The last couple of months, especially last month in Krakow, Poland, have been phenomenal.
Even though I’ve felt guilty at times for not being more productive, I accomplished a great deal.
In Romania, I had glimpses of my burnout starting to lift. In Krakow, I started to actually feel like a normal human being again. And here in Costa Rica, I feel like a normal human.
What is truly phenomenal is how well your brain works when it doesn’t have a million things to mull over, be it work, or social circumstances or what not. When it can run smooth and simply be.
In Europe, I think my system either never adjusted to the timezone, or I simply wasn’t motivated enough to get up early. Today, I woke up at 5:20 AM and was on the beach about half an hour after sunrise.
There is nothing exceptionally remarkable about my time in Costa Rica. That is what makes it remarkable. With it being off season, there’s not a lot going on. Half the businesses are closed, and the others are half empty. Things are pretty pricey, even by American standards, which makes them virtually as desirable as they are to the locals.
I accidentally overspent on some things the first week, and I was okay with it given that it was my friend’s birthday party so I felt like it was a good time to celebrate. But now that I’m in my homeostasis I’m thriving from decisions as simple as buying about $20-30 worth of restaurant food a day (which I consider expensive) or buying about that amount in organic food at the local store.
Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t want to sustain $20-30 of food across monthly budgets. On the lower end, that would be $600 a month. That’s about how much I was spending in the states for organic food which seems excessive anywhere else in the world. What it has encouraged me to do is prepare my own food.
I did things I’ve never done before, like getting garbanzo beans and soaking them in the oven for hours to use the next day. I’ve even bought curry powder and improvised my own curry mix. Between the curry garbanzo bean tacos I had this morning, and today’s dinner with curry beans once again, I’ve taken more steps to prepare Indian food than ever before in my life.
Before, it was a matter of using canned beans with some curry that came out of a jar.
When the options boiled down to spending a bunch of money on food, that to truly fill me, would cost $40 a day and not have the same standard of care I would take in preparing it, the decision to put more effort at home became clear.
It’s little things like that, which unremarkable by themselves are adding up to a transformative experience. I’ve also never been a big beach person. I’m not sure if it’s the climbing I’ve been doing over the last 2.5 years, or if it’s something else that has made me more comfortable being uncomfortable. I suppose even this year I had started wearing sunscreen when I went on walks, to protect my skin. What I used to hate, which is wearing sunscreen, had been desensitized. The discomfort of having sand in between my toes is nothing compared tot he discomfort of a climbing harness shooting up my crotch when I, or a climbing partner I am belaying, falls.
I suppose it’s little things like that, unremarkable things, that over the past few years have compounded into me becoming a different person.
Last week, I lost my glasses while surfing. These were transition lenses and I only have 2 pairs, in the exact frame style that I have liked for about a decade. Losing them in the past would have annoyed me, or at the very least caused me to feel silly about not having tied them with a little chord to my arm or something.
My reaction to losing those glasses last week was not an indifference. It was gratitude that I had the courage to lose them. I knew they would go. My friend lost her’s the day before, and even with the rubber chord I bought for my own they had already slipped off onto my neck 20 minutes prior to losing them altogether.
But what wearing my glasses allowed me to do, on my 3rd day of surfing, without having ever had any instruction in it, was to go up to the big waves where all the surfers were. The bronze and sculpted humans. 5 years ago, I am not sure I would have believed this story or find comfort in the bravery to put myself in such a situation.
Between the risk of being hit by another surfer (I had no idea what I was doing), getting tired out and smashed by the waves into rocks a football field or two over, losing my glasses, or some other downfall, I still braved the waters. And I’m so glad that I did.
When I lost my glasses I was trying to ride what my group describes as a 4 foot wave, but I’m pretty sure the waves were bigger than that. At least based on the feeling alone. When that waved crashed, with me not yet on the board, I went tumbling in a vortex of water that I can only describe as “drowny.”
The best part about this experience is my calmness about it. I can’t tell you if I was under water for 10 seconds or 12 seconds. Maybe it was 5 and it just felt like forever. I knew I’d lost my glasses one third of the crash through because I put my hand on my neck and there were no glasses like before. Holding my breath I suppose is easier than for most, given the fact that I play a winded instrument.
After losing my glasses, I came back to shore. Not only do I not feel super comfortable out there without glasses, but I took a beating in that wave.
I learned a lot more during this time surfing than I would have in a $50 private lesson over the duration of an hour or two. Not just about surfing, but about myself.
I’m grateful to have come here with friends. If it wasn’t for a couple that rented a board earlier on, which gave me the opportunity to try it, I likely wouldn’t have been brave enough to try it. It’s the same with climbing. Years back, a couple texted me that they’re coming to my place and get to get ready. I had no clue where we were going until they got to my place.
While I used to parkour years ago, in Colorado, and a friend of mine invited me to climb with her boyfriend, I was against the idea and never even went into a gym. I had run a marathon, taught myself how to parkour, and later on when I sold my car biked over 30 miles in a single day. Yet I was not willing to entertain the idea of climbing because to me it was scary. That’s about how open I was to the idea of surfing before this trip.
Another great part of it was my friend’s birthday. Just yesterday while washing the dishes it dawned on me that life is so unpredictable. In decades from now I could be celebrating my birthday with kids and grand kids of my own. Or I could be doing something completely different. The reality of that, how time sort of sets everything has been simmering with me as well.
As for Krakow, where do I even begin? I met an amazing friend who is a mix of all the heritages that I researched last year and will be included in an upcoming article I have yet to write. She shares my heritage of Romania, which is pretty cool in of itself. I got her boyfriend into climbing and find him to be a laid back guy which is inspirational in its own right, aside from the fact that he’s also a techie and is familiar with and a fan of most of the technology that I am.
At the climbing gym, I met amazing friends and climbing partners. On my last day, I was emailed by the resoler of my climbing shoes that they were ready. Since I knew he only speaks Polish and wouldn’t answer his email, my friend that I was at the climbing gym with helped me speak to him on a short notice after returning from the locker. We asked the resoler if he takes card — nope. Does he take Euros? Yes. My other friend was over an hour late to climbing with us because of an issue he was dealing with, and he had just made it to the locker room when I told him I’d have to go.
To my surprise, my friend in the locker room told me he had cash and could help me. After asking me how much it is, to which I said 70-80 dollars, he gave me 300 zlot (their Polish currency). I was taken aback and told him he doesn’t have to, I can go back to my place, then to the resoler to get that taken care of. He asked me if it would help if he loaned me, and also offered me a car ride.
What’s crazy about all of this is that my friend had already paid to go into the climbing gym, and he told me it wasn’t about climbing and more about seeing me off on my last day — and he’d be happy to drive me if it helps. I turned down the car ride, was super overwhelmed with his kindness, and ran some quick time tables in my head to confirm I could get to the resoler, head to my place, check out, and make it to the train station in time for my departure to Warsaw.
After the locker room, I told my other friend I’ll have to head out and invited him over to the cafe where I got some power balls + drinks for us. I was obviously a little bit frazzled and with half of my thinking capacity to the time table, looking at Bolt, and being ready to head out in 10 minutes or as long as feasible without making myself late.
The friend I had been climbing with said that I’m social. Which really hit me harder than when anyone else had said it before. I’ve been told I’m social by people I consider extroverts, for years. Whether it was in Playa del Carmen, Mexico from an old friend or my ex girlfriend, or whether it was in Richmond, VA from the group of friends that got me into climbing, I never really understood it. However, on this trip, another friend or two said the same thing. One claimed I had made more friends in my time there (7 weeks) than he did being in the country since the pandemic.
Before, I would just deny this. However, it’s important that I accept that just because I live in my head, feel introverted, or recharge when I am alone, does not mean that in the grand scheme of things — in the reality as observed by others — I am a social person and can meet others easily.
I think what overshadowed my acceptance of this before is the can part. Sometimes I am not interested, other times the vibe is off. Like in Romania. I speak Romanian, but I feel like an outsider because I didn’t grow up there. I feel more like a foreigner in Romania, where there are no other international travelers or people that have emigrated other countries, than I do in a place like Krakow where I’ve made friends spanning from various places spanning the USA, Canada, Poland, and other countries.
At any rate, it was surreal leaving Krakow. After the ride to the resoler, back to my AirBnB to get my bags, back to the gym to pay back my friend using Euros/USD (who told me not to worry about it that day), it felt monumental. Just 7 weeks prior I had come to this place because I felt comfortable with the gym I saw on Google maps. Here I was, leaving from the gym, with my shoes resoled in Poland (after getting my first holes that that gym), after saying goodbye to two friends and climbing partners I made there. The fella who lent me for the shoes, he even gifted me a shirt with that gym’s name on it (and 2 stickers which I didn’t see until I got to Costa Rica).
It was really nice, because for him, I was his first climbing partner. And I taught him the ropes if you will. For me, it was great because I saw that other people have their own struggles. He is in a high risk, high stress environment every single day. Think fighter pilot, surgeon, or some sort of extremely complex machinery like dams (I’m making up examples here, I don’t want to go into the specifics of what he does since I value his privacy). And here he was, openly sharing that he has XYZ struggle (it could be financial, health, etc).
It made me feel less alienated for having my own struggles, with feeling down or whatever. I told him as much when I hugged him and gave my final goodbye. That it has been really inspirational meeting him — he makes me happy and I need to remember the same when I’m feeling down, that I can make others happy in the same way. It sounds sappy, and I’m really tired writing this, it probably means more to me than it does to a stranger on the internet reading this. But that’s okay.
As I drove in the car, past an intersection where my friend had met me to give me soup and homemade unpasteurized jam one of the days I was sick, I felt a tear welling in my eye. It didn’t break over, but damn — it meant a lot.
This city had become more alive for me than an area like Richmond, VA where I was for about 3 years. Even now thinking about it, how a buddy of mine launched an ad campaign while I was there, it gives me some reminiscence of Tony Hawk pro skater… where I ‘unlocked’ different areas of the city and made memories there, or at least better understood the ‘tags’ which my friends had left to mark their own story. And if you’re not familiar with the term; tags were graffiti in Tony Hawk games that players could leave behind. It was unrelated to the skating objectives and optional / purely recreational.
Having arrived to Poland still in a post 9-5 rut and experiencing the weather turning from summer into autumn (while I only had brought a majority of summer clothing), it’s a real surprise and a relief that this worked out the way it did. With the exception of Romania, which I am originally from, I’ve never lived in another country. Poland was completely random. It just ended up in my sights after I wasn’t completely sold on going to another place like Bulgaria, Albania, Portugal, and so forth. And yet, after a short period of time, I’d cemented a lot of memories there like helping a friend move, trying to go to music events on multiple occasions and leaving without enjoying any music, meeting all sorts of people in a business setting, and improving my climbing.
I was not ready for any of it. At one point earlier in September, I was getting snacks with my Ukrainian friends as I introduced one helping me shoot something I’ve procrastinated on for years (a journal/podcast telling the stories of how people spread kindness) to another friend who is a videographer. We were at a restaurant my other Ukrainian buddy had just started at that week. This was taking place like 3 weeks into my stay in Poland. The guy working in the restaurant, he was actually a data science student and I felt some pride in being able to pass on some inspiration or memorabilia about the field/making opportunities for yourself when things seem tough in the job market.
I could go on and on, it was phenomenal. Even with me ending up in Costa Rica, what really made me keep the tickets here was a conversation with a barista at a favorite tea place of mine in Krakow. Something made me sit closer to the bar that day, I think to be able to get more food or tea easier, I’m not sure.
Anyways, that barista starting talking to me. Maybe out of interest that I was American, or out of boredom. After a while I learned she had a boyfriend. I was surprised she spoke so freely and at length given the fact that she didn’t have to, and that she had a boyfriend. So I asked her my 2 questions from the kindness initiative, out of my own curiosity.
What does kindness mean to her? What’s an act of kindness which made an impact on her? She told me about her grandmother who has dementia and is in hospice receiving amazing care from one of her physiotherapists. She said he went above and beyond, and it really made her week working with him. Not just the physiotherapy, but how he acted with her. As she told me this story, my eyes welled up with tears and I think I saw hers do the same. The irony was that I had gone there to figure out what I will do with my tickets, which I could cancel, that were originally going back to the states thru Lisbon (on an overnight layover) and then to Costa Rica for my friend’s birthday party.
Since my friend is older, the story the barista told me hit home. I thought about how I may not have the opportunity to go to my friend’s birthday party, and to be there for something like this — a party with all her kids coming together for the first time in what she told me was a lifetime. In an instant, this woman’s story about her grandmother resolved everything with why I was still in that cafe — which was cancelling my tickets to make way for a different plan that would take me to South East Asia sooner.
If there’s anything I regret it’s not getting that barista’s contact number or Instagram, to introduce her to one of my friends in Krakow since I think they’d hit it off. But if you can believe it, I have the number of one of the other baristas there who I was trying to go climbing with. In fact, he ended up buying a pair of shoes to try to make that possible, since he’d sold his first/only pair he had before after putting climbing aside in his life. I just thought while writing this piece that I may be able to ask him for her Instagram, get in touch, and introduce her to my other friend there.
If there’s anything that brings me joy about all of this, aside from the crazy coincidences be it the heritages I spoke of which my friend shares to the ones I was researching last year, or being told a story about kindness which inspired me to keep my plans to go to Costa Rica, it’s seeing friends of mine become friends of each other. Because even though I’m gone, they can still have a good time and when I hear one enjoyed their time with another it’s an even awesomer way of living through them.
I suppose there’s something comforting knowing that even other high performing friends have their own struggles, or that through space and time, whatever I’m going through, there’s something going on around half way around the world that’s upbeat, positive, and inspiring in my circle.
I know that your brain finishes developing around 24-26 and it makes me wonder if I’m a late bloomer or if it’s just the ‘pura vida’ as they say here in Costa Rica. But for the very first time, or at least what feels like the first time as I’ve shared with someone earlier this week, it feels like my brain has finally crystalized as an adult.
A lot of the angst I had before, be it anxiety or whatever, seems to have dissipated. And boy, am I glad for it.