The first week of January

First week in January | Collage by @lev_me_vision

Gradually, the blurry and unclear picture of what was happening began to clear up, and I finally understood what exactly I would be doing in Thessaloniki until the end of August. This realization brought a certain calm and a sense of structure that I had been missing in the previous weeks.

Although previous week was partly a holiday, I only managed to fully rest on the night of December 31st to January 1st, during the New Year's celebrations. The very next day, I returned to work, as I had to complete tasks that, unfortunately, I hadn't been able to complete in December.

The main focus of the past week was writing articles and designing visual materials for them. In parallel, I continued working on my own book, which will be my final work at the end of the project. I also cleaned my apartment for the arrival of two colleagues from France, which also took a significant amount of time and effort.

A separate highlight was creating a calendar for my previous project, Pawsitive Park, in which I used photographs of Thessaloniki's stray cats. Work on the yoga calendar, in turn, was temporarily suspended due to a lack of the necessary photographs. As a result, we decided to rework the concept and design of the calendar so that it could still be completed, but without the photographs that were originally intended to be a key part of it.

As I steadily completed tasks one after another, I couldn't stop thinking about one specific assignment that had been waiting all this time... no, not even to be completed, but only to be started.

This was a project I was assigned in mid December: to create over 40 murals in a park near my home. The initial deadline was three months, of which one had already passed. Having done graffiti as a teenager, I assumed I could handle this assignment, if not exactly on time, then at least get a good start.

However, a recent experience, when I once again held a can of spray paint, made me realize that my street art skills had practically faded over the years. This forced me to rethink my approach to the task and look for alternative solutions that would allow me to maintain the quality of my work despite the loss of skill. Fortunately, the plans were revised: the deadline was almost doubled, and they proposed a change in the process painting with brushes on plywood instead of spray paint. The finished works will be coated with a protective varnish and then mounted on the walls, which will also protect them from moisture and weather conditions.

Midway through the first week, I had two new neighbors from France: Martin and Alexis. We hit it off pretty quickly, and they turned out to be very pleasant and interesting people. I especially like how different we are. Martin is a "nature person": he will be working on the park renovation and farming, and it's especially interesting to spend evenings with him, discussing philosophical and life topics. Alexis, on the other hand, is a multi disciplinary specialist: on the one hand, he helps find partners and sponsors, and on the other, he is involved in theater projects in schools and possibly universities. I feel I could learn a lot from him.

The rest of the week, I was focused on work, but in my free time, I managed to spend time with local friends I'd met back in May. At the end of the week, Dimitris and I had an additional meeting where we discussed possible collaboration in April. There's a chance our entire team will travel to Rhodes next April for the festival, but for now, we're remaining fully focused on our current tasks and projects.

by @lev_me_vision