The Hannahlogues

*Quick PSA to those of you who get new posts via email, the website has a photo dump page where I upload a photo of the day, if you’re interested in seeing more pics*

I first started this post last Tuesday – a week after packing up and leaving my island oasis. I got side tracked by the Mostar travel fail that I ended up making its own post and left this one unfinished… because IT’S BEEN A REALLY HARD TRANSITION.

So, here I am, finally revisiting this a week later, though in hindsight I think it’s probably a good thing that I gave it a little more time, because I have a kinder perspective after an initially rocky start.

I also want to preface this post with a full acknowledgment that it’s been a much much harder couple of weeks in so many places across the world. My individual, and often comedic struggles at finding my happy place are of course relative. However, they are the focus of this post.

---

In my “End of the Kolocep Era” post, I begrudgingly acknowledged that perhaps it was time to move on from the rehab facility-like setting of the island and test out my new found sense of mental freedom in a more real world scenario. I felt like I had achieved what I was going for on Kolocep. My brain had returned to stasis, my curiosity had been awakened, I was learning new things, not guilting myself for the things I didn’t want to do, and I was physically active in a way that felt good, and not like a chore.

I mentioned the isolation of the island as a way to force myself to be alone with my thoughts. Because my (and I think most humans’) instinct is to avoid the hard inner work at all costs. So of course that isolation was by design. I worried I was going to leap at the chance to push that introspective work to the side and dive head first into a new country and all of the distractions it provides.

In the weeks leading up to my departure, I’d felt like things were finally starting to come together. I didn’t know exactly what they were coming together to create, but I could see vague shadows of the disparate parts of new and old information in my brain starting to circulate, intermingle, and arrange themselves in a coherent way that I just know I would have looked at in wonder, smacked my forehead and asked why it took me so long to see it.

You know I love a good metaphor. As a New England gal, this process is evocative of eating a lobster. Stay with me. There are a couple of approaches one can take. Some people eat as they peel, popping the meat in their mouth as they pull it from the shell. As if it were an appetizer, not the star of the show, like the sociopaths they are. They then move on to the rest of the food on the table, as if that were the main event.

My process is to fully shell the lobster, collecting all of the meat in a pile on my plate (though I make an exception for the legs. There’s not enough in there to wait to eat!). Once the lobster is shelled, I clear off my plate of any detritus, wash my hands, get a fresh napkin and then add the salads, the corn, and other side dishes. Finally, I sit down with a full plate of food. After all, the lobster is the reason we are all around that dinner table, and can now be savored accordingly.

The point being, I can’t enjoy the fruits of my labor – the reason I came to the table – until I’ve gotten all of the bits in one place, cleaned up the mess created by the process of amassing the component parts, and put it all in a fresh workspace.

For my non-lobster-eater-readers, imagine the process of starting a puzzle: spending the first hour flipping all of the pieces right side up, sorting by color, and gathering all of the edges in their own pile (again, there may be sociopaths that just raw dog 1,000 piece puzzles, but I am not one of them). There’s a lot of prep work to do before you can start in on the fun part of – quite literally – puzzling everything together. Hmm, as I type this, I realize this is actually the more appropriate metaphor for what I’m trying to communicate.. but I’m keeping the lobster in there, since it’s the mental image that I see every time I think about this process.

It’s how I write. I word vomit onto a page, not paying attention to flow, or order, or grammar – jumping to new paragraphs mid-sentence, so that I can capture a thought before I lose it. Only once I have gotten the words out of my brain do I go back and think through the organization. Right now, I have about 7 disparate paragraph fragments that I’ll get back to when I’m ready to put it all together and smooth the edges. Sometimes they turn into separate posts (as the Mostar one did), but it’s just as likely they become one mega-post that you all then so patiently read.

When I left Kolocep, I was still elbow deep in of this process of amassing and organizing everything, but absolutely getting excited about the part where I get to put it all together. I wasn’t done shelling the lobster, never mind washing my hands and getting a fresh plate. Maybe I’d turned 750 of the pieces over, but I had yet to sort by color and separate the edge pieces. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel, something I was looking forward to.

I had a lingering fear that if I didn’t finish this process of gathering the component parts before I left, that it would be hard to get back into that mental space, and that all my hard work would languish like a forever unfinished puzzle that just sits there in your living room, reminding you of the better person you used to be every time you walk past it (in this case, the lobster metaphor no longer applies, because I NEVER leave a lobster uneaten!).

I was worried that when I stepped off that ferry for the last time, whatever portal I had managed to open in my brain would suddenly close, not to open again for 7 years.

---

Going in, I knew that Mostar was going to be a bit of a wash. You don’t need a full 4 days to “do” Mostar, but there is certainly enough to keep you busy, and hanging out in the room wasn’t really a comfortable alternative. 4 days wasn’t enough time to unpack and get things organized, and in a very small room, I was constantly tripping over my suitcase, which gave me a very unsettling sense of claustrophobia.

Mostar is also more obviously touristy. Of course there’s a big city beyond the boundaries of the Old Town and bridge, but its visitors are generally funneled to that area, making it feel more contrived. I understood that most of my time would be spent doing touristy things, and not necessarily getting back into my Kolocep zone.

Plus, I had an apartment booked for two weeks in Sarajevo to look forward to. Surely that would be enough time to see the city and also pick up where I left off.

So here we are, after 5 days in Mostar and 9 days in Sarajevo. The motivation hasn’t disappeared per say (more on that in a bit), but what has returned with a vengeance is the word “should,” which is the loudest voice in my head, at the moment.

I didn’t “plan” my time here. I have a bunch of flagged places on google maps, and had a couple day tours in mind, but that’s as far as I had gotten.

But because I don’t have a solid plan when I wake up in the morning, it’s like I have a project manager on my left shoulder wearing a little headset, tapping its foot impatiently, a clipboard full of Sarajevo “must dos” in hand. The figure on my right shoulder is more of a spiritual advisor, wearing long flowy dresses, waving a smoking sage stick, and reminding me that I had merely scratched the surface of my inner moon goddess, and that there was more work to do.

What ends up happening, is I become so paralyzed by indecision (both of my angels have very valid points) that I end up wasting the better part of the day deciding, ultimately doing a little bit of both, but not necessarily in a way that feels satisfying.

The natural solve for this of course, is to better plan my days here so that I wake up knowing what’s on my plate. But I then fall back into the trap of over-scheduling myself, and feeling the obligation of doing things.

[It’s faint, but if you listen really hard, you’ll hear it: the world’s smallest violin]

---

There are a few things that I think are leading to this sense of disorientation:

Lack of a satisfactory workspace: The apartment I rented is clean, comfortable and in a good location, but does not have any sort of view. And there are some great views in this city, so I am hyper aware that I don’t have one. I also feel very isolated working from the apartment in a way I didn’t feel on the island. There, I might have been focused on my computer, but it was with the panorama of the bay twinkling back at me from beyond my laptop screen. Or, if I was sitting at the desk with no view, I was at least taking deep breaths of sea air, listening to the chatter of birds, and feeling the cross breeze blowing through the apartment.

While this apartment has a small balcony that looks into the building behind it, I haven’t spent any time out there because the no man’s land between apartments appears to be a mating zone and/or fight club for pigeons and, inexplicably, cats. So rather than being soothed by the sound of waves lapping on the beach, I am assaulted by a cacophony of flapping wings as birds fight to the death in midair, and the hair-raising screeches of cats fighting each other.. or the pigeons? Also, the AC unit directly adjacent to the balcony looks like the aftermath of a pigeon-party, which I do not want to get anywhere near. It’s just not the vibe, people. Simply put, there’s nothing to distract me during the day – and not in a way that allows me to focus, in a way that makes me bored.

Naturally you might ask, well what about working from somewhere else in the city? This is absolutely a cafe town, where tables of people will nurse a coffee or tea, or a beer for an hour while chit chatting and people watching. But I rarely see people with laptops, or even books. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe is a participatory activity, not a solitary one. I scanned some digital nomad reddit threads for places that people set up shop around the city, and decided to test some of them out, to varying degrees of success.

I thought I had found the perfect solution when I read a recommendation to go to the library in the middle of the Old Town. I could purchase a week long membership for about $6, giving me access to a quiet workspace with relative security, but where I would also be surrounded by people.

It was only after I set my bag down at a cubby in the reading room and went back to the front desk to get directed to the restrooms when the employee manning the desk realized I was wearing a short skirt. As this is a library affiliated with an Islamic school, I am in violation of the dress code. Often, mosques have long skirts you can put on over your shorts in order to visit, so I asked if they had something similar here. No dice. However, rather generously, in light of the fact that I had just purchased a membership, he offered that I could work in a different room for the day.

So trust me when I say that the irony is not lost on me that I left the apartment in order to do computer work in a less isolated atmosphere, but that I am now sitting all alone and facing a blank wall in what amounts to a storage closet (he even closed the door!!).

[At least there is equal opportunity skin-shaming here. I was denied entry to a Catholic Church last week because of my shorts.]

The weather: I’ve also found that the weather is dictating my days more than it used to. Mostar tends to share its climate with its Adriatic neighbors…something to do with both its proximity but also the mountain range that provides a natural geographical border between Bosnia and Herzegovina. In fact, it’s the second sunniest city in the world! So, temperatures were regularly topping 90 in the first week of June, with evenings that didn’t cool down below 70. Whereas Sarajevo literally hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. But it’s still summer time in a city, so even a relatively temperate 80 degree day with low humidity is uncomfortable to be out and about in at peak hours. Plus, I’m no longer spending my days in bathing suits or work out clothes.. I have to worry about sweat stains and running makeup again. It also means the pressure is on to avoid the peak UV hours and get out early, or, more commonly so far, in the evenings. I think I’m just more sensitive to heat as I age which is another fun side effect of getting older.

Overall lack of energy: But mornings are hard to get out and about for, since for no real good reason, my entire body has been existing in a constant state of full body fatigue. I wake up feeling hungover, my eyes are puffy, my face is breaking out, my head is pounding (I will edit to add that this has improved a bit, but is not completely resolved). While I wasn’t exactly jumping out of bed in the mornings on Kolocep, my body felt good, strong, ready for the day. I was swimming 1-2x/day and taking 4-6 mile walks every evening, and still had the energy for several hours of “mental work.” Now, it’s one or the other. I can get out and about, walk several miles, see the things to see, but my brain is shot for the day. I haven’t even had the desire to read a book.

Acutely aware of the unresolved near future: You’ll remember I was very clear with myself in my guiding principles that there would be no panic about “what’s next” until the third month. Well guess what. It’s the third month!!! I wouldn’t say I’m fully panicking about what I will do for work/money.. though every time I have to transfer money out of my savings into my checking to… pay for stuff, I get a stab of anxiety as I watch the number get smaller and smaller.

But what’s really remarkable to me is the sluggishness with which the first 6.5 weeks passed is directly inverse to the speed with which the second 6.5 are flying by. It’s all truly been downhill from Kolocep. What felt on April 7th like the beginning of something new now feels decidedly like an end. It has also become readily apparent to me that 3 months is NOTHING. It’s a blip.

---

That said, it’s not all doom and gloom.

Firstly, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a really incredible country and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to see so much of it, learn more about its history, and interact with its people. They have been nothing but kind and welcoming and so excited to talk about all of the places in the US they’ve visited and lived. I’ve been to many places where being an American is.. not exactly something to advertise. It’s not their fault that I miss my island life. It’s not their fault that I feel the burden of should suffocating me like a weighted anxiety blanket every morning when I wake up.

It’s also not their fault that so many of the things to do and see here are related to a bloody war and heartbreaking genocide that occurred in my lifetime. That in every museum I am assaulted with images of bodies being exhumed from mass graves, or video footage of executions and death marches. That even now, as I sit at a cafe (I had to leave the library to be around people again), I am staring at a pockmarked building, in a city full of pockmarked buildings. I mean the city has a stretch of road called Sniper Alley for crying out loud.

[I do hope to write a longer post more specifically about the bloody war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 90s, but my education on the subject is very much ongoing]

But even in my short time here, I have experienced what many others have commented on after they visit: in a country plagued with nationalism, the Sarajevans are Sarajevans first and foremost. They are neighbors, and friends, and coworkers. They celebrate each other’s holidays, marry people of other faiths and ethnicities. Many of the Bosnian Serbs chose to stick it out during the siege alongside their neighbors in the 90s, despite being given the opportunity to leave. They have a kind of sick sense of humor and darkness, in that grungy 90s NYC kind of way. Theres’s a lot of life in this city, and I have felt welcomed and safe the entire time.

I’m also not going to lie and say the prices aren’t another thing that I love about this country. I have been getting really incredible food, both “street food” and sit down dinners for 1/3 of what I would pay in most places in the US. I had dinner with a couple girls I met in Mostar last week who were also en route to Sarajevo. Between the three of us, we had an appetizer, a salad, a pasta and a fish entree, dessert, a liter of wine and a glass of rajika (the BiH version of the after dinner apéritif that every country has), for about $35 each. It was one of those places that’s so popular you need a reservation every night of the week, where every dish is better than the one before it, and we sat for three hours enjoying the slow pacing of the courses.

Secondly, I have to applaud myself for the general flow of this trip overall. Three months really was the right amount of time for me to have started with. It was a duration I could be comfortable without a paycheck, knowing I wouldn’t be making money on day 1 back home either. It was a good amount of time to test drive renting my house (definitely some lessons learned there and glad I didn’t sign a longer lease with my current tenant). Plus, I don’t have to worry too much about tax implications as long as I’m still in my house for 6 months of the year. It was a reasonable time to test drive being abroad. And importantly, it was the minimum time I needed to reflect. Two months would, I now understand, not have been enough. Staying on Kolocep the entire time wouldn’t have been the right move, either. Even if I haven’t totally figured out what’s next or had that major “aha” moment (see: lobster shelling), I needed time do nothing, and I needed time to be a tourist in order to come back and feel like I really had a break – not just an intense study abroad experience.

But much longer than three months (well, let’s face it, four months would be great), I think I would have started to get a little antsy. While I’m still not sure on the how of it all (eg: financing), I understood pretty quickly that I want to extend this “slowmadding” process for at least a year or two longer before I make any major decisions about my house or leaving the US on a more permanent basis. So, too much more time, and I think I would have felt like I wanted to hurry up and figure that part out. As I’ve made pretty clear, I’m not usually someone who goes on vibes, so I would have likely had trouble leaning into the open ended nature of something when I knew how I wanted to resolve it.

I’m keeping a running “remember for next time” list, so this is all a learning experience. And it has truly been such a privilege to be on this journey, travel fails and all!

In Sarajevo till Saturday, then wrapping up the trip with two weeks in Slovenia! Here are a few more snaps of this past week of wandering.