Hana:
I’ve already mentioned that I started my project in Tuzla. This was the first city I visited and researched online, trying to find looking all the interesting people hidden there. One of the first people I met in Tuzla and why this town will forever remain so special and dear to me is Sanja Hajdukov. A colleague, I say, since Sanja Hajdukov became a blogger as of recently.
I was completely taken over by her personality. She welcomed me with coffee, marble cake, like a true host, and we really had a nice talk about how she started writing a blog. Her blogging came after she had started a private business almost at the age of 50 and it is indeed a remarkable story. It is possible that some of you may have read some of the wonderful stories by Sanja Hajdukov, but do listen to what she has to say about how it all started.
Sanja Hajdukov:
My whole life I kept thinking how I should become an entrepreneur, but as I was dealing with other things I often read about it and realised that there is a term of internal entrepreneurship. Namely, employees in companies who work for others or work for some state-owned companies are highly valued but the skills that make up an entrepreneur are successfully demonstrated, applied in their workplace and the like. This really happened to me and I always defined myself in company as an internally successful entrepreneur.
But at one point I felt what I’d later on described in my first published story. I made this analogy with the calling of a nun as it was women, who are nuns, who were actually explaining to me how they decided to make that step. And they said, “You know, it’s hard to explain, but you get a call. And when you get that call then you know you should go in that direction. And so I know one day and know exactly the date, it was last August when I felt that the call came to me. Namely, I was walking with my husband and I just got that click in my head, I felt some energy and told myself, “Listen, I’m going to start a company.” And it is interesting that he also thought the same thing and was saying, “As we were walking, I was silent and I wanted to suggest the same thing to you.”
So, as a person who has spent most, if not whole of her life, in education, doing working on various education-related activities, I believed I needed to set up a centre to promote lifelong learning, in all segments that such a concept implies. And then, as I was thinking of a name for this centre of mine, I chose Erazmo as a sort of a praise to my folly since I was 49 when I started this business. And then I changed it by writing a birthday card to myself and then I said, “Now after a few months of work and experience, my centre will no longer be called Erazmo to praise my folly but my wisdom.”
I’ve read tips of many who have gone through similar experiences that say “Write a blog, blog will bring the biggest, best promotion to that site and this business.” And so I decided to take this step and I published my first story called “How I Became an Entrepreneur in Three Unrelated Steps” where in one of those steps I precisely explained how I understood what it meant to get a call, then how I asked for advice from some of my friends, entrepreneurs, and so on. I had that story published on our local portal, a friend of mine, she has a very well-known portal, posted the story and called me after, I don’t know, an hour, and asked, “Did you notice that your the story has 5000 readings?” So that gave me the wings and I began publishing some other stories and these stories became more and more popular every day and then I realised over time what you were saying and what I read that Elizabeth Gilbert said about writing being a matter of training and that you get better with each new day. Simply put, the more you write, the better the quality of your writing.
I’ve always been a happy woman and thankful to God for that. However, what happened to me in three and a half months since I’m dare to call myself a blogger because I intend to stay one. It doesn’t matter how much I achieved so far, this I want to stay. Never in my life was I this happy, I never had so much adrenaline in my life, this wind to my back, or under my wings or whatever.
Simply, many ask me “Were you aware of how well you wrote?” And I did know but the comments I received were entirely in line with what you said earlier, at least what I read, those saying, “you won’t be getting any money for your writing but you will get it from writing.” I did not get any money from this writing so far, but I got so much value in life, I got such self-confidence, I got so much of a life’s beauty and energy that I really wouldn’t want to change this for anything, I want this to last like this.
At one point I decide to set up a club. So, it is already in place, called Erazmo Women’s Club, we meet on Sundays, women who read my blog, who are amazing women of Tuzla. We simply meet, drink coffee, eat cakes, talk, we come up with some topics…
I believed earlier when in any case I was below 50, that when people turn 50 that it was somehow accepting the fact that after that every path is downhill. I felt when I was 50 years old that I would be one foot down some hill. But then here a month ago, a month and a half ago, and I celebrated fiftieth birthday and never felt better in life, because I wrote a story to myself and it was very popular. In that story I wrote about exactly how I felt, how I made my wishes come true, and how tens of thousands of comments I received in the last two months gave me such life energy and life support, and I cannot thank enough all these women who made my life more beautiful.
As I wanted to go back to these business tips, and I wasn’t working for me, I came up with something I truly believe to be a great idea. And the idea is to publish two stories at the same time. On my blog I have two columns where I can publish business advice and these “I, Sanja, wife, mother, entrepreneur”. And that I will write each story from now on to be a life story where there will be a link that will be linked to a business story, with a link that opens up business advice and vice versa – that business advice opens a story from reality in BiH.
So, here I honestly don’t know what will happen next, it’s all in God’s hands, but in addition to this, to say the fact that I have three children and that this is the main thing in my life, whatever happens, I want to be in education and above all I want to write.
Sanja Hajdukov can be read and followed at http://www.erazmo.ba/
