The Hannahlogues

I’m writing to you today from the shade of a cafe patio in Warsaw, Poland, where a warm breeze is quickly drying the sheen of sweat that developed during my walk up and down this cute street full of bistros and boutiques. It’s one of those early fall days that start out deceptively cool, but forces you to shed your layers as the sun makes its daily arc across the sky. The leaves on the tree-lined street are starting to turn and flutter to the ground, and even on a Wednesday afternoon, tables are full at the outdoor cafes on every block. It’s my favorite time of year: jean jacket weather.

And in another 10 minutes, once I’ve stopped sweating for good, I’ll be able to put it back over my shoulders, since – in a defiant quest to wear everything I packed back in April – I am sporting my thin-strapped black linen romper, which LAST April, my mom – while helping my overflowing suitcase make weight – held up with two fingers and asked “Is a romper age appropriate for a 40 year old?”

IDK mom, I’m literally just a girl.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself – let me back up.

If we haven’t caught up lately and you’re not also receiving emails from “Hannah @ The Plan,” you might be surprised to learn that yes, I’ve been back in Europe since April 30. But this time, the theme is less “do whatever your heart desires” brain detox, and more “complete as much work as you can while spending as little money as possible” productivity sprint.

Last summer was about disconnecting, and giving my brain a chance to heal; this summer was about filling it back up with information of my choosing.

What I’ve been up to

I returned home last July after two gloriously unscheduled months on my tiny Croatian island, and several weeks in Bosnia and Slovenia, where I began dipping my toe back into polite society. I came home convinced that I had to avoid getting sucked back into the late-stage capitalist hamster wheel I had fled, and determined to find a way to thrive while living a slower, more intentional life.

Of course that’s easier said than done, and I was fortunate to be able to pick up enough freelance work at my old agency to pay the bills (if not zero out that credit card balance) for a few months while I figured out my next steps.

Another thing I returned home with in July was a newfound obsession with all things astrology – so that’s where I directed the rest of my attention.

I am not exaggerating when I say that nearly every spare waking moment since last summer has been devoted to some aspect of this roller coaster of a spiritual awakening journey I’ve been on.

Exactly one year ago, I channeled the audacity of a mediocre white man and enrolled in a 1 year astrocartography certification program I was in no way ready for, and continued in enrolling in shorter, one-off courses.

My podcast diet is almost exclusively astrology, as are my social media algorithms. I have eaten, breathed and slept astrology. Just ask my friends and family who made the mistake of asking a simple, innocuous question, and been subjected to hour long rants about moon cycles and planetary transits.

I spontaneously purchased a URL in early November, and before my logical brain interceded, I had launched a website and an 85 page personalized workbook offering. I also now have firsthand experience of the misery that befalls she who launches a website during Mercury retrograde – but that’s another story for another time.

When Natalia reached out in February to let me know that she had a booking request for the month of May, and if I wanted the apartment I needed to commit, I sent the deposit immediately, figuring I’d had enough time to figure out the logistics.

I brushed questions of “what will you do with your house?” “how long will you stay for?” “what will you do for money?” away like gnats, trusting that the rest would fall into place as and when it was meant to.

Within days of pressing “transfer” on the deposit, my neighbors, who had been renting the house attached to mine for the last 2.5 years, mentioned that the home’s owner had decided to sell, and that they had to be out by April 30. Looking to buy, but wanting to take their time, they didn’t want a long term commitment, which was great, because neither was I. That took care of question #1.

As far as question #2, my talking points to anyone that would listen was that I would spend May in Croatia, and then find an inexpensive place I could hole up for the summer while I completed my certification, created my offering, and launched my readings – and all of the mind numbing logistical coordination that would entail.

My requirements for that second location were only that I could keep my expenses hyper-low, and not be bothered by border runs or mid-summer moves due to in-country limits. My third requirement was that I wanted to be out of the oppressive heat of the summer, but I knew I might be out of luck since I’d be limited by how far I could travel by land from Southern Europe.

And.. it’s sort of mind blowing to say.. but that’s exactly what I did!

May: Back to Kolocep, Croatia

This was an interesting time, because I arrived at that little attic apartment an entirely different person than I was 12 months earlier. I wasn’t in need of lazy days spent reading books on the sun bed or taking long, headphone-free walks in the woods. But perhaps the most notable change in my schedule this time around has been to the events on my calendar. I didn’t even have a calendar last summer – having left my job, which had been where my personal events lived as well. The whole point was 90 days free of deadlines and 15 minute reminder alarms. Now, being 6 hours ahead, my weekly coursework, study group, and “meet and greet” calls (hate that) start around 5 or 6 a few days a week, sometimes running as late as 10p, even 11pm.

My afternoon walk would need to be wrapped up a bit earlier, and sometimes we only took morning swims, but this wasn’t the incomprehensible burden it would have been a year ago. This was me building a cross-time zone life, and learning how to structure my days in a way that supported it. Frankly, it served to force me out of my chair in the afternoons, so that I could do things like take a walk, or swim, shower, and make dinner before sitting down for another few hours of work in the evening.

June, July, & August: Herceg Novi, Montenegro

The story of how I landed in Montenegro for 3 months is probably worthy of its own post, and I don’t want to sidetrack too much, but let’s just say that the universe had a pretty strong say in the matter (let me know if you want to hear the whole story, which involves me becoming the primary – and fortunately temporary – caregiver to 4 cats, 25 ducks, and a chicken.. although I’m sad to report it’s now 20 ducks).

A handful of miles from Croatia, there are a lot of geographical and climate similarities in Montenegro, and in many ways, my lived experience was very similar, with the key difference being that Herceg Novi is not a car-free island. I had initially planned a 3 day stopover in the famous medieval town of Kotor – a breathtakingly beautiful 2.5 hour ferry ride from Dubrovnik – intending to carry onwards towards Albania for the rest of the summer (enter: Universe), but ended up staying in the less tourist trap-y Herceg Novi instead.

Suffice it to say, a spur of the moment WhatsApp message sent while on the ferry en route to Montenegro led to “an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

For a number of reasons, but I would posit that not being an EU member is a primary one – Montenegro is significantly less expensive than Croatia, but even so, an apartment on the coast is an apartment on the coast.

For this reason, I had been envisioning my summer in a quiet low season city or town, and had not considered that I might continue to wake up to an ocean view without busting my budget (I paid 700 euro/month all in, for those inevitably asking. Higher than my fantasy, but that had likely been just that – a fantasy).

Enter: my Montenegro fairy godmother, Dejana (primary guardian of the aforementioned cats, ducks, and chicken), who helped arrange the rental of an empty apartment owned by a friend of her mother. A three-season sunroom meant I could spend my mornings working at the table smelling the air from the large open windows, but close them and the room once the sun shifted and pleasant warmth became oppressive heat.

Herceg Novi is known as the City of a Thousand Stairs, and I have a bone to pick because there are at least 100,00 stairs, and I walked many of them. Most regularly, from the door of my my 4th floor apartment, there were 250 of them until I reached the beach – which means there were another 250 of them to get back to the air conditioning.

As with Croatia, there are very few “sandy” beaches in Montenegro; the majority of the coastline is lined with concrete “beach clubs” where you can rent a chair and/or umbrella for a few euro/day, but which are required to reserve 40% of their space for us plebes to lay their towels.

The coastline “in between” more commercial towns and cities is spotted with short piers where at any given time you’ll see people sunbathing or jumping off the side, tiny heads bobbing throughout the entire bay. It’s charming, really.

I got into the habit of taking a morning swim – aiming to make the round trip journey before 9:30, so that I could be back up before the UV got too high, and the water got too choppy.

While less visually stunning than the blindingly blue turquoise waters surrounding Kolocep, it was no less crystal clear. I could still look down and immediately be reminded of how badly I needed a new pedicure; but I could also watch the scores of schools of fish out for their morning swims.

Learning to connect with the water

Another difference between my Kolocep swims and Herceg Novi swims was that I was doing them solo. On Kolocep, Natalia and I took almost every swim together, chatting the whole time. It was a welcomed break from staring at computers or other work for both of us. But in Herceg Novi I started to appreciate the restorative, grounding value of spending time alone in the ocean every day.

Our moon signs provide insight into the environmental stimuli that helps us regulate, to reenter ourselves. Fire Moons need to release energy in a physical way; Earth Moons need to engage their hands in something tactile; Air Moons need to talk it out; Water Moons need… water. I am a Pisces Moon; all Water Moons regulate through exposure to water, but the vast, borderless ocean is most akin to Pisces; it’s glyf is even of two fish.

Over time, that daily ritual in the water became a way for me to fully unplug. I couldn’t people watch, I couldn’t listen to a podcast or music, and I couldn’t pick up my phone. I was forced to be alone with my own thoughts.

As important as Water is in my emotional regulation, I also lean heavily Air – with a Libra Sun and Gemini Rising also directly “talking” to my Moon in my chart. Talking it out has always been a way for me to process the vastness of my emotions, but the constant stream of content I had been consuming left me with very little “quiet brain” time. I have also struggled with silent meditation; my thoughts move too quickly for that (Gemini is often compared to a hummingbird, flitting from flower to flower, never stopping to rest).

Enter: the ocean.

My brain, in search of something to do, started verbally processing my thoughts, dilemmas, and questions.. out loud. An added benefit of bobbing along in the ocean is that no one else is around, and the people that are can’t hear you. So, I started talking to myself. Literally. I talked it out while granny-style breast stroking back and forth, my hair protected by my bright pink UV sun hat.

And believe it or not, I usually talked my way into an answer without even really trying. It was almost like I was remembering what the answer was, versus figuring it out for the first time.

I do really think the hand the universe played in keeping me in Montenegro had something to do with getting me into the water – alone – on a regular basis, so that I could understand what it could do for me.

I also loved this particular morning ritual, because it is apparently shared by all of the elderly locals. They had their own, unspoken, reserved corner of the concrete sidewalk – something I learned early on when I got out of the water and realized my bag/towel was in the midst of their clump.

After 30 minutes of chit chat as a half dozen of them gathered, they’d slowly make their way to the edge, and 1 by 1, lower themselves down the ladder and into the water, where they’d bob in clusters, or swim lazy laps.

When I think about Blue Zones and “Mediterranean” lifestyles, this is what I think of. Octogenarians who get daily doses of exercise (stairs, swimming, getting in and out by balancing on a ladder), socialization, and Vitamin D. I loved mixing it up and taking a walk in either direction along the 4 mile promenade, because even as early as 8am, the waters were full of clusters of starfished bodies, limbs akimbo, faces pointing skyward.

Full Monk Mode

But other than those daily swims and occasional walks, I didn’t do another damn thing outside for three full months. I can count the number of times I ate out, went out past 5pm, or had a full conversation with another human in person on two hands. I was in full monk mode.

And it was fucking awesome.

Astrocartography has something to do with it – but this isn’t a post about my North Node line, although I’m overdue for that over on my website blog – but that part of the world is rabbit hole territory for me. It’s full on focus – to the detriment of a personal life.

Another massive factor, to be sure, was the heat. And frankly, I wasn’t even getting the worst of the heat wave that blanketed most of Western Europe this summer. There was very low humidity, and while slightly hotter than usual, still very much a to-be-expected hot coastal European summer. As far as I am aware, no one died of the heat as they did in Spain and France, and no cooling centers had to be opened. People just plan their days according to the season and take a fan with them everywhere they go.

Would I spend another summer in Herceg Novi? Perhaps not. But when I said I needed to hole up somewhere for the summer, I meant it.

And man, did it ever pay off. Talk about setting an goal and then meeting it.

I’ve done my best to keep a log of what I accomplished during my time, which I won’t attempt to list in its entirety here, but major milestones include:

• Catching up on months of neglected coursework across various topics
• Studying for and passing my astrocartography final exam (200 multiple choice questions)
• Submitting and passing the “above and beyond” certification portion that became a detailed 75 page documentation of three full “test” readings I did for friends
• Resize/redesign and rewrite of my 85 page personalized workbook (buy it here!)
• Website content overhaul and inclusion of new pages for astrocartography readings (and the back-end tech stack that requires)
• Customer journey and brand message architecture (This was literally my job for 8 years, but it’s deceptively hard to do for yourself what you can do so easily for others…)
• Submission of an application/pitch deck to a travel insurance company to be their next ambassador testing out the next “hot” cities for digital nomads. I didn’t win (not even so much as a polite rejection email!) but a lot of time and thought went into that submission
• Wrote and revised my very first paid freelance article for Business Insider all about my decade-spanning tradition of taking birthday trips!
• Was interviewed for a feature in my move abroad group’s newsletter (unfortunately there’s no link, but if this is something you’re even remotely interested in, check out She Hit Refresh!)
• I also, spontaneously and with no real idea of where it would go (but trusting it would eventually go somewhere), developed a “building an authentic brand” course which was inspired by some women in my ACG study group realizing that pretty soon they had to put themselves out there to find clients.
  
  It clicked that this was so much of what I did as a brand strategist, so what felt overwhelming to them was actually very simple to me. This isn’t about customer-facing content, social media strategy, or CRM funnels. This is the really foundational stuff you need to be crystal clear on, so that it can support everything that you build on top of it. Questions like “who are you, what are your values, who are your ideal customers, what do they need, and how do you position yourselves to deliver it.”
  
  Five of us met nearly every Sunday for 3 hours over the summer, and it was messy, but I think everyone got where they needed to go by the end – myself included. When I ran from the politics and hypocrisy of pharma advertising, it didn’t occur to me that I’d miss the work, but I really do love – and am good at – brand strategy. This felt like an authentic way for me to bring two of my passions together.
  
  I truly believe that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater when rejecting corporate work. The tools themselves aren’t necessarily the problem; it’s the intentions of those that wield them that are problematic.

Suffice it to say, the rabbit hole did it’s job. I am grateful for my mostly-diligent record keeping, because a mere two weeks after leaving Montenegro, so much of the experience has faded into what feels almost like a dream, the details of which I can only summon when I stop reaching for them.

September: Warsaw, Poland

By the beginning of August, I could feel my time in Montenegro reaching its natural end (incidentally, also it’s legal end, as there is a 90 day cap on tourist visits).

I felt no grief about leaving, nor did I wish my remaining days away. It was a real “bless and release” moment; this place had allowed me to do what I cam to do, and now it was time to move on.

I feel like the universe was also satisfied. I had a few important spiritual encounters over the summer (via Dejana), and it’s almost as if the universe had brought me there to complete them, and then gave permission for me to move on.

The problem was, I had been so focused on getting through the academic and logistical part of the summer, that I hadn’t really thought about what came next.

I had always said “I’ll find a place to put my head down and do the work through the end of August, and then go from there,” without giving much thought to where “where” was.

So here I am, in Warsaw, Poland. Why Poland? The truth is, I can’t answer that logically. But I do remember the moment that I very casually asked in the course of my crazy lady rambling, “do I just go to Poland next?” The full body response I immediately received made the choice for me, and honestly, making the choice has proven to be the hardest part, so it was a relief, in a way.

Why Warsaw? Astrocartography, baby. Poland is pretty due north of the Balkan region, so I’m still on that rabbit hole line (now a mere 18 miles away instead of 150!), but there are a couple of mitigating factors that I was optimistic would infuse a lighter, less intense energy (they have).

I’m definitely walking away from these last few months with a lot more insight into what the life of a slowmad entails, and what’s important for me to consider in the future.

1. I am just not my best self in the heat. I’ve always been a fall girley, and as summers get progressively hotter, I have gotten progressively crankier. My mornings were a face against the UV index, and as a slow morning gal with two sleep disorders always felt rushed. Plus, I hate picking my clothes by what is less likely to show sweat stains or need to be washed after one wear.
   
2. I absolutely hate planning my travel. City scouting, neighborhood selection, rental comparisons, bargain hunting – no thank you. My razor thin budget adds to the stress, but even with access to all the monies, this task will never spark joy. Patchworking together my various accommodation arrangements – all of them contingent on the prior and post arrangement not falling through – can suck all the life out of me. I’ve lost entire days to the black hole of booking sites, facebook groups, reddit feeds, and credit card points portals.
   
3. I dread travel/transition days. I did not pack light. I left the US with text books, half a dozen notebooks (a collection I have only added to), two tarot decks, a beside fan, portable white noise machine, 4 months of medication refills, a second screen, mouse, keyboard, and – I am loathe to admit – a fucking CPAP bag (turns out, once one sleep disorder was properly treated, another promptly emerged).

I know this is a lot of crap. But I intentionally packed all this crap, knowing it was a lot of crap. The term digital nomad is misleading, because what that term often evokes (for me, at least) is a 25 year old influencer in Bali moving from hostel to hostel with just their backpack because they don’t yet have any chronic medical conditions and they wear XS flowy clothes and string bikinis that take up no room.

I don’t know if that’s what comes to mind when you hear the term, but the reality is, the average age of a self-described digital nomad is 37, and the average time spent in one place is 30 days (told you I did a lot of work on that travel insurance pitch a few months ago). I don’t know what the statistics are for how frequently people sweat through their clothes in the summer, but there’s no way I’m getting multiple wears out of anything in that heat.

Clothing-wise, I actually did well, considering the range of seasons I covered: lingering spring, pleasant summer, melt on the sidewalk summer, and almost-winter fall. I packed significantly less clothing than I did last year, and without all the aforementioned crap, I would be pretty nimble.

The Jam Jar Barometer

I’ve mentioned the term slow madding a few times, which is a much more realistic aspiration for me. I’d like to stay somewhere no less than a month, ideally 2 or 3.

This isn’t just about not wanting to pack and unpack every few weeks (although it takes quite a bit of time to repack my vaccum seal bags and Tetris everything else around them), but it’s about having enough time to establish a routine, and find a rhythm.

I’m not on vacation, nor am I necessarily “traveling;” I’m working remotely. Sure, my schedule is more flexible, and over time I want to find a better balance of work and play, but my nervous system requires at least a temporary state of stability to be healthy.

I like living somewhere, and that means staying in places where I make my own food – and where I have enough time to use that food. I talking about this on a call with a woman from my move abroad group who was on month two of her scouting trip through Europe. Mid-rant, I said that “I want to be somewhere long enough to use a full jar of jam goddamnit!” and we both laughed because she knew exactly what I meant.

I’ve done a pretty good job timing my food purchasing so that I don’t end up with too many extras, but you move around enough, and it becomes expensive and wasteful to leave a half full jar of honey, bottle of olive oil, or salt & pepper behind – and buying a new set of everything for a week or two stay at a rental seems crazy, but without those staples, you miss out on the benefits of paying extra for a place with a kitchen in the first place.

These aren’t complaints so much as they are considerations that I need to factor in if I want to sustain this sort of lifestyle for a while.

And then there’s the question of bags

Those of you who read last year’s Mostar suitcase saga will be happy to hear that I left that big, 70 lb checked bag at home this time… opting inexplicably for two smaller roller bags and a heavy backpack instead. It makes sense in theory – once I’ve checked the bag, I can get around easily.

Individually, the suitcases aren’t so heavy I risk a hernia every time I carry it up a flight of stairs.. but my brain was really on PTO when I made this decision, completely failing to consider how difficult non airport travel would be with two roller bags, and a big backpack, and a CPAP bag, and a bag of food, and usually a purse.

And of course anyone with a brain knows that roller bags in Europe are already difficult because of ancient, cobblestone roads and a lack of elevators.

Now, combine the above with the city of 100,000 stairs and 85 degree heat. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that transit days are my most challenging days.

Here’ are some of the places I’ve traversed with my cornucopia of belongings:

• two different ferries
• a city bus
• the subway/metro
• an airport tram
• a coach bus
• a farm
• up and down countless flights of stairs, which of course requires multiple trips because while I can technically carry everything I packed.. I can’t carry them up four flights of stairs at the same time

And yes, every time I feel like crying, I remind myself “you made the decision to pack all of this,” and just power through. I don’t regret the choices I made (although I am puzzled by the two roller bags one) and I’m not bothered by the judgement of, or advice from, the people who “could never.”

Looking back, I brought a couple of books I haven’t used, but ultimately, I’ve been grateful to have the tools I need to do the things I came here to do. And on the lowest of days, I splurge for a cab.

That said, it’s my blog, and I’ll cry if I want to.

Where to next?

Well, I leave Poland on the 20th. I visited Krakow briefly on my 40th birthday trip and loved it, and I’ve also been really dazzled by Warsaw. I miss my swims, but at the end of the day, I’m a city gal. I just need to find a healthy balance.

By the time I depart on Sunday, I will have moved 4 times between 4 neighborhoods. It’s been a lot of bouncing around, which has been stressful, but I have appreciated getting a sense of the different parts of the city, especially as Warsaw is quite sprawling. I could absolutely see myself spending more time here in the future.

There are two platforms which I was not able to use in the Balkans, but which are widely used in Western Europe: HomeExchange, and TrustedHousesitters which are important factors in my upcoming plans.

HomeExchange is a house swap platform that allows you to make non-reciprocal (and reciprocal) exchanges, earning points when people stay at your house, which you can spend to stay at other people’s at a later time. I hosted several stays at my house over the winter, banking the points to use this summer. In fact, the reason why I’ve moved around so much in Warsaw is because I was building my stay around a week at an apartment I booked on HomeExchange, which was effectively free.

TrustedHousesitters is a platform I’ve been lurking on for over a year (which is more a petsitting platform than strictly housesitting), and finally went ahead and paid the membership fee a couple of weeks ago. As with HomeExchange, aside from the platform fee, you are trading pet sitting for a free place to stay, which is a win/win.

On Sunday, I begin a bit of a whirlwind journey that starts with a train to Berlin, where I’ll spend Sunday night and Monday afternoon before boarding a sleeper train to Brussels.

I arrive in Brussels on Tuesday morning; I’ve never been to Belgium, so I’m excited to spend a couple of days exploring and will be staying in an apartment via HomeExchange.

I leave bright and early for London on the 24th, and I’ll continue directly onwards to a village near Southampton, where I have booked a petsit until the 28th.

After that, I’ll make my way up to Edinburgh for a few nights, before heading west of Glasgow for a 2 week petsit. When that wraps up, I’ll head east to meet my parents for a week in the highlands (also courtesy of HomeExchange)! They’re going to be in Scotland with a group for a couple weeks, and had extended their stay, so I decided to plan my travels so that I could meet up with them!

The logistics involved in coordinating this little Euro Trip would make your eyes bleed, but after a solid 8 hours of painstaking research (complicated further by matching everything against my astrocartography lines and transits), I have the biggest parts in place.

And then?

What happens October 20th? Hard to say, but there’s plenty of time for the universe to work its magic!

That’s pretty much it for now! I didn’t get into many business updates, but hopefully you’re already following those – if not, find them here, and if you know of anyone who you think might be interested in an astrocartography reading, send them my way!!

I’ll do my best to check in a bit more casually here, but I only have two hands to translate the zillions of thoughts swirling in my head, and for obvious reasons, I’ve been prioritizing the thoughts that can make me money 🙂

I’ve also started a business Instagram. It’s pretty sparse at the moment, but I hope to get better at regular posting. Here are the other places you can find me!