In the mornings I sit on my balcony, drinking my coffee, and watching the world go by on the main drag of my village. Mondays are comparatively quiet: the bakery below is closed for the day and no one is sitting, chattering at the tables. The weekend day trippers have all gone back to wherever…
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Because I still work and my business is based in the US, I do the expat time zone warp—I work in two different time zones (sometimes three). While some expats are retired and get to spend their days deciding between golf, tennis, shopping, and, of course, where to eat lunch or dinner (one of my…
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Sunday morning traffic in Santa Luzia. I have two sets of sliding glass doors in my living room that look out over the street below and afford me an almost panoramic view of the Tavira Canal and the Ria Formosa. I spend too much time (perhaps) watching the ferry go back and forth to the…
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Sometimes the earth’s gravitational field is noticeably stronger. The air is heavy. The clouds are heavy. The world is lethargic and dim and muffled. There is not enough coffee. The downside of moving to a new country is that you can’t physically be with friends and family when they need you. You can’t hug over…
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A transcript is not even a first draft. #SorryNotSorry Back in the day, before I started writing course manuals for a living, I bought a bundle of three courses from a real estate guru. Each course had 12 CDs and a “course manual.” The manual turned out to be a straight transcript of the audio…
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Minor frictions are to be expected in the expat life. Did you really expect or want everything to be the same as it was “back home”? It is a grey, misty morning here in Santa Luzia, the second day in a row that we’ve had an overcast. The temperature is refreshingly cool without being cold.…
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I don’t often struggle with writers’ block. I like to say the cure for writers’ block is a hard deadline. But last week I had several (not one, not two, but SEVERAL) free days to just work on my own stuff. It was the equivalent of being taken to Baskin Robbins and told you could…
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The fishing boats are coming in with their catches, each taking its turn at the pier. The five days of hot, dry weather finally broke yesterday and while it’s still warm, there’s enough of a breeze to keep things cool. I have no air conditioning in this apartment; most people here don’t have air conditioning.…
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Last week I talked about open loops and cliffhangers in my Friday newsletter and several people responded asking for more information. (What? Not a subscriber? Subscribe using the form in the right hand column!) I’m in an open loop right now. Friday I missed the delivery from Amazon Prime. As it turns out, my door…
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Moving to a new country as an introvert is probably easier for us than it is for extroverts. We’re self-contained units who have spent our lives figuring out how to do things on our own. Alone is our happy place. But we get peppered with questions from our extroverted friends and family who are concerned…
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