I was trying to make a list of things I could do in the future.

I realise every now and then that I have no university diploma, I cheated on all my algebra tests in high school and I have nothing to prove my abilities in the form of paperwork of any kind.

Fishing back and forth between thoughts of going back to study or continuing down this path of activities with no real back-up or support system for the fture… ahh yes its been on my mind from time to time.

Every now and then I think I know what I want to do… I think perhaps I could be a midwife.. those  white dresses and delivering babies.. how heroic.. but then I think of all the blood and all the… bits and pieces i will see… and I think I will need more assistance then the woman in labour.. then I think a journalist would be a good idea.. I could study for that.. but already writing this blog tests my concentration and writing skills.. believe me I am stalling right this very minute. My brain leaps from one occupation to another.. the main problem with me doing any of those things is that I don’t like doing anything too hard for too long. This may seem very un Hollywood movie like.. when you see that all you have to do is work really fucking hard and persist to become a hero.  These two things.. working very fucking ha

rd… and persisting… I can do them both.. but i want to do that for so many different things, not just one. I am aware that there are many people like me, with brains that just don’t compute to the normal career driven path, who crave new experiences, people and ideas all the time, are you one of them? It would be interesting to know how it makes you feel.

We are now watching the Olympics, we see the best and strongest person glorified, we all watch in admiration and kinda dream of doing something worthy of a gold medal ourselves one day. I always wanted to be very good at something, so whenever I got an interest, I forced myself into it with a passion, telling myself that was my thing, then I got distracted with something else and began to work on that… all of this has resulted in who I am today, a collection of random and eclectic half leaned skills on my belt and I have to say I enjoy doing every single one of them when I do have the chance.

Its not so bad to be one of these kind of people, I know lots who are.  I watched a TED talk where someone talked about this and called us ‘multi potentialities’ and it really is reassuring to know that I am not the only one who cannot do one thing and one thing only

Also guys, its not so bad to be a bike messenger and its great to work with Pink Pedals, a really cool and young group with good energy and focused on cycling

I just want to say that if I am not getting lost now (not so much anyways) and managing to bring things to the right places… then for sure anyone could learn and do this job. The whole idea of being a messenger seemed counter intuitive to me, because I am very spaced out, getting lost…. Once I even got lost in my own apartment building… yeah and I'm kind of nervous and jumpy… not calm.. how can I say crazy in more ways?

Three weeks ago I was crying after my shift and I remember one of my friends asking me… ‘well why do you even want to do it so bad, it seems like its really hard for you and not that much money’. I knew though that I had to get through this hard part, the bit where I know nothing and I am always confused. I think I am now safely unto the next stage of learning, not from the complete basics but the improving what I already now know. I do not know why I always wanted to be a bike messenger, for me it felt like it was the coolest job you could do. I have to admit after I rode my first shift with one of the other messengers, I nearly died on the way, it was sooo much harder then I thought, but of course I pretended I was fine… fake it till you make it. After this I was not sure I could do the job, but with time and patience I see improvement.

My favourite things about this job are

1.       Getting to keep your body fit and train while you earn money

2.       The cool exchanges you have with the people you meet along the way, from the people in the businesses or offices to the looks you give people on the street, just a little eye contact telling someone they can cross in front of you, or letting them know you are passing through.

3.       The feeling of satisfaction when you find a new short cut or find a street you were looking for easily, when you try a new way and look to the street name and give yourself a virtual pat on the back when it’s the right one.

4.       The way that streets around the city begin to connect for you, when a friend mentions where they live and you remember that you delivered something there.

5.       The feeling of freedom and of course… pure exhaustion that comes from riding your bike as fast as you can for as long as you can

There are some thing I hate about it too.. such as a super early morning.. but on the flip side.. this can also be really beautiful and refreshing. I do hate being lost and really confused… but as I said before… with time this changes.

 Patience is the name of the game. When i was starting to work as a messenger, or at least when i wanted to begin, i read a quote that said 'A monkey in a suit is still a monkey'. This quote bothered me more then i can say. I didnt want to just say i was a bike messenger or a business owner or whatever else i was, i wanted to really be that, i wanted to be 100 percent genuine and walk the talk. I felt like i would never be able to do that and that i was that monkey in a cycling t-shirt, still a monkey, making a mess everywhere i went. Ah now i can look back and laugh, of course i am a monkey... :) but i am genuine in every effort that i make, i have persisted towards my goals and i am really doing everything i want at this point in my life.

    So an update on what is happening with Culture Exchange. Danny and Lani have made the decision to go back to the states, after giving so much time and effort for our baby in Serbia, they have brought the place back to life. It has lived another beautiful year and they did an amazing job. For thier family and other life goals they will be moving back to be with Danny's dad. Don't worry, Culture Exchange in Serbia is going to be continued, as our dear friends and people who we have worked with for years, Ana and Andy are taking over the shop, they will be putting thier unique colour and flavour into this business. It's amazing how many phases the business in Serbia has had, and its still going, its a really interesting story and it continues to develop. Our place here in Graz has its struggles, some are more on a personal level and others on a simply business level. We have been here one and a half years and its still only scraping by. We get very little money from its and its been a tough battle the whole time. Who knows what the future will hold, but no matter what is going on with the business here, I have the feeling that everything at this point is only preparing me for what is going to happen in the future. I don't know if the busienss here will ever work, but i try to learn as much as i can, to see what things i would change and how i would do it. So thats where we are now and let's see what will happen 

Ah and let me also add that i really built my bike.. and i kinda have a feeling that i want to use some bike-building skills in the future.. maybe a 'pink fixie' brand name... who knows

  So the earth has decided that i am now 28 years old... pretty brilliant..... i have survived my own stupidity and the stupidity of others up until this point, congratulations me. I still feel and look like a child, but what better way to live your life, children do seem to have a lot more fun then adults anyways and in many ways i know i live in my own world, with the simple things that make me happy, my lack of desire for material possessions and money and the dear humorous friendships i have built.

A lot has changed for me this year. If i look back on what i was going through and how i was feeling last year, things are very different and so much is new. I knew that leaving Serbia to come to Graz woul be a big change just from the outward physical perspective. What i didn't realise was that this year would challenge me a lot to get in touch with my spiritual side again, think about who i am and what i really want. I still have a lot of discovering to do and i finally got the courage to ask my co-workers to let me take 2 months off to go to Asia at the end of this year. I know that i need to get out of my workaholic life and connect again with myself. I feel that if i am always surrounded by work and the possibilities to work, i will never fully let myself go, i will always be scheduling new work for me to do. 

I figured out that I don't ever go easy on myself when it comes to expectations and work, I always seem to fill every available space of time with duties... and if i cannot manage it i feel very upset and disappointed. This trait has always been with me, and its one of the things this year that i want to lose. Its a lack of respect for mind and body to push yourself so hard, and as i have learnt the hard way, its only hurts you. We all need to be easier on ourselves, mistakes are part of growth and i make plenty of them. One of the reasons why is simply because I try a lot of new things, i push myself and expect a lot in return. In order to help myself to work less, i have quit my job as a waitress in ERDE, even though i loved it very much and had so many good times here. I knew that working 60 hours a week was only going to tire me out beyond repair and something had to change. This job gave me security and a close knit group of co-workers, and i enjoyed it so much. However you have to think about the big picture and what you will be going towards if you keep something up that is bad for your health. In this case it was not ERDE, but excessive work that was killing my mind and tiring my body.

So recently i did a 24 hour race, the last 2 months i have been cycling a lot and the opportunity came to do a race with my colleagues from ERDE. My biggest fear was getting lost on the race track, yes even though I am a bike messenger, i am often very uncoordinated with direction and lack of orientation. THIS WAS NOT AN IRRATIONAL FEAR, as i was about to find out. My dear teammate looked at me and said emphatically 'Anna.... it is literally impossible to get lost on the race-course, there are signs everywhere', I shouldn't have believed her. So there i was, one little idiot wearing my tightest biking clothes, nerves on edge waiting at the starting line, as soon as my team mate finishes his first round i begin... first move... the wrong move... i immediately turned to the wrong side.. avoided the oh too obvious barrier and began to ride the wrong way on the race track. I was alarmed for sure, feeling i had done something wrong, but the people standing on the sides of the tracks just looked at me with raised eyebrows and a quizzical expression. For sure no one was meant to go that way.... but if someone was doing just that, then i expect they thought i must have a damn good reason. As luck would have it (and i mean bad luck), i managed to ride a good 3-4 kilometres and one large hill before i spotted a group of about 15 cyclists coming not behind me but in front of me.. then i realised that i was really in the wrong place. Panic and unbelief... lots of 'FUCK MY LIFE' thoughts... but what could I do.. i turned around and went back.. of course i passed the finish line.. except i had not finished anything but being stupid... the public cheered me on.. and for absolutely no reason. Needless to say the pain i felt inwardly was real as i finally got on the right track and began to ride the race for real. Despite the initial problem i rode the rest of the race in good form and no one even mentioned that i had made such an obvious and rather impossible error. Of course the voices in my head could not leave me alone.. and i spent a good portion of the next day regretting my life in its entirety and promising myself that i will begin to eat more food that's good for the brain... 

What i learnt from all of this, is that I am one of those kind of people, funny stuff happens to me all the time... and i have to embrace it. When i told the other cyclists that i had gone the wrong way on the race track they laughed a lot but also were puzzled 'how???' they asked... it was indeed difficult to go go around the barriers and clearly not the right route. I can only shrug my shoulders and admit that I have to laugh at the shenanigans i get up to, life would  be so boring without them. Instead of desiring perfection i realised for me that the experience is what counts. Ever since i was a little girl i wanted to be so good at something, i tried many things, i was dancing, managing a bar, trying to be a bike mechanic, trying to do graphic design, playing guitar and singing and much much more... i always seemed to have problems and make some crazy errors.... however all of those are good experiences that add up to making life funny, interesting and marvellous. 

I don't think we should desire to be so good at anything unless its coming naturally to you to do just that. If you are like me and put your energy into many areas you may have to accept that you will always be ok at many things and never really specialise... Accepting and appreciating ourselves and knowing that we are enough just as we are is the medicine we need to be thankful with our own situation and be happy. If you clear away all the silliness in life, being happy is all that we want and what matters. I know i could be the best cyclist in the world but if i was not satisfied with myself and not happy in my life.. it would really be empty to me. I had a lot of trouble with myself these weeks that i have been working as a bike messenger. I felt angry when i could not accomplish as much as the others, i even broke down in tears after my shift when i felt i had not done well enough. What the hell is good enough anyways??? if you are someone like me, you will understand that it is never good enough for the little demons inside of your head. Instead of being upset, try to understand that its your life experience, find it funny, as funny as you can, and accept yourself. Every time i ride i thank my body for doing what it does... i tell myself that its amazing i can do it, i look at my legs and i am amazed at their strength and i am thankful that even though i smoke so much, my lungs are pushing out and processing air so fast. I thank my brain for remembering streets and i forgive myself when i make a mistake.. i try to remember its all part of learning and its really the fun part... the part where you make some memories, do some silly things and get those stories that you will one day tell your kids. 

I will finish this post with saying that this last year brought me many gifts and the greatest of these was the person that i am in love with. I found a true soulmate, who understand me and makes every day of my life filled with love. For this and for all the love in my life I am really grateful

Culture Exchange in Serbia has been open for four years

I came back for the celebration, taking the time to appreciate and respect the project that we started all that time ago. Clearly so many people have contributed to make this place what it is.... and i feel great pride in it, how we have grown up from the kids that opened it...we are still kids inside but we learnt a lot. There is a strong energy of love and teamwork here. I am such an emotional person and i know its only the love that i felt for this place and from this place that kept me working tirelessly on it for 3 and a half years, and to work so hard last summer to keep it open, reinvest and reinvent. Just being here a few days brings my energy up again, i feel the strength of all that we did here. 

What a beauty it is...for what it is.

It never made money, but it made an impact. It brought us through so many highs and lows, and it squeezed us all and pushed us inwardly and outwardly. It may not be success in a definable way, but its successful in the most natural way. It's still open, it still works. 4 years.. i could have never imagined in the beginning that we would be around this long. I have seen almost every local in the area around us change owners, places close and open here so fast. It may seem not a big deal to be open for a mere four years, but anyone who has lived and worked in Serbia will understand, its pretty outstanding. 

The setbacks that CE experienced and all the things that could have closed us were many. We even had almost all the owners (apart from me) deported from the country, our name smeared with negativity in the public newspapers, our window smashed by right wing nationalists, and death threats. The story got better with each turn, as we survived against the odds and thrived in our own unique way. The support from Novi Sad and from the people that loved CE kept it afloat in moments of doubt. Last year I had to close CE for 3months because of the financial problems, it was a hard moment to see the windows covered with papers stating that we would reopen in 3 months, clearing out all the furniture, drinks and other things, cleaning it for what could have been the last time and trusting the future would somehow be OK. I remember all the sleepless nights wrestling with what to do from that point..should we just close it? One year later and we succeeded to keep it open. The next chapter of CE is going to be interesting.. i will be writing about what the plan is,but for now you can know there will be some changes. One thing we all have to accept is that nothing stays the same, everything changes and we can always choose how we see these things. Whatever happens in the future, we can always look back on the last 4 beautiful years, and deeply appreciate the wonders of life and all that transpired here in little Novi Sad in Serbia.

I want to express deeply the thankfulness I have for all our friends here and the staff who have worked in CE. guys...i am so grateful to know each one of you and to have had the privilege to be close to you. You are the secret ingredient that made this place wonderful, and everyone added their own special ingredient. Every single one of you is priceless and i love you all a lot. I will never forget this country and each of you, and i treasure it. 

Here are some of my favorite moments from CE in pictures

 

             Messenger Lessons...

I jumped my  first hurdle to work as a bike messenger alone. My life here in Graz has been filled with so many new experiences and I always have to fight my own demons of fear and lack of belief in myself. I am lucky to work for Veloblitz, the coolest group of guys who showed me so much support and trusted that in time I could be a good bike messenger.

I first did my training day over one month ago. I chased Sava (one of the messengers) for about 6 hours, even though I felt strong enough to ride, I also didn’t know much of the city and was not sure where we were for almost the whole time.

  Its better to do something badly yourself then watch someone else do it well, I knew I had to take the leap and ride alone. I was so scared and worried about screwing things up, getting lost and fucking it up. In everything we do, fear is there, looking at us and we need to face it down and defeat it. I always experience a lot of self doubt in everything I did, despite my fear.. I always push myself and go through it. I got lots of good advice from each of the experienced messengers, mostly to have no expectations and to do my best.

One thing the job taught me was about taking each moment as it comes and not worrying about the whole day and how I am doing.. how much money I am making etc… It teaches you to be calm in stressed situations.. it makes you push yourself physically while you tune in mentally to the route that you need to ride. It makes you appreciate your body and all it can do for you, it makes you stand on your own feet, depend on yourself and trust yourself. My boyfriend (who is a messenger himself) gave me lots of good tips and also rode with me around the city to get to know it better, he always told me that I can do I t and that he believed in me.. but no matter what other say.. the battle is always yours and yours alone.. and perhaps greater then the battle to make it to each job on time, I fight my fears and work on trusting my instincts.

I have had lots of funny moments already, going totally wrong ways, getting lost and bringing packages way too late… what I call all of this is ‘experience’. That beautiful thing that sometimes is filled with blood, sweat and tears. Sure I was late so many times so far… but I also gained knowledge of the city and rode faster then I have ever done before. The funniest moment so far was when I thought a line on the map was something I couldn’t cross and did a serious long detour… only to realise it was a random line on the map and totally crossable.. it was distressing at the time and I thought I was very stupid.. but now I laugh at it and regard it as one my finest messenger moments to date… 

It’s cycling season, and now I strengthen my body and work on riding as much as I can each week, normally 3-4 times a week. Together with friends I formed a beginners cycling group ‘THE VELOBITCHZZZ’, and we cycle together as much as possible. 

There are lots of lessons abounding in my life at the moment. I choose to accept whatever life is bringing me with an open heart and strive to see it all as a path for growth. After the last time I rode messenger, I was very discouraged and wrote the Furwerk(head-quarter guys) to tell them I was sorry for my poor performance. They wrote me back that no one expects me to be amazing at the beginning and that they know I can be super fast. There is a great support here for trying new things, and everyone knows what its like to start and to be in my shoes. 

In every area of my life right now I feel like I am learning a lot, pushing into new things and as much as possible trying to be open and loving. This is in every area.. my work, my cycling, and my relationship, I feel like for so long I have been stuck in the convenient confines of my previous mindsets and lifestyle, now I am realising things don’t have to be the way I have always thought were ok. I don’t have to live by any other rules then my own, the ones I set and the way I want to live. This is giving me a feeling of responsibility, control over my feelings and my life and also confidence in myself, as I see my choices are good and my reasoning is clear and rational. 

One of my greatest concerns this year was that I would struggle through a big depression, similar to what I had last year. I kind of accepted that every year in the summer (I know it’s a weird time), I would get depressed. I almost waited for the depression to hit me and if I had a bad feeling in the beginning of the year at any time, I would get worried that the great depression had hit me early. I always thought perhaps I was a manic depressive and something was wrong with me.. I thought I might need to take medication and see someone who could help me when those feelings of sadness were very strong. I realise now that there was nothing wrong with me, I am a balanced and sane person, it was the stressful and capitalistic circumstances of my job and the world that I lived in that created those feelings and pushed me into a stressful place. The world around us forces us into depression these days, the constant attention on work and success, the lack of rest, sleep, enjoyment and simple play.

 The last years in the summer, CE in Serbia would always be out of money, I felt terrible stress and pressure, I also let the expectations of unrealistic and very uncompassionate people matter to me. I listened a lot to ideas of those who did not really care about me, but just had their own interests at heart. All of this I thought at the time to be reality, now I realise that it was all the reality that I created for myself. Although last year was an important time of learning deep lessons, and its almost always through rough patches and deep sadness that we grow and learn many things, I now live differently, at least a bit. Even though I still work very much, I have detached my sense of self worth from my business. I know that no matter what happens at CE, I am a wonderful person, the future of my business does not say anything about who I am.  

I think the way we are brought up and raised in this society is wrong in so many ways. Of course its easy to look at the problems with the world and criticise things and that’s not what I want to do. I do however want to challenge some of the mentalities and obligatory restrictions placed upon us these days and at least question why. Let’s go back to what I discussed a little earlier… attaching self worth to acomplishments… I always felt that I was what I did… that I had to do so many things and please so many people. Who is to say what we are meant to do with our lives, whether we choose to study, work, wander the world or do nothing for a while, we shouldn’t feel that we are less or more of a person or less or more worthy of love or life. We are always glorifying people that work hard and accomplish big things, but not everyone is meant to travel that path. Work these days is basically slavery in return for a few gold coins, it adds nothing to the personality, stresses, drains and squelches human spirit. 

About one month ago I had a serious stress breakdown. I was working many, many hours each day for months on end. In the beginning I felt really strong and like I could handle it. Typical to my character, I took on way too many things, and started to also invest time in my hobbies.. this meant that all day from early in the morning I was on the go. I rushed around all the time, I didn’t have time for friends which meant that my relationships with people were not on a deep level.. this is very troubling for me and gave me a lot of insecurity, because I am an emotional person and relationships of all kinds are very important to me. It was one Friday in the middle of my 17 and a half hour shift that I rushed home do a quick one hour fitness training. All of a sudden I felt a deep sadness and pressure in my chest and started to cry. I called my boyfriend, but I couldn’t talk to him, I just cried and cried.. I went to see him at his place quickly, but the tears didn’t stop and the pressure inside of me made me feel terrible. I felt like I was just a working machine, with no real friends or love, the stress had blinded me to the beauty of my life and my workaholic tendencies had caught up with me. 

I really got to thinking after this mental collapse… why had this happened to me.. when I had tried to think of why I was crying so much, I couldn’t name it. It was not one thing, but the stress and confusion of work that had done this to me. I think we are all far more beautiful and free minded people then we realise, we are stopped from thinking and acting freely by the materialistic system that literally fucks us as we are forced to enslave ourselves.. but I had learnt my lesson. I never took such a long shift again and I determined to spend more time cycling and doing things I enjoy, going into the sunshine and into the wilderness.. spending time with people who uplift me and make me happy. I have enough money to live, as I think most of us do.. but I am a workaholic and I don’t know yet how to say ‘NO’ when people impress jobs on me. I still need to learn to respect my body and spirit and its needs. More important then anything you do.. is you.. and if you are stressed and unhappy…it’s not worth it. Nothing is worth killing your spirit for. 

I also now challenge societies rules on sexuality, relationships and love… I am able to do this together with an amazing person, and we are going into a journey together to open our relationship to other people and experiences. I am writing this on my blog, because I think that this is such a big topic that scares almost all of us. We are all pretty fearful when we are confronted with relationship issues. I don’t know how much to write here, because it seems pretty off topic.. but its definitely part of my journey of openness, love and honesty.

Optimism…  the way things are and the way we dream things will be

So our CE in Graz is still here.. and still without its licence. The last time we went to check on the progress, the man in charge of our paperwork had lost some of our important documents. Instead of calling us and letting us know he had misplaced them, he simply took his time. They love to do that don’t they, take their time and in the process take yours as well.

   The fact that CE in Graz feels a bit stuck in the mud in some moments can be disappointing for us. We only had the one business experience under our belt, the one in Serbia that is. When we opened CE in Serbia it was peaking in its first 3 months, packed with people, talked about in the media and getting well known in the city. The situation here in Graz has been very different, we did have some really strong days with concerts and events here, however after the fines and the confiscation of our licence it went very far down, now its climbing slowly up. I feel like the people in Graz and Serbia are very different, the crowd has a very different need. Serbia always needs entertainment and excitement, it needs to always be the ‘IT’ place of the city, where everyone is going. If people get bored of you there, they stop going to your spot and go to the next hot-spot of the city. Here in Graz I feel that people take much longer to get used to something, they really need to feel comfortable, try it out, take their time and go slow. Most of the popular places in the city have been here for decades. Its like a tricky puzzle that takes a long time to complete but once its done.. its done. Once you are in, you are in to stay. The battle of CE in Graz seems to be a battle of patience.

Every day when I come into CE to work and I see those moments where it is still totally empty, I envision this place full. I look into the future and imagine what could be, when it is full of people and brimming with positive energy and exchanges, I really believe it can happen. Even if this story does not become a success in the way we like to interpret it at the moment, I am glad that we are doing this and that we decided to try. The fact that CE has few customers at the moment is really just a part of the story.

Today I also did my first day as a bike messenger. It was a very tiring day, long and exhausting, but good as well. I  have a lot of respect for the guys and girls that are working this job, its really tough on your body and on your mind. You often have a short time to get packages from one place to the next, you need to orientate yourself, not get lost, be careful in traffic, avoid the people who are walking around  and not looking, and then also push to ride as hard as you can. I did my training with Lukas, who is such an excellent cyclist and really explained things as best as he could, even though I was pretty slow, he took time, slowed down at some parts and also pushed me pretty hard. The fact is that I still feel very overwhelmed if I think about going on my own and finding all these places, I am not the most oriented person, I often get lost in really stupid ways so its pretty challenging for me to think of doing this job.