Before August 2024, I kept my house clean and nice. At work, I checked every text and fixed every mistake – even a typo, even a picture sitting slightly off. At home, I was always doing something for my family: cleaning, organizing, making sure everything was in order. I thought I was taking care of them. They never asked for it.
None of this was much on its own. Together it added up to a life in which almost everything had to be done well, all the time, in every area. Why I had that drive, I cannot say.
I did not see it then, but I was moving through my days the way a tourist moves through a country with a bucket list: in a rush, a little frustrated, with no time to think anything over or let it settle, and none to enjoy a moment when one came.
A tourist like that can arrive in a new country and never really experience its life. There is always another place to see, another thing to tick off the list. No time to stop long enough to feel where you are.
I was a tourist in my own life.
It tired me out. I was trying to be nice, good and perfect in everything. Deep down, I knew that something was fundamentally off.
In August 2024, I went to a mindfulness festival called Masters of Calm, in the Lithuanian woods, with a friend. We stayed for three days. While we were there, we decided to sit in on a presentation about the Enneagram. The speaker recommended taking a comprehensive test to find out our types. I answered question after question, and when the result came back, it read: Enneagram Type 1. The Perfectionist.
I started reading, and I recognized myself everywhere. I didn’t see it as something I could simply switch off. Instead, I started wondering how I might live with that part of myself more gently.
That was the trigger. What followed was less a transformation than a trail of breadcrumbs. One led me to a documentary about the Blue Zones. Another brought me back to something I had buried underneath my busy life: being with people.
I called 2025 my back-to-socialization year. It became my first and only New Year’s resolution, with one simple rule: I would stop saying no to invitations just because I was busy or tired. Cinema, café, party, theatre, an old colleagues’ reunion – I said yes. Even on a workday, even when I was tired, I said yes.
I felt happier.
Alongside it, through 2025, I explored the Japanese philosophies of ikigai and kaizen. I spent the Christmas vacation of 2025 at home, in my bedroom, going back to a book and a workbook, because my rational mind needed something concrete.
Looking back, I think I was no longer trying to become a different person. I was trying to understand how to build a life that suited the person I actually was.
That winter I said yes to photography and yes to the blog.
A traveller, the way I mean it, has time to think things over and let them settle. To notice where she is before moving on to the next place.
I am still learning how to do that. And the more I explore, the more there is that I want to understand, write down and share.
Maybe that is what this blog is for.