This Life I Live

"Yeah, I mean that's not how we do it at my bar, but-"
"Your bar?" He cuts me off. "You know you quit that job right? It's not your bar anymore. You live in Europe now."
Shit, guys. I live in Europe now... What is this life?
According to Passenger "If you can't get what you love, you learn to love the things you've got. If you can't be what you want, you learn to be the things you're not. And if you can't get what you need... You learn to need the things that stop your dreaming." And I did... I stopped my dreaming for a long time. But I'm over that.
Bring on the dreams. Bring on the adventure. Bring on the love, the pain, the success, failure, heartache. All the things that let me know I'm alive. If I fail, I'm gonna fail big, leaping and bounding towards what I want. Not sitting still, too scared to try. So let's see what this week holds...

It's not the partying that keeps me around. No. I can find a party anywhere.
It's the quiet moments, together. It's midnight, when the ninjas gather in the kitchen after the pub crawl has taken all the guests away and we can sit for a moment. When Dan bursts in the door with a bag stuffed full of pastries he just scored at the bakery across the street as they were closing.
"I told you!," he exclaims, victorious. "Show up at midnight, 20 kunas (2.70euros), and they give you everything left!"
We laugh and dig in, faces and fingers smeared with chocolate. It's these moments that keep me. That make me happy to be working in a hostel instead of swinging through. The camaraderie. The work which pulls us together. I miss my bar because I enjoy having a team of awesome people that have my back. With the right co-workers, the job description ceases to matter.
I stay for the people. The coffee in the morning. The pastries at night. The jokes and jabs. The bleary eyed sharing of stories late into the dawn. The immediate extending of friendship. There's something about traveling that just opens hearts. Thank god.

The waiter appears from thin air, right on time.
"Oh, perfect," I smile and give him what I owe, my hand hesitating over my purse. "Sorry, can you tell me...do you tip here?"
"Yes," he says immediately, slight surprise coming through.
"Can you tell me what's a normal tip?"
"We don't have a rule for it."
"No percentage?"
He shakes his head and it's my turn to be surprised.
"Well...like what is a rude tip and what is a nice tip?"
"We don't have rude tips. Some people have a bill of 120 and leave only 2 or 3 kuna...some people get one coffee and leave 20 kuna. It doesn't matter, it's not rude."
Huh.
I am surprised not just by what he has told me, but the fact that he did tell me...he could easily have ripped me off in this moment, as I have no clue of the custom in Croatia when it comes to this. But he didn't. He told me the truth though it would likely not be to his personal gain.
I pull out a few more kuna than what I have already left and thank him, once more feeling my trust in people slowly being restored.

Velvet Cafe. Definitely suggest it. The backroom looks like somewhere Vampire aristocrats would have wine.

The leisurely pace taken by locals and tourists alike has quickened today, heads bent against the chill and strong winds which bring rain on them.
Ironic I just left most my winter clothes behind in Vienna.

Scattered throughout Zagreb there is a to scale - size and distance - solar system. I only ever found three planets and the sun (which I forgot to take a picture of. Derp), but this was just another thing that made Zagreb such a cool city.

It's funny how quickly things can change in this transient lifestyle I'm living. The entrance of one person and exit of another can change the whole vibe of a place or situation. One of the ninjas decides she doesn't like the way we are treated here. She decides to quit after only three days, originally having pledged three weeks, like the rest of us.
"It's not like they are paying us," she says, "I don't need to be stressed in a job where I'm working for free."
And she's 100% right. I want her to enjoy her travels, and go where is best for her, but even after only three days, she is one of my favorite people in the hostel, and I'm sad to see her go.
Suddenly the team of awesome people seems significantly smaller, and I'm starting to wonder if this is the right place for me. Now that the camaraderie seems to be shrinking (the incoming ninjas are not great with task sharing and shouldering burdens together, unfortunately) the job description begins to matter a bit more, and the truth is, we work a lot for what is offered in return. Part of me wants to complete my three weeks just to stand by my word, but the other part of me knows I'm being taken advantage of. I've worked two weeks and had only one day off to truly explore the city, and this feels wrong to me. The point of staying an extended amount of time in Zagreb (or anywhere I go to work) is to be able to really experience that place and culture. So far I've felt locked up in a hostel a good percentage of the time.
By the morning, and I'm still struck by conflicting thoughts and my deciding factor comes in the form of a guest playing loud video games, crashing and clanging and exploding on his phone in the kitchen at 9am while I'm trying to make coffee. I want to tell him to "put some damn headphones on, dude, people are just waking up", and suddenly I know it's time for me to go. The complete lack of quiet or privacy or space (I literally can't even sit upright in my bunk) has put me on edge, and I know Anne was right. "I don't need to be stressed in a job where I'm working for free."
So with my mind made, I head to a coffee shop, pick a coast town, and book a private apartment on Airbnb for seven whole nights. My criteria? Enough room to do yoga. A balcony. A kitchen. A table to write at. And once I hit confirm, I breathe easier, being able to see the end of my slowly increasing claustrophobia.
Being cramped with people who are your friends = fun.
Being cramped with people you don't vibe with = potentially hell.
I am very much looking forward to some recharge and alone time.

I don't know what these are besides cool. They were scattered about downtown.

"I don't know how things are gonna run around here once you're gone," Scout Master Pat (our new entertainment ninja) admits to me as we head out on my last night in Zagreb.
I laugh first, thinking he's being sarcastic, but quickly realize he's not. "Uh...what? You know I've only been here a week longer than you, right?"
"Yeah, I know...but you seem to always know what's going on, or what we're supposed to do. You've got the answers. What's gonna happen when you go?"
 Well...damn. Technically, he's just reinforcing my point. The whole vibe can change with the exit of one person. I just didn't think that person was me. "You never know just how you look through other people's eyes."

Scout Master Pat! We found the boyscout shirt and American suspenders in a vintage shop here in Croatia. Thusly the Scout Master was born.

If you haven't noticed, I tend to write as the week goes by. Small moments in time as they happen, or ideally, soon after, so I can keep the detail as accurate and bright as possible. There is a moment almost every week...somewhere around Friday or Saturday, where I think...I won't possibly have enough to post this week...it's going to be rather drab. Yet somehow, by Tuesday I am scrolling through and looking for spelling mistakes, and thinking...this week's is so long! No one is going to want to read all of this!
But this week my adventures truly haven't been many, as I've felt a bit stuck in the hostel, so I'd like to share a bit of a side story with you guys, which does actually fit in...cause isn't everything connected in the end?
So here it is...

Last August I injured my back while working in Canada. Nothing extraordinary happened, it just got tight.
And then tighter.
And tighter.
And then excruciating pain.
I couldn't do anything...sitting made me cry...standing made me cry...laying down made me cry...I could hardly change between the three on my own, which made me feel useless and want to cry. It was so bad at one point my boss had to pick me up and lay me flat, because bending at all was more than I could handle, and I simply couldn't do it on my own. I spent at least an hour each morning slowly inching to the edge of my bed until I could get my legs over, and then staring in dismay at my shoes, because reaching to the ground may as well have been reaching into another galaxy. I had to use a pole to pull myself into a standing position or lower myself down...I shuffled about, unable to walk properly, and carrying anything over 5lbs was out of the question. At the peak of pain, walking 20 feet could easily take me 20 minutes.
My friend told me one day, "I had that happen to me. It took a month before I was normal again."
"If this lasts a month...I don't know if I'll make it," I told him. This was a week in. It lasted three months at that level of pain.
I was desperate for relief and I began calling on anyone I thought might be helpful. Some people swore by chiropractors. So I went. The two doctors in the office gave me conflicting advice, unable to agree on what would help me, and in the end, added pain. Okay...I thought maybe a physical therapist could teach me how to rebuild what had gone wrong. So I went. They gave me some exercises and told me to do them three times a day. I followed their advice, but nothing got better.
Finally, after two months of disabling pain, I went to see the massage therapist who found my moms cancer. She told me it sounded like my psoas had tighten and thrown my spine out of alignment. Two months of searching, doing research, and consulting with "experts in health", not to mention hundreds of dollars spent, and not one person had mentioned this muscle to me. Annoyed doesn't even begin to cut it. She gave me new exercises to do, and told me the ones I had previously been given were doing the opposite of what I wanted and irritating the problem further. Great.
Following her advice, my pain slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, began to let up.  From the start, it took me three months to feel even slightly like a human again. Another three months passed of uncertainty and hoping. I would wake in the morning unsure what to expect for my level of functionality that day. Some days were good. Some days I was back at square one. And though my pain levels had improved, I had to pause many of the activities which brought me joy. I couldn't climb, couldn't do acro, couldn't perform, couldn't dance...it was hard to feel positive, and I began to wonder if I would ever be myself again. Living in constant pain can do strange and dark things to the mind.
Last August, I couldn't walk 10 feet without bursting into tears. This June, I'm walking at least two miles a day, typically somewhere between 5 and 10, with none of my body objecting...except maybe my feet. ;)
I won't sugarcoat it, those months were dark, and having lost interest in doing much of anything (since all my activities were off limits), it certainly wasn't motivation that pulled me through. It was discipline. I found the thing that would make me better (the stretches and exercises), and no matter how much it hurt to do them, or how depressed I was, or how much of a rush I was in, I made myself do them every morning and every night, even when I hated it, and now...here I am...in Croatia. In the last three months I've been able to do manual labor, walk for miles and miles each day with no pain, go hiking, run, swim, leap, and bound toward whatever goal I choose. I get to feel like I'm in my 20's again, because shit...for a while, I wondered why my body liked to act like I have lived decades longer than I have.
Motivation is fleeting. Discipline will get you through.
I am grateful every day that I was able to recover my mobility. We truly take ease of movement for granted until it's not there anymore. Be kind to your bodies...take time to nourish yourself...drink water...don't be like I was. It's not worth it.
This chapter of my year was brought back to my attention this week because the beds at the hostel were pretty bad. I began to wake up in the mornings with a tight back again, and after about three days of this tightness, I started to dread the worst.
But it's all about listening to your body right? This pain was born from both physical and mental stresses, so I acted quickly and removed both. Last night was my first in my private airbnb, and this morning I did an absurd amount of stretching, and guess what? Everything feels right, again.

Listen to your body. Act quickly. Be kind to yourself. <3
And remember that the rest of your life, starts with this moment.
Right here.

Have a beautiful week, everyone!

I feel like I really failed you on the pictures this week (mostly cause I didn't take any. Whoops). So here's a short, rough video I did one night in my hostel. "What Makes You Smile?"
They'll get better!