Category: Set the tempo

After a long time without going out, I have finally seen Timisoara again. How we were discussing going to eat pljeskavica, with my friends Katsia and Arus, for a long time, that day finally came.
I was wondering why Katsia is so amazed by this pljeskavica, how she was eating even before, and this recommendation came from her. The thing is that in the country I’m from, Serbia, pljeskavica is very important part of every day cuisine. My doubt was how this one in Romania will be like. We were impatiently waiting for our meal to come.
And when it arrived, the happiness could be visible.

Katsia was indeed right! It was worth going!

1. been drinking a lot of iced vanilla lattes lately

2. I haven’t been feeling very motivated to work lately. I need to work on it

3. I need a change of environment so badly. but the pandemic is still bad so I might be stuck here for awhile longer

4. I can’t control what happens but I can control how I react. I’ll suck it up and try to focus on work as much as I can until the situation gets better. then I will leave and catch a break

5. I have a good feeling about the second half of 2020. I think things will be better

Nothing is possible in life…
Even we think in this way…
I was planned to have a workshop in my Youth Center. This was the first time, that I should have,
it was so exciting but at the same time, I was so confused. Why I was excited because I was
going to meet new people, to have new communication with the community, to get new
experience in facilitating. And at the same time, I was confused, because this was my first
organized activity in this country, city and I didn’t know how to call people, bring them to the
youth center and because of this, I had a fear that I won’t have even one participant.
Somehow I was right, and somehow I was wrong. Because I didn’t have a lot of participants, but
at least I had one participant, who was such a good, communicative and smart person. I didn’t
my session with her, which was about sustainable development goals.I did some nice and
helpful activities for her, she gets new information, and from both sides, we enjoyed the
workshop.
This was not only something for me that I could get a piece of knowledge and experience, but also this
was a challenge on how to solve the problem, how to control my emotions even it looks impossible.
Now I am looking forward to future plans and new achievements.

I had an impulse moment yesterday to write on my laptop. and I did it.

the permanent marker was sitting right in front of me when I was using my laptop. the urge to want to write something on it was strong.

so I wrote down the first quote that came to my mind.

it is also a quote I hold onto dearly as a reminder to myself.

growing up, I was never handed anything. whatever I wanted, I had to create it for myself.

that wired me into this person – where I always felt like if I don’t do something I wanted, no one else would do it for me.

on one hand, I’m terrible at relying on other people. which is one thing I’m trying to work on.

on the other hand, I personally feel responsible for anything that happens in my life. having this mindset motivated me to do a lot of things myself. because if not me, then who?

I still have a long long way to go. and it is up to me to create whatever I want to happen in my future.

so I wrote down this reminder on my laptop.

I don’t remember how I came up with the name. but it was something I needed at that time. and “inspire me” became my blog title.

it’s funny how here we are, over a decade later. and I can still resonate with something I wrote when I was 14.

inspire me.

this is something I still need a lot. funnily enough, I think the older I get, the more I crave for it.

I want to feel inspired. I want to meet people who are doing more. I want to do more. I want to be more.

I will always be thankful to the people who inspired me to be more at a time where I didn’t know it was possible for me to amount to anything significant.

inspiration for me comes from a lot of places. people around me. my environment. the content I consume. strangers on the internet.

I think deep down we all know that we are capable of more. but we don’t always believe it.

and I think this is where being inspired will bring you the magic you need in your life.

Volunteering gives a lot of learning opportunities.

While being a volunteer in a foreign country, you learn (and practice) new languages. International environment can give you a great chance to improve your English skills of any level. Work with local community requires some knowledge of Romanian, which I have been trying to learn since the day I arrived in the country. However, independent learning is not enough and you can get provided with the language course, taught by professionals. Previous week we even had our very first classes. Moreover, constantly being around my Armenian teammate Arus enriched my everyday vocabulary with some words in Armenian.

Another thing you can learn during the volunteering period is practical skills. Here we work a lot on marketing and promotion, therefore enhancing our digital skills in different programs for creating visual content. Besides, we learned how to work with some heavy tools, in order to fix our youth center.

Volunteering is also full of flexibility and creativity. You can learn how to manage your time, how to create a schedule and adjust it in a few day, how to make a plan for your activities and adapt because something does not go according to the plan. You can learn how to dance, how to take pictures and videos, how to write blogs and many other things. Furthermore, you can learn how to teach others and how to learn while you are teaching.

Volunteering also means dealing with different kids of people. Everyone has their own desires, wishes, lifestyle, character and perception of the reality. You will need patience, empathy, solidarity, great investment of time and efforts, in order to achieve communication goals you set for yourself.

Volunteering gives an opportunity to learn how to deal with your own feelings and expectations. Sometimes you feel great and successful, sometimes you go through the wave of disappointment. You learn how to live with it and how to move on, trying to pursue important things.

Volunteering is experience.

Katsia

I’ve spent a huge part of my life living in the future. thinking about how it will be better once “this” moment is over.

And then it becomes “this” moment after “this” moment. it can always get better and I just keep living in the future. Hoping that one day I can be content.

I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing. It just is.

I try what I could to find contentment in the present. But it doesn’t deny the fact that I still badly wanted the future to come.

My theory is that if you keep moving from one “future” to another “future”, eventually you come to a point in the future where it’s the version you want.

Well or at least until you fuck it up and things suck again and the cycle repeats.

There is still a pandemic going on….

I think sometimes people forget about that. but there is still a pandemic going on.

It has been almost 5 months (?) since the massive outbreak.

I remember starting 2020 in January very positive and optimistic and travelling.

and in less than a month, I had to go home because of the outbreak. and then I had to stay at home and temporarily cease all my plans.

fast forward to June, I’ve been spending most of my 2020 literally just being in my room.

it is now June and while I think the situation has eased a little in some countries, the total amount of cases in the world have been increasing rapidly.

and it is still increasing….

I feel like recent events have taken the focus away from the pandemic and there is this false illusion I get from some people that things are seemingly “back to normal”?? when the pandemic is still very much real and has not gotten any better.

so I thought I just wanted to make a post, Blog and write it down. that there is still a pandemic going on.

stay safe.

This week was almost completely dedicated to the workshop on storytelling, which was implemented online (unfortunately). This workshop is a part of the big European project “Stories behind city”, where participants from Novi Sad, Rijeka and Timisoara tell their personal stories about their cities via digital media tools.

The workshop was facilitated by experts in digital storytelling: Italian NGO Melting Pro and StoryCenter, which is based in Berkeley, USA. The outcome of 5 sessions we had was a video, where we tell our stories with support of visual and audio materials. I was really amazed by the final results from each member of our team.

This whole experience was interesting me, even though I cannot say that I learned something new for myself. However, it was an exciting challenge to go through the whole process and create a story that could be actually used in our work here. Hope you will enjoy it.

Katsia

Already two months, and suddenly I knew that we are going to have an online session. From the first moment, I just thought that it is a session, as in general everybody is having. I was wrong. It was a session as an Arrival training, where we were supposed to be with volunteers, who were also in România, but not in Timisoara. They all were from different sides of the world and for sure before the first meeting I had some fears.
Time for the first session. From our seven volunteers, I was with Alisa and Milica, I was happy that I am not alone and somehow there are people whos I know. Let’s say this was a little hope for me. Then the first session started and it was different from what I imagine before and what was happening there.
Sessions were cool, the trainers were amazing and I can’t describe my words about the group.
Every session we started by listening to jokes from Sorin ( one of the trainers ). And then we had group works in small groups. Groups where nobody knows what we need to do (LOL), where we were taking care of each other, and groups that made us recognize and make friends from different countries, even online.
I Will did not forget that in one whole session I and Alisa as because we were sitting together in the same room, we were laughing all the time. Yes, not for the session, but because of the warm environment, it makes us funny.
Let’s mention another happiness. We were supposed to work in a group . In each group three participants. And really non of us didn’t get the point of the experience, and lucky they just mixed and put us three: me, Alisa and Milica together, in the same group, and we didn’t do anything besides laughing, having fun, eating and speaking.
These days were amazing, I got really a lot of knowledge, even not connected with topics, but some knowledge and skills for using some apps. I got a lot of new friends, who were cool people, and of course, I had an opportunity to have one of the amazing trainers.
This was my short story, about the online sessions,during volunteering and quarantine …