Travel Rant: Fall in Love

Don’t be scared to fall in love. And no, I’m not talking about that cute backpacker boy or the hot local guide.

Fall in love with new places, the inspiring experiences and most importantly with yourself.

After that you can hit up with all the handsome and beautiful people you meet on your travels or in life generally. This may sound corny but loving yourself first is important. Trust me I know what I’m talking about.

Being scared of life is somehow been normal feeling for me as long as I can remember. It has been easier to follow someone and make sure you will never be alone. When pushed to experience something new my survival guide used to be: find new friend, follow them everywhere like a lost puppy, a little by little get attached to them too much and in the end get lost even more.

This changed when I did my first solo travel trip year ago. I took my 20 years old self to adventure I had always dreamed about but never believed to accomplish. For the first time in my life I followed my own nose and learned how to love myself.

It’s not easy but it will happen naturally. Just keep doing what you want and don’t always listen to others. Not even if they seem to be the love of your life. Being alone seems scary but it will make your learn a lot about yourself. What do you really like?

You have a whole day ahead of you. No one to tell you where to go. Your day is full of choices and you have to make them. Will you wake up early or sleep until the noon? Do you want to eat in safe McDonald’s or try something suspicious looking local cuisine? What do you want to do with your life?

Loving yourself seems so hard. For me it has meant to like the way I look, decide my own destiny and be proud of the things I have accomplished. At the age of 20 and before I left my home to wander neither of those were true. I hated my appearance and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was totally lost.

After I had spend some time alone and listened my own opinions there was change. I began to like the person staring me back from mirror. She wasn’t yet beautiful but something in her eyes screamed happiness and that made her perfect in my eyes. That made me love her, myself. Without even trying I had finally fallen in love with myself.

I didn’t still had direction for my life or any remarkable achievements. But I didn’t need them. Twenty years I had tried to form perfect me to fall in love with but it only took one month to realize that wasn’t what I needed. The perfect me wasn’t the one I would love.

What I am trying to say with this somehow confusing piece of my mind is to listen yourself. Love the person you are. Be with yourself before you give your soul to someone else. I have seen so many of my friends falling head over heels and then their relationships have ended because they don’t know their own self well enough.

Traveling solo is the way I figured this out and I think it is the easiest way. Alone in the country you don’t know and people speaking language you can’t understand it’s easier to get closer yourself.

Maybe I’m wrong but this is my opinion. This is how I see the world.

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I know I promised to publish the London travel diary today but I have been sick so here is old travel rant I wrote months ago. Suprisingly, travel rants have been quite popular posts in my blog. Also, I have the most fun writing these pieces even if they don’t make a lot of sense. So here is another travel rant and be aware that there will be even more of them in the future!

With love,

Viivi Severina

Earning Travel Money: Fiverr

“Earning Travel Money: Fiverr” or maybe better said

 

My First Month In Fiverr To Earn Extra Travel Money:
What You Should And Shouldn’t Do…

 

I have been super busy lately and so had hard times having time to write blog posts. I was trying to come up with easy to write post idea when it was standing right in front of me. Big part of my busy schedule has been earning money in Fiverr. If you don’t know what this site is about you will soon find out!

What is Fiverr?

I think we have talked about this before here in my blog but Fiverr is internet site that lets you work as freelancer for anyone wanting to buy your services. Fiverr takes small part of your earnings for providing you the easy way of finding jobs.

What can you do in Fiverr?

Literally anything. I have been doing translation and blog writing but you should decide the jobs depending what you are good at. Give advises, take photographs or teach languages. I have also seen people sending post cards, cursing people or depending to be someone’s boyfriend online. Any gift you have can make money for you in Fiverr.

If you can’t come up with any gig ideas you should look ‘buyer requests’ board where anyone can search workers for their projects. I have found few interesting projects to take part from here so I can totally recommend using it.

My Tips

So now you have been introduced to the amazing world of Fiverr and I bet you want try it too. I mean who wouldn’t? Specially if you are traveller extra money is always handy. I have learned many thing in this short month so I wanted to share them with you. Enjoy this list of things you should and shouldn’t do in Fiverr:

  • Don’t expect someone to hire you just because they contacted you. I have been contacted by many people telling me about their super interesting projects. We have been talking for few days and then they stop answering to my messages. Don’t feel offended they have probably found someone more fitting for their project or someone who is cheaper than you. Or they just decided to not hire anyone.
  • Always answer for everyone. If you don’t answer in your profile “Response Rate” percents are going down. And yes you need to answer even if they say something stupid. And you need to be the one who gets last word in every conversation. For me as quiet Finn this is super hard and sometimes my response bar has been under 50%.
  • If you start to regret promising to do gig just cancel it. Same goes if you realize you can’t do what you have promised. I had one $60 dollars gig that I realized was too big and hard for me to handle. I told to the orderer that it was too much for me and then cancelled the gig. It is easy!
  • Count how long it takes to finish your gig and decide the price with that in your mind. How much is your hourly wage? I decided right away when starting Fiverr that mine would be a little under 10$. When you get better you can decide to get more money per hour.
  • Watch out for cheaters! Some people will try to cheat you and make you work without pay. Be careful and you should be okay
  • Use the ‘holiday’ mode when you are busy. When you are on holiday mode in Fiverr people can’t order from your gigs. Use this when you are too busy to work in Fiverr.
  • Be friendly and always do the works as well as you can. Even if it may seem like few euros gig isn’t worth of doing properly you never know what can come out of that small gig. People tend to first buy small gig and if you do well they will order more. So if take every work seriously there is better change of getting bigger and better paying gigs.

My First Month in Fiverr

So now you may be interested how well have I done in my first month. I have to say I was surprised by the amount of gigs I have done! 13 gigs and earned $200 in my first month. It has taken me approximately 20 hours of work and too many cups of tea.

My first gig was translating product descriptions and made me totally anxious. I know I can write well in Finnish and I know I am fluent in reading English however I had never done any translation work. Surprisingly the client liked my translation. I got four stars out of five (because few compound mistakes with the product names) and new order from them.

After that first gig I have only got five stars out of five stars review and positive feed back out of my translations. Apparently I am quite good at it, who would have guessed! So my first month went mostly doing translations and getting better and quicker at it. In the end of September I saw someone searching for Finnish travel blog writer and I got my first article writing job. And apparently I am quite good at that too!

Right now during my second month I have done more article writing, longer translations and archived level two as seller. So I could say I’m totally hooked to Fiverr.

 

Do you have any experiences from Fiverr? Or other sites like it? I’m always happy to hear your stories and experiences!

So today I had to break off from my Friday posting schedule because we returned from London yesterday. Guess what that means! Next Friday you will get travel diary from my trip to London. If you want to have sneak peek to what I did check out my INSTAGRAM photos.

With love

Viivi Severina

 

Travel Rant: Being Scared

Once upon a time social phobic, shy and scared of everything girl decided to go and travel the world. Everyone though she wouldn’t do it, even the girl herself. But now year later she is here writing for you and wanting to share one message she has leaned.

Never let your fears take over your want to live.

Everyone is scared of something but I have seen that usually the ones being scared of leaving are the ones needing it the most. At least that was the case with me…

Traveling may seem dangerous for someone never been outside of their comfort zone. You will always hear about the dangers on world. Robbers, rape and terrorists. Getting lost, conned or not fitting in. Everything familiar at home transforms scary when in new place. Going to see the world is like deadly affair with your dreams.

The reality is different from our scared imagination. On my travels I have met the most kind people. If I am lost someone is always helpful to walk me back to my hostel. If you use your common sense getting conned isn’t problem. There is always someone who will make you feel like in home.

Show the people who are not believing in you that everything is possible. Small town girl can survive alone in the big dangerous cities. Nothing can stop us if we just try our hardest.

So go and travel despite your fears. Trust me those who fear traveling the most should do it as soon as possible. It will open your eyes and heart. It will make you braver than you ever though you would become. 

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So this was “travel rant”. Me talking about random things concerning travels. Did you like it? Well, I will probably write more of them even if you don’t want so I’m sorry for that. I’m still asking: do you want more of these kind of writings or should I just stick with the travel stories?

With love,

Viivi Severina