Bulgaria is testing me

I’m crying and laughing at the same time.

I need a residency card to buy a car here.

To get a residency card, I need a proof of address.

To get a proof of address, I need a long-term rental contract, which I don't want because I'm about to buy my own dream house, which is the whole reason I'm here.

Every step forward reveals two more steps I didn't know existed, and it makes me feel a surge of underlying rage and an inability to focus on anything else.

This isn't a Bulgaria thing.

Bureaucracy is bureaucracy wherever you are, and it has a special talent for making simple things feel impossible.

Like you're trying to swim out to a lost boat in an ocean of molasses.

You want to do one straightforward thing, and suddenly you're blocked by a new step that depends on another step that requires a bloody form you don't have yet.

But, funnily enough, these experiences feed my work.

Just as ‘tough‘ experiences are gold for your own creative work.

Not only my cheeky daily emails, but my fiction stories too.

I wrote a short horror story this week called 'The Buyer,' about a man who buys a house in rural Bulgaria and discovers the house has plans of its own.

It came straight from what I'm feeling right now.

The disorientation, the not quite fully understanding, the sense that the thing you're buying might actually be buying you.

It's a five-minute read. I'd love for you to check it out and subscribe to my writing there.

Read 'The Buyer' on Story Cabin here.

Peace and fun permits and things,

Alex

Oh, and one last thing:

No matter how difficult the process, if you know the result is worth it, hold fast, and never ever ever ever bloody give up.