yugoslavia with Juliana and Amila (and Sofia).
I stayed another night in Zadar, before bussing to Sofia (Bulgaria). There I spent a few days in a hostel, and met Franzi.
I bussed directly from Sofia to Istanbul (Turkey), bought another ticket and waited a few hours, then went all the way through Turkey to the Georgian border. Unexpectedly the bus didn't actually cross the border, but dumped the few remaining passengers at Sarp, the most chaotic border crossing I've ever seen. It was hot, there were hundreds of people, many carrying giant carpets, and actual fights broke out in the 'lines'. After passport control the Georgian side was airconditioned, and more civilised. I don't know where all the people dispersed to. I caught a marshrutka to Batumi, a city on the Black Sea, and spent some days there in a hostel. It's a very strange place, but in a nice way.
Then I bussed to Tbilisi. I was advised to take the train, but left it too late and there were no tickets left. I stayed in Tbilisi with Jason and Elspeth for a little over a week, and attended the Open Governence Partnership conference. I met some of my ODS colleagues I hadn't met yet IRL, as well as some folks from OCCRP, and it was pretty fun. I met Eric, Jason's vegan friend, and Georgian food blew my mind. We went to the Rachuli mountains for a long weekend after the conference.
I took a train back to Batumi, spent a few days deflating in a nice apartment on the seafront, and absorbing more Batumi weirdness. My ferry out was postponed a day, and then delayed another day after boarding. Eventually it left, and I spent two days traversing the Black Sea to Ukraine on a hand-me-down Lithuanian vessel crewed only by people who spoke Russian, with all the customs forms and other documents in Turkish. It was a bit weird.
I arrived in Odesa (Ukraine), which was hot and as weird as Batumi but in different ways. I stayed in an awful hostel, and took the train out across the country to Lviv.
56 July posts. Weeks in review:
I spent a few days in Lviv in a lovely hostel, in the company of some of the amazing and generous people (Sasha and Roman) who work at Quinta Group with government procurement data.
My explore-the-Baltics-in-the-summer plan was a little delayed, but eventually I made it to Estonia. Almost a week in Tartu to begin with, and then on to Tallinn for the rest of the month. I started out by almost immediately getting locked in the City Library. I had an AirBnb to myself, and spent my time wandering beaches and woods and wildlife conservation areas and touristy things. I met Vandesh at a vegan picnic in the park which I found through CouchSurfing.
I got a cool sideshave haircut, and bleached my hair blonde, aiming for white but not quite getting it. I also applied for Estonian e-residency.
I took the ferry to Helsinki in time for the MyData conference.
45 August posts. Weeks in review:
I didn't attend the MyData conference, but bengo let me crash in his AirBnb and I went to the social events. We went back to Tallinn, which I had planned to leave immediately but struggled a bit and stayed an extra night. I managed to drag myself away eventually, and stopped in Parnu, Estonia's seaside town.
I spent a week crawling my way around the Baltic coast, aiming for Klaipeda (Lithuania). I took a bus from Parnu to Riga, then Riga to Kolka (Latvia). One night on the beach of the Cape in a barrel-house in one of the most beautiful places ever. I hitched a ride from my barrel-house-neighbours, Tomas and Eva (from Warsaw), around the coast to Ventspils, then on to Liepaja, where I stayed in a hostel for a couple of nights.
I took a bus to Klaipeda, and spent a week there. I cycled the Curonian Spit, but could only manage one way. It was beautiful.
Then I spent two weeks in Kaunas, in a super friendly small hostel. I met Paul, who worked there, and they started referring to me as the "long term resident". Kaunas is a highly underrated small city, with oodles of river and nice places to walk, as well as a cute old town. The Pope also came by while I was there.
I went to Vilnius for a week, by train. Stayed in a hostel over a giant club, and had either attend or sleep through a rave or two. Cafe worked and touristed and treora showed up for a few days. Spent a day in Trakai too.
59 September posts. Weeks in review:
After a month of hostels and buses, it was time to slow it down again. I spent the whole month in Riga (Latvia), with a studio apartment AirBnb to myself once more. On the first weekend, Claire (who I met in Malaysia, in Wholey Wonder) came to visit. I lied, I didn't spend the whole month. At the last minute I decided in the third week to head back to the UK for the ODS OGM in Nottingham, and had just enough time to squeeze in a visit to my family before heading back to Riga. Some touristing, and mushrooms!
I did NaNoWriMo, a month early, managing over 43k words of a story I love despite the travel and work and guests. I picked up my Estonian e-residency from the embassy in Riga.
The weather started to deteriorate.
24 October posts. Weeks in review:
I went back to Poland, where the weather was much better. I spent a week comprehensively falling in love with Warsaw, and then went out into the countryside to sit a 10 day Vipassana retreat. I had made no onward plans, and got a ride to Wroclaw, which I spent a week comprehensively falling in love with as well. There are lots of islands, rivers, bridges, but the weather was getting colder still.
There's a direct bus to Bratislava (Slovak Republic), so that's where I went next. I met up with Helmut, who I met on the Vipassana retreat in Austria, for an afternoon and evening. I still loved Bratislava, but it kind of pales in comparison to Poland.
I went to Vienna, then on to Sarajevo (Bosnia i Herzegovina). Logically this is not a sensible thing to do in the winter, but if you zoom the map out really far it's sort of in the right direction. And of course I saw Elizabeth and Almedina and jen and Edin and Rysiek and Czesiek and Aida and whomever happened to walk into the Data Team office at OCCRP while I was hanging out there. And unexpectedly I bumped into Juliana (are you paying attention? I met her at the yoga retreat in Croatia in July).
22 November posts. Weeks in review:
Then it got smoggy. Really smoggy. I carved my way through the air to East Sarajevo bus station, and left for Belgrade (Serbia).
I spent a few days in Belgrade, because I hadn't been there in quite a few years. I'll never love Belgrade, but it's alright. Bus ticket negotiation was tricky by email and the web, but in person I was helped very well, and went directly to Thessaloniki (Greece). It was a relief to reach the sea, and the threat of freezing temperatures was finally abated.
After a week of cafe working and very gentle touristing, I went to Kavala for a day, then caught a ferry to Mytilene, Lesbos. I took the bus across the island to Petra, when it eventually left, and settled in to a studio flat right on the sea front. The town is very small, and quiet in the off season; most cafes and restaurants are closed down. My host, Eleni and her family are extraordinarily generous, and I'm really being looked after. Lesbos is an island rich in variety of flora and fauna with beaches and mountains of all kinds to explore. Local olives are great, and Greeks are generally a hospitable, if loud, bunch.
Got one day a week of Web standards related contracting work. Should be fun, but 3 days a week suits me well so not sure if will live to regret an extra one, we'll see.
I got a great haircut, and dyed my hair dusty grey-purple.
39 December posts. Weeks in review:
A pretty successful year, I think. My tl;dr goals were "write more, travel more, work less." I achieved all of those, right up until this month where I picked up some extra work, but still not enough to make me full time.
I aimed to sit another Vipassana retreat, and I managed to serve one and sit one.
I focussed a lot on conscious eating, reduced the amount I eat, and waste I produce from takeaway food.
Some specific things I didn't do were:
Some things I did that I didn't expect were:
I've become a lot better at understanding my own needs and rhythms. I have a good idea of when I need solitude, or when it is going to be bad for me, and what I should do to feel better if that happens. For most of the year I roughly alternated between staying in hostel dorms, with friends or family, and getting a flat to myself. I mostly got it right, but there were times when being with people too much or being alone too much got to me.
I continue to meet people who are astonished that I travel alone, and this reminds me just how important it is to me. Of course it's nice to spend time with friends and friendly strangers, even long stretches, but ultimately I still need my day-to-day to be completely untethered from anyone else. I appreciate never having to compromise, being able to make decisions and change my mind and never having to explain myself or convince someone else. I know how to plan a day for me, the kinds of places I'm willing to stay, how fast I walk, how long I spend in museums, how much effort I'm willing to put in to find a vegan restaurant with a wrong address on happycow; throwing someone else into the mix makes that impossible. Even someone I think I know well, or someone with whom I have a lot in common. Call me selfish, but never having to check in to see how someone else is doing is absolute bliss.
I discovered, or perhaps for the first time managed to vocalise, the feeling of arriving in a brand new place I know nothing about. I felt it a lot this year, and very distinctly on some specific occasions. It's easy to get swept up in the rhythm of travel. No trip feels special when your whole life is making trips. Things become a haze of movement, bus schedules, logistics, finding food, taking photos, pretty landscapes, walking tours. But I take it as slow as I can, and stop to appreciate the rush of being somewhere for the first time. Especially somewhere I know nobody, and nobody knows me. And every time I do, nothing compares.
Sort of related is enjoying making do with what's available in a new place. My diet changes every month based on what local food I can buy, and how I prepare meals and coffee changes because of the kitchen facilities I can access. I've stayed in places with only microwaves, only stovetops, only grills, or no kitchen at all, and figured out how to make meals. I learnt at least half a dozen different ways to make coffee, and that a great many different household objects can be re-purposed as a rolling pin.
Having a low-pressure job and working 3 days a week is enormously good for my mental health. Writing code is often frustrating, and often boring, but I don't miss academia or deadlines at all. Having a schedule that ensures I have time to hike, to read fiction, to hack on my own stuff, to write, and most importantly to just be with nobody expecting any outputs or results, is amazing. I really appreciate having a flexible job, where I can switch days or hours around if I need to for travel reasons, or if my head just wasn't in the right place to be productive on a work day, I can make it up another time.
It's been well over a year now, but I still feel the lightness of being free from you-should-be-writing guilt. Of course, there is always more to do. But I don't feel bad about not doing it. I could be a hundred times more 'productive' if I wanted to. But I don't want to. And that's okay.
I also value being part of an amazing remote team now. Checking in by video call has become a habit; one I thought would be too social for me before I started, but I have acclimatised. Text-based communication is still my preferred, but seeing the faces of my colleagues every workday morning is.. just nice.
I thought a lot this year about how to provide safety and comfort for people who need it. My Vipassana kitchen experience cemented in me that I want to one day open a pay-as-you-want hearty healthy vegan kitchen, and my social media timelines full of people who are having a hard time and just need a place to go has had me thinking about how a pay-as-you-want hostel/shelter might work. One thing I miss while I'm travelling is not being able to offer people a place to stay. It's a way off, and I have no idea yet where that would be, but it's on my mind. Meanwhile, what I can do is donate money to organisations who can provide these kinds of things, or to individuals who ask for help on the internet (or sometimes in person, on the street).
In the medium term, I would definitely not mind transitioning away from tech.
I plan to continue to travel in the same way through 2019. How much time I spend in EU countries may depend on Brexit and like wow, really who knows how that's going to go. It may have no effect on my travelling at all, or I may suddenly be hit by a need for visas or uncertainty at borders. Really no idea. Not flying is now baked in to my psyche, so I don't expect that to change.
But hopefully I will spend at least two weeks in the following countries:
It could also be nice to spend longer in Croatia and Slovak Republic, if the opportunity arises.
I should exercise more. No, I will exercise more. I still hike a lot, but I only did yoga this year in the presence of Aida (and she knew it) and I stopped running (except with my sister, in Vienna, and once in Tallinn). So there's that new year's resolution cliche.
I refresh my aim to sit at least one Vipassana course.
And did I mention? Write more. I will strive again to draft Quest for Brothers, finish Milo's World and Of the Moon, and now I have Birds to finish as well. I wrote half of it in one month, surely I can write the second half in another month.
I can't lie, a hotel room ever once in a while is a niiice luxury. Just one night before my ferry out. Especially after a few weeks of hostels and couchsurfing.
(There are no hostels in Kavala.. but I still booked the cheapest thing I could find and I did NOT shell out for a sea view room with a balcony.. yet here I am.)
Fiiiinally.
Now my problem is sun glare on my screen, which I've gotta say is a tremendous improvement over freezing to death.
I picked up my e-residency from the Estonian Embassy this morning, and now I'm in a proper hipster cafe to work and eat vegan cake and drink flat white with quinoa milk surrounded by other cool lookin' laptop people, I'm at peak digital nomad today.
Also posting about it to social media.
Since my first Big Adventure on an Oasis Overland truck for three weeks in the Middle East I've been itching to see more of the world. During my PhD I have been taking the absolute piss utilising my academic freedom and conference travel funding effectively, and since September 2012 I visited seventeen countries, most (but not all) on a university's dime. I did this not by fraud or trickery, but by carefully picking conferences and communities to involve myself with, by thinking laterally about how I might find the cheapest transport options, and by asking for barely any funding towards accommodation, so I can ask for more transport funding again in the future. I squashed accommodation costs by CouchSurfing, hotel-surfing (when I know someone attending the same conference who has a spare bed or sofa in a room covered by their organisation), and staying in hostel dorms. Thinking laterally about transport options involves being flexible about dates, but also cities and means. Buses and trains are often cheaper than flights in Europe, and transport links are good. It's possible to get good multi-city deals on flights, and if, for a conference in city A, I can fly into city B and out of city C for less than a return flight between home and A, nobody minds when I expense that... and I get to see three cities instead of one. For that, I'm happy to pick up the cost of buses and trains to A from B and C myself. In the end, I'm sure I saved the university money.
In May 2015, I found four legitimately work-related reasons to be in different continental European countries in the space of four weeks. My department paid for a three-week Interrail train pass, which was cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) than two flights a week for a month. Before my rail pass started, I hitchhiked. En route between the places I was supposed to be for meetings or conferences, I visited a few new places alone, for peace and quiet and to catch up on work. This trip lasted five weeks, and was the longest travel experience I'd had so far. Because of the flexibility of the interrail pass, I didn't make much of a plan except for the known waypoints, and I was able to decide where to be next a few days or less in advance of setting off. I. Loved. That.
In October 2015 I moved to the US for a one-year visiting studentship, and the only months I didn't leave Massachusetts were January and July. I visited four countries outside of the US (not counting the UK), and six states within. I spent literally days on Amtrak, and far too long on buses.
Travelling is tiring, but so is staying in one place. At some point, possibly during that month of backpacking around Europe, it became cemented in my mind that my dream was to set off without much of a plan, and not have a date to be back by. I started telling people who would ask what I was doing after my PhD, that the plan was to... just go.
At this point it's less of a dream and more of a frantic urge. Boston is nice, but loud and expensive, and I can't wait to get out. Edinburgh is beautiful and affordable and friendly and full of people I love, but the thought of going back there makes me feel claustrophobic. There are places I know I will be welcomed with care and a bed, but nowhere feels like home right now.
I started pipedreaming about skipping winter this year, and heading to Mexico or Asia to finish my thesis. I have a month to vacate the US once my visa expires, so I thought I could overland travel south to Mexico, and just stay there. It turns out though that I have to leave the continent before I can re-enter as a tourist. Then I found out a bunch of people I know will be at ISWC in Kobe, Japan, in October, plus my brother just moved to Tokyo. Several people in the past year told me I'd "love Bali", and my sister didn't like it at all when she went last year. Two people I know through work-related stuff said they're planning to be in Bali at some point this winter. Bali is a fairly easy hop from Japan.
Eventually the signs mounted, and I booked a one-way flight from LA to Osaka. I left myself a week and a half in the US after my visa ends, mainly constrained by the dates of ISWC. I'm filling that time by flying to Austin to see a CouchSurfing friend, then taking a 37 hour Amtrak to LA.
Before I left Edinburgh for Boston a year ago, I gave away almost everything I couldn't fit into a large suitcase and a 40L backpack to take with me. I spent the summer whittling down my possessions further, and swapped the suitcase for a 52L backpack. I developed an absolutely pathological aversion to stuff, and started to check myself hard if I found something difficult to let go of. The harder it is to give some item a new home, the more important it is I get rid of it. I took a mountain of clothes to Goodwill, and sold nearly all of my tech.
I'll admit that I still have a cupboard of stuff in my old house in Edinburgh, but I've authorised the current residents to give away or claim all clothes, books and furniture. I'm stuck with some folders of writing and paperwork that one day I hope to digitise. I also have a buttload of stuff at my Mum's house in England. I remember finding it so hard to let go of childhood clutter. Maybe next time I go back I'll finally be able to sort through everything and let it all go.
This is what I have left:
So, finally it's happening. From Sunday 9th October, I will no longer be on a rental contract. I won't have a fixed address. I have a one-way flight to Japan, just enough savings, and total time flexibility, to get to somewhere - probably Bali - I can afford to stay for the winter, once my brother kicks me out of his place in Tokyo.
I still have to finish my thesis. But the thought of doing it on the beach, in a timezone where nobody can bother me, puts me at ease.
I am officially a digital nomad. Don't ask me when I'm coming home, I'm already there.
