A Peek Under the Hood

It’s been a year since I moved to Spain with my son and husband. I imagine most people think the past year has been about travel and cultural immersion. While this is true, there’s another part of the story.

Some Things You Might Not Know
Most people don’t know our decision to move to Spain took place in the Fall of 2016 when my husband lost his job. While it looked like we decided to move to Spain in May of 2017, it actually took us over a year to make it happen. Most people think it was fast and easy. Nope, the year's activities were hard.

Decisions were hard, too. Instead of keeping our life in tact after my husband lost his job, we took a pause. We decided to let go of many things we held dear instead of keeping the status quo. And the big ticket item hardest for me to let go of was our house. But while it seemed crazy to do so because we'd only been in it for 18 months, it was the best time for us to let it go. It also marked the beginning of down-sizing our life. It felt good.

Most people don’t know we purposely moved into a small, fixer-upper duplex after the sale of our house. It was a conscious decision. Some people, after seeing my crappy, quirky rental, told me they were sorry for my loss. But what they didn't know was we had a bigger goal and the duplex was a big part of it.

The move to a smaller place was ideal for helping us adjust to having less space, less storage and less things. Now, it wasn’t easy. After living in a beautiful, newly remodeled, spacious house, the duplex was sad. It was drafty in the winter and hot in the summer. The kitchen was hard to cook in and we had to get used to sharing small spaces with one another 24/7. In the end, though, the year we spent there was perfect.

Another thing we didn’t tell people about our move was the move. It wouldn't be until July of 2017 when we would share our plans. Most people didn’t know our Spring Break trip in March was more than a vacation. It was actually a scouting mission.

Testing the Water
We purposely chose to stay in a couple of Air B and B’s during Spring Break of 2017 so we could cook, do laundry and buy groceries. We also used our time in Madrid and Barcelona to learn how to minimize our life in Austin. If we could minimize that life, we thought, then we could more easily adapt to our new way of life abroad.

We were delighted to find that our duplex rental living was very close to how we would need to live in Spain. Even the thin walls and noisy neighbors in Austin were preparing us for “the city that never sleeps” called Barcelona!

In the Fall of 2017, people found us putting the finishing touches on our VISA documentation and letting go of as much stuff as possible. A big shout out to friends and family who took some of the bath and kitchen and other odds and ends stuff! We started writing a blog back then, mostly to keep our wits about us, but also to capture the process for anyone who was interested.

Getting our one-year VISAs were really hard and the whole process required a lot of patience. The long, stressful days were all worth it, though. By the end of the process, as you could probably see from the FB posts I've shared with my friends over the year, life began again.

Endless Vacation
But traveling to new places is only one part of our story. I bet for most people, they think I am living a permanent vacation. But there are bills to pay, a kid to feed and protect, and my husband’s full-time job to support.

What I thought I’d be doing and what I ended up doing are vastly different and it's been no picnic. For example, I had no idea that the move would shake my insides around. I had no idea how hard it would be to connect with friends and family. My friends were busy, I wasn’t. The environment around me was busy, but I was too tired to connect with people. For months it seemed like I was in some sort of limbo fog and I became terribly lonely.

Body By Spain
It was nice to rest but my body was also being pushed to its limit. Years of a car-centric life and work from home job had taken a toll on my muscles. I was weak. Very weak. Just walking the two blocks to the metro and climbing a flight of stairs was grueling.

After a couple of months of walking everywhere, I felt the worst pain in my body. My neck hurt. My feet hurt. My toes hurt. I didn't know your toes could hurt that much. Bedtime brought throbbing pain throughout the whole of my body like I’d never experienced before.

I worried that I was venturing back into a chronic pain experience, something I knew all too well from the 10 years I lived with chronic neck pain. But I learned to embrace sleep during the middle of the day and I took it easy whenever I could. I didn’t have a formal job to go to nor anywhere I “had to be" so that made life a bit more bearable.

To my surprise, though, my body got stronger and stronger. There are multiple levels of fitness to overcome when you change to a more pedestrian lifestyle. Even to this day, my body goes through sore times as it continues to adjust to my ever-increasing level of physical activity. I have lost a lot of fat and feel better than I have in years.

The Heavy Lifting
That said, let’s talk about the mental and emotional work this move has required of me. This is where I’ve “earned my money” this past year. My time in Spain has been grueling. I was not prepared for the deep mental cleaning and the emotional upheaval the move caused. I can’t even begin to tell you how much of my sense of self I have lost, thank goodness. Yes, it is a good thing, but something you just can’t ever prepare for in the end.

By the way, I don’t think everyone’s experience with moving to a new country is like this. Mine has been hard because I made it hard. I did. First, I removed all anchors to my old life by not bringing a lot of possessions with me. Second, my husband and I consciously left our old life in Austin behind by not visiting similar stores or even speaking English outside our home in Spain. Third, we stayed in confusion by not having English-speaking friends. Not having our home language available to tell our well-rehearsed rote story in helped us let go of it. We realized we could be anyone we wanted to be, why waste such a wonderful opportunity?

Confused and Out of Sorts
We simply lived in Spain, confused and out of sorts. We went to local hangouts, local grocery stores and spoke the language, (very poorly, I might add). And this was good because the busy-ness of our old life had kept us from talking about things in our relationship that needed to be addressed. In our secluded, small piso we had all we needed to address the deeper issues that naturally come up in a marriage.

And that wasn’t all I discovered. I discovered a bunch of beliefs about money and work and productivity I thought for sure I had conquered. Nope, they were alive and well. Hola!

I had my fair share of spiritual crisis, too. So many dark nights of the ego! Once a dark night showed up, I couldn't escape it. I had no excuses. So I kept digging in, deeper and deeper because, well, I had the time to do so. But I wouldn’t recommend it because finding one’s short comings is not fun.

So as not to get too personal, I’ll share one such realization I came to in the Spring of 2018 that shifted how I conducted myself and business.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road
After many soul-searching, gut wrenching arguments with my husband and lots of meditation practices, I realized my validation hungry ego was alive and well. My work made no sense, especially the radio show and new website that ended up being a huge waste of hard-earned money. But such is life when you don’t know which (dysfunctional) part of yourself is running the show.

It’s insights like these that sometimes only happen when you’ve taken some time off from your self and your busy life. My lack of distractions was a really good thing, and layers of old beliefs and old stories peeled away. I continued to work my a** off for the rest of Spring and into the Summer.

Hi! Como se Llama?
By June I felt healthy enough to start socializing again. A wise sage, my hairstylist Tony, said to me one day in May, “Honey, you are making your time here too hard. You need friends. Make English-speaking friends, you need people in your life. Go get yourself some girlfriends.” So, I did.

I started putting down my roots, (pun intended), by finding an English-speaking Chiro-massage Therapist to help me address some physical pain. That encounter led me to a professional woman’s group where I slowly started meeting people.

This Wasn't the Plan
As I reflect on this past year, I can honestly say I am not where I thought I’d be. I currently live within the walls of the Old City, Barcino. I’ve only seen a handful of clients this past year instead of the hundred new ones I imagined.

The internet presence that was supposed to bring me riches, (LOL), brought me insight and no money. That insight is probably worth more money than I can imagine, but doesn’t necessarily look good on the business balance sheet. Oops.

Sometimes having invaluable life lessons are better, though. And a dose of mental discipline goes a long way. I’ve shored up my meditative practice and, after giving up my spiritual life, I’ve come into some of the most spirit-filled experiences and insights scattered within the musings of everyday life. Take that, New Age Industry.

The Good Life
In my 30's I used to wear lots of T-shirts with the Life is Good logo on them. I used to get them at Whole Earth Provision Company or Academy in Austin. It was just a mantra, (okay more like a wish), back then.

But today as I sit in my dimly lit, 14th century stone-walled living room in Barcelona, I know life IS good. It is beautiful, gritty, noisy – perfect in every way.

I really look forward to our next year in Spain. By writing this post I realize that I am doing another round of letting go. Instead of the physical items of last year, though, I am letting go of old, mostly non-physical things. This year's purge is about letting go of old ideas, outdated thought patterns and unfinished digital projects. Sheesh, another round of purging?

I can do this. I must do this.

Okay, with that kind of encouragement, I will devote the rest of the year to finishing old projects and purging all the outdated, digital information from the “self-growth business” of the past few years.

Sweet! I'm feeling excited now. How about you?

One thing is for sure: Getting rid of old, stale versions of ourselves takes time.