logs (3 out of 3)

20s in Review

I left home aged 18 to study for a BSc in Web Technology at the University of Lincoln (UK) because that was what I liked to do for fun. I didn't have much of a plan or a goal, and haven't ever since. I spent my twenties with one thing leading to another, not trying to steer myself in any particular direction. I don't think I ever had an image of what life would be like when I reached 30. I am privileged and fortunate to be where I am.

• When I turned 20 (2010), I was at work in London, doing a 3 month Google internship. I chaired a team meeting for the first time ever. It was a small group, some of whom were on video in Zurich and Vienna. (They didn't know it was my birthday.)
• When I turned 21 (2011), I woke up before dawn and took a hot air balloon flight over the Nile in Egypt with my sister. We were on a 3 week overland trucking trip through the Middle East.
• When I turned 22 (2012), I was sick and stayed in bed at home in Edinburgh with Kit, a bit sad at not being on a coach to Birmingham with the kids doing the Young Rewired State hackathon whom I'd been mentoring all week.
• When I turned 23 (2013), I was in Birmingham, helping out at the finale hackathon weekend of the Young Rewired State kids programming week.
• When I turned 24 (2014), I was in London. I spent the summer there working on Semantic Web Stuff with industry leaders at the BBC.
• When I turned 25 (2015), I was visiting my Mum in Lincolnshire on the way home to Edinburgh, having attended my highschoolbestfriend Polly's wedding a couple of days prior.
• When I turned 26 (2016), I hung out in Boston (US) cafes by myself, and in the evening ate blueberry pie in Veggie Galaxy with my friend Ned (who didn't know it was my birthday).
• When I turned 27 (2017), I was at work as a software developer for OCCRP in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Nobody knew it was my birthday until I found out two of my colleagues had their birthday on the same day, so we all went out for drinks in the evening.
• When I turned 28 (2018), I was alone in a high-ceilinged studio apartment in Tallinn, which I had moved into the day before. I slept in with a headache and stayed home all day.
• When I turned 29 (2019), I had coffee on Trebević mountain, went for a drive through the Bosnian countryside with my friend Edin (who didn't know it was my birthday), and ate krompiruša in Sarajevo old town.
• Turning 30 (today), I am at the end of the two week mandatory isolation period at my Mum's house in Lincolnshire, having just travelled back to the UK from Albania where I was 'stuck' for five months during the coronavirus pandemic. What's next?

In the last decade, I graduated from university 3 times, with a BSc(Hons) Web Technology, MSc by Research Interdisciplinary Creative Practices, and PhD in Informatics. I studied at the University of Lincoln, the University of Edinburgh and MIT. I won some awards and prizes that don't mean anything. I helped to start two companies that didn't really go anywhere. I worked at Google and the BBC; in media & comms at the University of Lincoln Students' Union; tutored for Edinburgh School of Informatics and Edinburgh College of Art; got my dream job working on web standards with Tim Berners-Lee at MIT and W3C; freelanced until my PhD took over; spent time in a kitchen at a vegan cafe in Malaysia; worked with investigative journalists in Bosnia; joined a co-operative to work on open data for public good.

I taught myself Python, sufficiently that people paid me to write it. I learned to cook and bake, and then all over again without eggs and dairy. I learned some sign language, and forgot it. I learned to knit, and forgot that too, and to crochet, which stuck. I stopped swimming, and took up running and yoga. I sucked up my fear of public speaking to cope with conference presentations, but never found a way to enjoy it. I discovered Vipassana meditation. I fell in and out of love. I started writing five novels and have finished none of them. I volunteered with reuse initiatives like Freegle and the SHRUB. I mentored kids learning to code, and set up a club for them in Edinburgh. I ran university societies like Lincoln CompSoc and Edinburgh SocieTea; organised and helped out with conferences and hackathons; coordinated events and meetups. I published some academic papers; contributed to open source projects; co-edited W3C Recommendations.

I haven't been sick or had any major injuries. I neither found nor lost religion. Nobody close to me has died, gone missing, or been imprisoned. I didn't gain or lose any large sums of money or assets. I owned neither property nor land. I didn't become fluent in any new languages. I haven't learned how to grow vegetables, or figured out how to consistently keep plants alive.

I feel like I have been several different people over the last decade. My values and principles have evolved. I used to want to change the world; now I want to leave no trace. I went from being infatuated with the tech industry, to despising it. I went from a wide-eyed naive Google intern to an opponent of surveillance capitalism and advocate for decentralised social media. I stopped obsessively writing paper journals, went through a social media oversharing phase, then started logging all kinds of stuff on my own website. I went from hating coffee to loving it (via a drinking it sweet and milky phase). For a while I enjoyed and was very good at being in charge, organising, coordinating things, running the show. Now I prefer to be behind the scenes or watching from the sidelines, invisible, unknown. I met several people who changed the course of my life in very discernible ways, and countless others who influenced and moved me more subtly. I committed to only buying secondhand material things (2010), became vegan (2014) and swore off flying (2018). I adopted a homeless parrot (2010), who moved to Scotland with me (2011), then was left in the care of other people when I moved to the US (2015). I dreaded my hair and shaved it all off. I went from being afraid to travel, to jetting around the world for academic conferences, to giving away everything and living out of a backpack for 4 years (and counting). I went from loving winter to needing the sun. I went from deep attachment to places and things to shedding it all and itching to keep moving. I overcommitted, overachieved, multitasked, got involved in everything; burnt out, and built myself back up focussing on one thing at a time, expecting nothing, promising nothing. I learnt to love to be alone.

All around me, the world has changed, and stayed the same. Everywhere I have travelled, things are samesame but different.

I have nothing profound to say. Who and where will I be in another ten years? It doesn't matter.

Since travelling is at the forefront of my mind, and what I have the most comprehensive records of, I made some charts about it. Maybe in ten years, I'll make charts about different things.

New countries by year

From August 10 2009 to August 10 2020. Colour scheme is by continent, you can figure that out.

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2020

Flights per year

From August 10 2009 to August 10 2020.

Icons of the exact same colour are part of the same trip. Shades of blue are work/conferences; shades of red and orange are leisure; shades of purples are work and leisure combined; shades of green are specifically to visit family or friends or to fulfil social obligations.

(Holy crap I flew a lot. The first flight in the chart, on the first day of my 20th year in 2009, was the first flight of my life, so this represents all 106 flights I've ever taken. I'd never have guessed that number if you'd asked me to estimate.)

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2020

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🏷 quantified self logs week in review life travel

Mon 10th of August 2020 at 9:17pm (+01:00)

Post created with https://apps.rhiaro.co.uk/no-ceremonies-are-necessary

2019 in review

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.

tl;dr

• Continued to travel around Europe; visited lots of new places, and returned to places I know and love.
• Met a few wonderful new people. Kept in touch or reconnected with many others.
• Tested the limits of my sociability.
• Did contracting work as well as my day job, but not enough to add up to full-time.
• Went out of my way to attend RWOT conferences twice.
• Looked after other peoples' pets.
• Took a detour to visit Elizabeth in Zimbabwe for 2 weeks (broke the no-fly rule).
• Had a rhino-related near-death experience.
• A long, hot, Balkan summer; swam in the sea often, got a lot of migraines from the heat.
• Learnt to read Cyrllic with ease.
• Returned to the UK for Co-op and family stuff.
• Did more exercise than last year. Not that the bar was high.
• Fell in love with the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.
• Won NaNoWriMo!
• But overall wrote less than last year.
• Overcame a bit my aversion to fire, through necessity.

Goals for 2020: more of the same really. But with more solitude.

Words

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.

Travel

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.

• Long stays: Bulgaria (new, 50 nights), Croatia (14 nights), Czech Republic (20 nights), Greece (54 nights), Macedonia (new, 31 nights), Montenegro (new, 30 nights), Poland (14 nights), Slovakia (21 nights), Spain (17 nights), Turkey (new, 19 nights), UK (37 nights), Zimbabwe (new, 12 nights).
• Short stays: Albania (new, 8 nights), Bosnia (9 nights), France (3 nights), Hungary (4 nights), Slovenia (3 nights).
• Transit-length/single day stays: Andorra (new), Austria, Italy, Monaco (new), Serbia.

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:

• 6 months, 15 days, 4 hours, 26 minutes, and 40 seconds on an adventure;
• 1 month, 11 days, 10 hours, 20 minutes, and 21 seconds at home;
• 26 days, 16 hours, 16 minutes, and 9 seconds out getting food;
• 19 days, 13 minutes, and 12 seconds in a meeting;
• 4 days, 19 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds at an event;
• 2 days, 20 hours, 8 minutes, and 10 seconds out exercising;
• 1 day, 13 hours, 23 minutes, and 49 seconds in an office;
• and was in a talk or seminar for 11 hours, 58 minutes, and 11 seconds.

Work

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.

Code

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.

Stuff

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.

January: solitude and the sea

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:

• 31 Dec - 6 Jan
• 7 - 13 Jan
• 14 - 20 Jan
• 21 - 27 Jan

February: emerging back into the world

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:

• 28 Jan - 3 Feb
• 4 - 10 Feb
• 11 - 17 Feb
• 18 - 24 Feb

March: zigzags

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:

• 25 Feb - 3 March
• 4 - 10 March
• 11 - 17 March
• 18 - 24 March
• 25 - 31 March

April: offgridding

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:

• 8 - 14 April
• 15 - 21 April
• 29 April - 5 May

May: to Africa and back

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:

• 6 - 12 May
• 13 - 19 May
• 20 - 26 May
• 27 May - 2 June

June: by the Adriatic

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:

• 3 - 9th June
• 10 - 16 June
• 17 - 23 June
• 24 - 30 June

July: Balkan summer continues

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:

• 1 - 7 July
• 8 - 14 July
• 15 - 21 July
• 22 - 28 July

August: hot and hectic

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:

• 29 July - 4 August
• 5 - 11 Aug
• 12 - 18 Aug
• 19 - 25 August
• 26 Aug - 1 Sept

September: identity and doughnuts

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:

• 2 - 8 September
• 9 - 15 September
• 16 - 22 September
• 23 - 29 Sept

October: back in the UK

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:

• 30 Sept - 6 Oct
• 7 - 20 Oct
• 21 - 27 October

November: writing by the sea

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:

• 28 Oct - 3 Nov
• 4 - 10 Nov
• 11 - 17 Nov
• 18 - 24 November
• 25 Nov - 1 Dec

December: turkeytime

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:

• 2 - 8 Dec
• 9 - 15 December
• 16 - 22 Dec
• 23 - 29 Dec

Reflection on 2019

Compared to the past

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.

Alone time

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.

Blogging and logging

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.

Things I didn't do

Some things I thought I'd do this year that I didn't, include:

• I didn't spend any time in Ukraine or Romania, and hardly any in Serbia.
• I didn't make it to Belarus.
• Not spending long in Albania and Kosovo; just transit-length visits.
• I didn't attend any Vipassana meditation courses.
• I didn't lose my EU citizenship... The Brexit date got moved twice.
• I finished neither Of The Moon nor Milo's World, nor Birds. Didn't even touch them.

Things I did do

Some things I did that I hadn't expected were:

• Dragged my butt across Europe and back for RWOT conferences in Barcelona and Prague.
• Stopped off in Andorra and Monaco.
• Visited Sarajevo a few more times than is probably healthy. (JK I love you Sarajevo.)
• Flew to Zimbabwe to visit Elizabeth.
• Revived my Fairphone 1 with the help of a second FP1 with a working charge port.
• Spent a full month in the UK, co-working with my Co-op colleagues, and seeing family.
• Changed my winter plans to accommodate a return to the UK in early 2020 for KitB's wedding, and was colder than ideal due to not being far enough south, and smoggy due to not being near the coast, but made some amazing friends in Bursa to make up for it.

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.

2020

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:

• Albania
• Belarus
• Kosovo
• Moldova
• Romania
• Serbia
• Turkey
• Ukraine

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.

🏷 didwg writing food quantified self 2019 life year in review travel week in review digital nomad transit logs ods w3c

Fri 31st of January 2020 at 11:24pm (+00:00)

2018 in review

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.

tl;dr

• Started travelling, around Europe, mostly. Did not fly.
• Finally wrapped up the last Social Web WG specs.
• Left OCCRP and joined ODS.
• Drafted half a novel.
• Went to a couple of conferences, for either fun or profit.
• Refaced my website.
• Made many new friends, some fleeting, some lingering on WhatsApp or Signal.

Goals for 2019: Proceed on current trajectory, but write more.

Skip to:

• Words
• Travel
• Work
• Code
• Stuff
• January: travel practice
• February: re-finding my nomad
• March: slow down
• April: new experiences, and academia flashbacks
• May: beaches and history and solitude
• June: home again home again
• July: off-route
• August: back on plan
• September: Lithuania is underrated
• October: writing, stability, then a detour
• November: I LOVE POLAND
• December: to the sea, better late than never
• Reflection on 2018
• 2019

Words

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.

Travel

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.

• Long stays: Austria (18 nights), Bosnia (49 nights), (new:) Estonia (26 nights), Georgia (15 nights), Greece (26 nights), Hungary (16 nights), Latvia (23 nights), Lithuania (27 nights), Poland (51 nights).
• Short stays: Bulgaria (2 nights), Croatia (7 nights), Czech Republic (12 nights), Finland (2 nights), France (6 nights), Malta (3 nights), Serbia (2 nights), Slovak Republic (8 nights), Slovenia (3 nights), UK (34 nights total, not consecutive), Ukraine (4 nights).
• Transit-length/single day stays: Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Turkey.

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:

• 5 months, 13 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes and 7 seconds on an adventure
• 1 month, 24 days, 1 hour, 49 minutes and 38 seconds at home
• 21 days, 17 hours 44 minutes, and 22 seconds out getting food
• 20 days, 15 hours and 55 minutes with logging turned off
• 12 days, 13 hours, 1 minute and 33 seconds in an office
• 6 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes and 59 seconds in meetings
• 3 days and 6 hours at an event
• and was out exercising for 2 days, 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Work

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.

Code

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.

• alephdata/aleph
• alephdata/flexicadastre
• alephdata/followthemoney
• alephdata/memorious
• csarven/articles
• csarven/lr-thesis
• linkeddata/dokieli
• linkedresearch/linkedresearch.org
• occrp-attic/exactitude
• occrp/tech.occrp.org
• open-contracting/extensions-data-collector
• open-contracting/kingfisher-scrape
• OpenDataServices/cove
• OpenDataServices/developer-docs
• OpenDataServices/fireproofbox-standard
• OpenDataServices/lib-cove-web
• OpenDataServices/sedldata
• openownership/cove-bods
• perma-id/w3id.org
• rhiaro/admin
• rhiaro/birds
• rhiaro/cashcache
• rhiaro/ch-seco-sanctions
• rhiaro/evieblue
• rhiaro/homeiswherethehammockis.com
• rhiaro/ocds-memorious-crawlers
• rhiaro/pym
• rhiaro/questforbrothers
• rhiaro/salvage
• rhiaro/sloph
• rhiaro/sloph
• rhiaro/unknown-sample
• rhiaro/vocab-logs
• rhiaro/zulip2md
• w3c/activitystreams
• w3c/credweb

Stuff

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

January: travel practice

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:

• 1st - 7th
• 8th - 14th
• 15th - 21st
• 22nd - 28th

February: re-finding my nomad

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:

• 29th Jan - 4th
• 5th - 11th
• 12th - 18th
• 19th - 25th

March: slow down

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:

• 26th Feb - 4th
• 5th - 11th
• 12th - 21st

April: new experiences, and academia flashbacks

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:

• 22nd Mar - 1st
• 2nd - 8th
• 9th - 15th
• 16th - 22nd
• 23rd - 29th

May: beaches and history and solitude

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:

• 30th Apr - 6th
• 7th - 13th
• 14th - 20th
• 21st - 27th

June: home again home again

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:

• 28th May - 3rd
• 4th - 10th
• 11th - 17th
• 18th - 24th

July: off-route

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:

• 25th Jun - 1st
• 2nd - 8th
• 9th - 15th
• 16th - 22nd
• 23rd - 30th

August: back on plan

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:

• 30th July - 5th
• 6th - 12th
• 13th - 20th
• 21st - 28th

September: Lithuania is underrated

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:

• 27th Aug - 2nd
• 3rd - 9th
• 10th - 16th
• 17th - 23rd
• 24th - 30th

October: writing, stability, then a detour

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:

• 1st - 7th
• 8th - 14th
• 15th - 21st
• 22nd - 28th

November: I LOVE POLAND

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:

• 29th Oct - 7th
• 8th - 18th
• 19th - 25th

December: to the sea, better late than never

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:

• 26th Nov - 2nd
• 3rd - 9th
• 10th - 16th
• 17th - 23rd
• 24th - 30th

Reflection on 2018

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:

• Set up a real travel blog style website. Instead I improved my photo galleries and general display of rhiaro.co.uk though.
• Complete a draft of Quest for Brothers. I did a little bit of writing and editing, and a lot more planning and world building though. I guess I thought I'd write QfB for this year's NaNoWriMo, but I wrote Birds instead.
• Write endings to Of the Moon and Milo's World. Just didn't happen.
• Write a short story every month. I managed one month and then dropped the ball.
• I didn't go to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro or Romania, and I only passed through Bulgaria, Serbia and Turkey.

Some things I did that I didn't expect were:

• Changed my job, which was a very tough decision but I'm pretty sure I made the right one.
• Zigzagging so much to visit the UK and Sarajevo for work and Georgia and France for conferences.
• I went to Georgia, Ukraine and France, and spent more time in Austria than expected.
• Took a ferry across the Black Sea. I was saving that for a future braver me, but it was fine.
• I read much more fiction than I expected, I think.
• My Fairphone made it to December! But it's on its very last legs, and as of the beginning of Dec I'm only turning it on in emergencies because the batteries are pretty fucked and charging is agony.
• Came in well under my budget for the year; months I overspent were still outbalanced by months I spent little. This is definitely thanks to spending about 4 months total rent-free with friends and family or on Vipassana retreats.

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.

2019

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:

• Albania
• Belarus? Maybe
• Bulgaria
• Greece
• Kosovo
• Macedonia
• Moldova
• Montenegro
• Romania
• Serbia
• Turkey
• Ukraine

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.

🏷 transit logs food year in review quantified self writing week in review 2018 travel life occrp sloph ods digital nomad

Tue 1st of January 2019 at 8:10pm (+02:00)