About (2016)

Welcome To My World

Just woke up after a 90min nap, it´s probably around 1am. My best working hours are usually between 1 and 7am. Now I´ll chill in a nicely lit and warm living room, this week situated in North London. Sitting on the couch, Mac on my lap, green tea on the table. I´ll spend the next few hours writing up content for the next vid or blog posts, reading and/or video editing. I´ll go to sleep around 7am and sleep till about 2pm. If it´s weekend, or if I really feel like it, I will skip work and just go partying (socializing without alcohol). After I wake up the next day, I´ll make sure I get some exercise, meditation and healthy food in my body. Might work a little. Early evening is reserved for friends/family/girls. In a week or two not much will change. Except my location.How did I get here? I answered the call to adventure.

The Call To Adventure

Right now I´m in the later stages of what Joseph Cambell calls “The Call to Adventure”. I enjoy and willingly throw myself into unknown and uncomfortable (yet exciting) situations. It´s a feeling that creeps into me when I´m in one place (geographically or developmentally wise) for too long. Soon I can´t handle it anymore and I move on. Switch a country, switch a job, switch a lover. Switch my beliefs about what is right. About who I am and who I want to be. And than you follow the call, through the good and the bad and come to the secret treasure in the and like the alchemist. And after the adventure is done, there are a few moments of serenity. And then the call comes again. And I´m cool with that.

I was born in a small town called Novo mesto… bla bla, nobody cares, right? Fast forward to the 2nd year of my university in Ljubljana, this was probably when I started to hear the call to adventure. I listened to how my sister loved her exchange studies in Japan (thanks for inspiration sis!) and decided to apply to study in London. I didn´t get the one and only spot, I was 2nd. Fuck it. I did get to go to Lithuania though. To be honest I didn´t know anything about it, because I was 100% confident (was already starting to be a cocky mofo) that I will get to go to London. Now I know Lithuania and Latvia are not the same. And a lot more.

10 Months in Lithuania

I spent 10 months up in the north in a beautiful Baltic country called Lithuania. I was never the same again. I learned the language and met so many cool people. And had a lot of alcohol and sex. Pretty regular exchange studies right?

Well, in addition to all the “regular” stuff I also:

• took an acting class (in Lithuanian of course)
• organized 2 breakdance seminars
• took a 10-day silent meditation retreat
• worked with abused local children as a volunteer
• won my first Allstyle (dance) battle
• spent the Christmas and New year´s with a Lithuanian family
• recorded my first multi-language rap song.
• had my 1st threesome.
• raised my grade average from 7 to 9 (on a 1-10 scale).

Not your typical exchange student, huh?

The Freshest Shoes

After that I returned to Ljubljana and I was not the same. In the summer I was kind of apathetic and a little bit depressive (the post-exchange depression + not sure where to go in life). So I decided I will start my own company – www.thefreshestshoes.com. In a few months time, I actually had a website, small team, and a few amazing products. But no sales and therefore no money. I was pretty much broke and I hated it a lot. I quickly got a few part time jobs because financial situation in Slovenia was (and still is) not the best. The jobs included teaching breakdance, cold street-selling Amnesty subscriptions and bar work. And voluntary therapeutic work with abused children.

Roadtrip to Athens

Then I made a 1700Km Road trip from Ljubljana to Athens with my breakdance crew and paid for the trip with street performing. We had a rented van, drums and a lot of balls and good will. We could do anything!

We also applied for Red Bull´s campaign “Can You Make iIt” but didn´t get it in the end. However, the video is so cool I wanted to show it anyway 🙂

The call was still there, I couldn´t stay, I had to go somewhere. On top of that, I recently graduated so I was very free and very broke. I applied for several jobs, drove to Germany and almost took a social worker post. Just before signing the contract I changed my mind and applied for a social worker post in UK instead (working with children in care), flew to the interview, got the job, and moved to UK a month later.

Funny story about the similar position for a German company in a very remote Finland project. I´m happy I went into UK in the end, because I heard one of the kids lost it in Finland, killed his carer and ran away. Ouch :/

Moving To United Kingdom

So I moved to Kent, UK, not far from London. Started a new job and loved it. It was hard but the pay was good and for the first time in life I could really afford stuff. Great feeling. So I worked a lot (think I worked 230+ hours in the first month :D) and when I was off I took the train to London to party and game. This lasted for about 6 months, I loved it, it was a nice life. However, deep inside I was not content. In those 6 months I learned most of the things about the job post. I also showed a lot of initiative and learned that most bosses don´t care about cool new improvements and prefer to be in their little safe zone. So I decided to quit and they wanted to sack me in response (cheaper for them lol). Anyway, that period of my life ended, although not in the nicest of ways.

London Life

A few months before that I had already moved to London. Life really started now. I was gaming almost every day, went to France for another 10-day retreat, started to work as a street performer in Trafalgar square. It´s funny how people think you need to have crazy skills to be a street performer. In reality, it´s psychology, public speaking and selling. It could come down to a science. Try it for yourself once, check out a street show and dissect it, you will see what I mean. I visited Paris and Barcelona. On the side I was going to all kinds of meetups and business networking events. I even tried to sell Virtual Reality for the company my brother works for.

Applying for Unpaid Traveling Internship

After 6 months or so, again, I could not stay where I was, adventure was calling again. A good friend of mine told me, that a Youtube (self-development niche) celebrity is searching for an unpaid traveling assistant. He promised a shitload of hard, high-pressure work (some days 16h+) and I´d have to pay for ALL of the expenses myself. Of course I applied!

And I didn´t send them a boring CV. Instead, I paid a professional photographer who I met in one of the networking events 50$. He shot a professional video application and I turned it in.

Three rounds of Skype interviews and 50 candidates later, I got offered the position. I remember that moment as if it happened today, I was in Prague with my good friend Fernando, I read the mail: “We´d be happy to work with you!” I started screaming with joy. I knew there would be a lot of work. But I knew there would be countless amazing places I´ll see. And countless amazing people I´ll meet. Countless things I´ll do, experience and learn.

Living out of a Suitcase

It´s been more than 4 months of non-stop traveling now and the stories and experiences would exceed a volume of a large book. I travelled through more than 10 of European capitals. I slept in penthouse apartments and crashed on the floor. I ate salmon with celery squash in fancy restaurants and survived days on black bread and peanut butter. I experienced amazing sex beyond ecstasy and got slapped and told to fuck off. I got sick and I got scared. I got so frustrated I started to kick a wall and I was also looking at the amazing view with the blissful moments of serenity. I cried because I took too much on my plate and I walked around the city with a “I´m the shit” grin after a sleepless and wild night. I met old friends, cut away some old ones and made a bunch of new, some of them will last for a lifetime. But the most important thing is, I was never bored and deep inside I knew I was doing the right thing. Deep inside I felt happy and grateful.

Conclusion

When I meet people, I tell them I see age not chronologically but based on life experience. In that regard, I think I am mid-years already. But trapped in a young body, which is great because I have almost limitless energy 🙂 The call to adventure is still here, but my purpose is starting to crystalize more and more. I want to motivate and inspire you, to take the steps that you need in order to escape the rat race. To truly awaken and start living life. To find out what is inside you and after you transcend that, to give back to the community and help me make this world a better place. Now go and answer your call to adventure!

Hope I inspired you or that it was a pleasant read. What´s your call to adventure? What are the barriers, can you destroy them? What would help you? If you are already settled, what were the biggest obstacles you had to overcome? Let me know, would love to hear and share with you. If you got something out of this post, please take a minute (took me 15 hours to write this) to write a comment or share, I will really appreciate it.

Peace,

Bostjan

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