When I was little, I dreamed of becoming a writer. I was certain I would spend my life in some isolated mountain cabin, writing fictional stories and only coming down among people when I published a new book.
That’s why I enrolled in the Faculty of Philology, in the Department of Yugoslav Literature and General Literature. I wrote reviews and short stories, and one year I won the prestigious Matica Srpska “First Book” competition with the manuscript of the novella “While Souls Were Wandering” (“Dok su duše lutale”). Ten years later, I published the short-story collection “LP – Personal Stories” with Narodna kniga publishing house.
But I never retreated to a cabin. Instead, I worked as a Serbian language and literature teacher, as an editor in a multimedia company, as a real-estate agent, as an insurance saleswoman and later manager, as a saleswoman of all sorts of things, and then again as an editor for magazines and some publishing houses… all in all, I changed about fifteen jobs.
At the beginning of my forties, I suddenly woke up and asked myself: what happened to my dreams? Why didn’t I become a writer? Why did I get lost in a system I never wanted to be part of? How did life drag me into something completely different from everything I had ever dreamed of?
It was 2011 when I sold almost everything I owned except a small apartment in Belgrade and set off on the greatest adventure of my life: cycling around the world. I travelled with a daily budget of five euros, slept in a tent, and cooked on a small stove. I climbed the Himalayas by bicycle and crossed the Gobi Desert. I reached Siberia in the north, Japan in the east, and Timor in the south. I cycled through more than 50 countries on four continents, covering over 100,000 km by bicycle and several thousand kilometres on foot. The whole time I kept a blog, and several times I stopped for longer periods to write a new book. That’s how I temporarily lived in Cambodia, Nepal, Vietnam, Bali, South Korea, and Patagonia.
Finally, I live in my cabin – even though it is in the shape of a tent. I live freely, outside all systems. And I write, publish, give talks, sell books, and that’s how I finance the continuation of my journey. With pride I can say to myself: “I am living my dream!”
Published books:
„Dok su duše lutale“ (pripovest), Matica srpska 1995.
„LP“ (priče), Narodna knjiga 2005.
„Zakotrljaj me oko sveta“ (roman) autorsko izdanje i reizdanje Lagune, 2014.
„Priručnik za kampovanje“ (priručnik), Nova poetika 2015.
„Vodič za putovanja biciklom“ (priručnik), Nova poetika 2015.
„Preko Himalaja i Gobija“ (dva putopisa), Laguna 2015. i reizdanje 2018.
“Nomad (I)“, autorsko izdanje 2016.
“Severna Koreja – putovanje po zemlji Kim Džong Una“, Kornet 2018. i autorsko izdanje.
“Svedočenja o Zemljanima“, autorsko izdanje 2019.
“Planeta Japan(aca)”, autorsko izdanje 2020.
