39 days, cca 3500km, history, culture, beaches and an endless road that could take us wherever we wanted to go. This was the vibe this summer. Just sun and chill. With my mum as a chauffeur and organiser for 10 days of the holiday, even my “constantly organising everything” brain took a short break. The camera, however, was working full tilt…

Coronavirus still dominates the news. Every day, new damage report. People have turned into numbers. Depressing, isn’t it?

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I decided to take a positive spin on this “straight out of a zombie outbreak film” situation. And one of the positive sides in all of this was time; the havoc that coronavirus wreaked on the economy and jobs left many of us with a lot of free time.

Some have used this free time to catch up on TV shows and video games (guilty) while some have taken online courses and upskilled (guilty again). One thing I decided was to use this time given and spend more time with my family. It was also a way to leave the demoralising job hunting situation and enjoy some lovely sunshine. And boy did it work well!

My time in Croatia numbers just under 40 days. From that, I have spent a little under 3 weeks on the coast, by the beach. I have travelled the country far and wide and visited some extended family I have not seen in over a decade! In the 40ish days, I did 3403.6km or 2114.9 miles (even more actually as I did not count shorter trips in locations). From this number, 1507.6 km or 936.78 miles was done in the 2 weeks while the husband joined me in Croatia. I put some effort in this and even made a map!

We have visited locations from Istra all the way down to the famous Dubrovnik. I myself had time to go to the capital, travel a bit around my home town and venture into Slavonija and Podravina. I will definitely have my hands busy with writing for some time to come.

What can you expect in the coming months (I wanna say weeks but I fear that is a bit too optimistic)? Well, apart from finalising the Morocco trip, you can look forward to reading about:

I have a few more posts on my mind but I still need to figure out where the story actually lies.

In my last post I have called this a Summer of mindfulness. The idea behind it was to move away from the current situation, use the time to have some me time in Croatia, to see my family and friends, to recharge my creative and every day batteries and possibly finish up Morocco posts that I could not get my head around during lockdown.

As you can see, I wrote only 1 post since I left for Croatia on the 12th July and that was while at my sister’s in Pula. When I was “planning” this summer, I failed to take into account the amount of time that goes on family, especially family that lives a 1000 miles away and you see once, maybe if you’re lucky, twice a year. I didn’t have much me time (doing yoga is difficult when your parents are so happy you are home they want to chat or ask something every 10 minutes) and I could not sit down for long enough to actually get into writing. While the husband was here, we spent days on the beach or exploring historical sights.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Taking a step away helped; I spent a wonderful 5.5 weeks in my homeland, had an excellent road trip down the coast and spent some much needed time in my family’s loving embrace ❤ And now? I fell more energised, I am already planning several different things for my shop this autumn and winter and I am gearing to start writing again. Oh yeah, I am also looking for jobs with more gusto than before 😀

Below are some of the photos from our trip, giving you a small taste of what’s coming next.

How about you, reader? Have you done anything for your mental health this summer? Leave a comment below, we’d love to know what people got up to.