My original idea for the off-season was to use the time to do something I had been planning for a long time: move to Portugal with my partner and my dog. But it turned out the process is a lot more complicated and every step takes twice as much time (and money 🥲) as we expected, so we decided we wouldn’t rush it and leave it for September.

That meant I needed a backup plan... So I made a couple of rules. It should be something that:

• I’ve been putting off for a while and I never seem to find time for
• Doesn’t involve sitting and looking at a screen

Here's what I decided to do in June:

Help out at the animal shelter

Serbia’s got a really big problem with stray dogs and cats. I try my best to feed them, leave water for them, and donate as much as I can to different organizations, but I always felt I could do more.

There is a local animal shelter that does a great job and they desperately need volunteers. With a full-time job, it was pretty much impossible–it’s a huge place with lots of animals and they need someone to come in and do intense physical labor for 3-5 hours per day without anybody babysitting them. So in June I’ll be spending ~5 days a week with 70 dogs, 5 sheep and 2 pigs, and most of the work I’ll do will revolve around:

• Feeding the animals
• Making sure they have fresh, cold water
• Chopping wood for winter

Get a driver’s license

I first took driving lessons back in high school, but it was a terrible experience for an anxious teenager like me. My driving instructor was this really unpleasant character, to put it lightly. He’d yell all the time, constantly make dick jokes, and literally make me slow down whenever we passed an attractive woman so he could stare like a creep. At some point, he got fired for taking a bribe, and by the time the driving school found me a new instructor, the summer ended and I never got my driver’s license.

Living in Belgrade, I didn’t really feel a need to own a car and thought I could live out the rest of my life without learning to drive, but now the situation is different. I have a dog, my friends and family live in a different part of the country, I'm exploring nature a lot more...

So I decided to give it another go. I bought a crappy Nissan Micra and the plan for June is to:

• Pass the theory test
• Get at least a dozen of driving lessons

A month is not enough to actually get a driver's license, but it should put me in a good spot to do so by the end of July. 🤞