Time for Another Portugal Update

Hey friends, can’t believe it’s almost the end of February and I’ve completely been neglecting the blog!! It’s been a busy time, I’ve been working hard and thinking about a lot of things and I traveled a bit too!

It’s a lovely time to be in the Algarve. The beaches are quiet, though now at the end of February it’s slowly getting busier. And spring has sprung! Lots of wildflowers everywhere and fruit trees are blossoming. It’s a novel experience to have spring so early in the year, and I love it! Here’s what’s been going on with me in Portugal…

A New Apartment

I arrived in Portugal and Portimão mid november and originally booked my apartment for only 10 weeks. But I decided to stay a bit longer in Portimão and wanted to live closer to the beach. And I found a lovely apartment and moved into it on the 31st of January and will stay here til the end of April.

The location is great, just 100m from the beach which means I can now easily go for sunrise or sunset walks on the beach. There’s a great little juice bar with all sorts of healthy foods just around the corner, and a cheap sushi place and my favourite coffee place too. And I’ve got some awesome views from my 9th floor apartment (that sunset pic at the top of the blog post is from my balcony). I can see the ocean, the cliffs and even Lagos far away! It’s definitely an upgrade from my last place…

Meeting Wonderful New People

There’s a lovely new digital nomad community here in Portimão and it has been great going to the meetups and connecting with all these people from all over the world. It’s really great to hear everybody’s stories, it’s a very varied group but all of them are pretty open and obviously love to travel and meet new people.

A Trip to Lisbon & Brussels

Last week I went on a last-minute super short trip to Brussels to sort out a few things and while I was there I met up with several friends and family. It was very stormy weather with storms Eunice and Franklin passing through though…

And because I could get better flights from Lisbon than Faro this time I ended up staying a day in Lisbon before I traveled to Brussels and again another day in Lisbon after and what a great treat that was!!

It had been over 10 years since my last visit to Lisbon and I really enjoyed being there again. Such a lovely city with so many colourful and charming corners and lots of great little restaurants and shops. And it’s not that hard to get from Portimão to Lisbon, it’s only a 3-3,5 hr bus trip. So I’ll visit again for sure. There might even be meet up with a dear friend there in March already!

Below some pictures from the Botanical Garden in Lisbon

Some Things Have Been Difficult Though

There are always some trials and tribulations, struggles to deal with when starting over. In my case it’s trying to figure out how to create a new source of income since I haven’t been feeling inspired to keep on making illustrations as I did before… The write up below is a bit of long story so feel free to skip it, but it is part of the journey and it might interest some to know what’s going on…

The Etsy Shop

In my last post I mentioned that I had just opened a brand new Etsy Shop and I was super excited about it. It seemed like the ideal way to create a new source of income but 2 months later I feel like I’ve taken the wrong turn and somehow got myself stuck in the mud somewhere in a place I don’t want to be.

It has been hard work to get the shop up and going and especially in the beginning it seems like there is absolutely not progress when it comes to shop visitors and sales. The work actually snowballed to the point where I felt so incredibly overwhelmed that instead it of being a way for me to be able to do what I want to do it was actually preventing me to do so because it seems I have to put everything else on hold to make the shop successful.

And in it itself that is not an issue. I don’t mind working hard on something or that I have to put some things on hold and focus on this one thing so it can take of off and start to become successful, especially if it’s something I’m passionate about but here I really was asking myself what the hell I was doing.

I want to be learning about permaculture and regenerative businesses, connecting with nature, healthy food, … But instead I was being overwhelmed by all the work to simply attract a few more visitors to my shop, a shop that had no real connection with those interests.

I think my fear of not having a good income stream anymore and ultimately running out of money made me jump into this Etsy shop project a bit too quickly without considering everything involved. I thought I had chosen a good product to sell with these digital journals and planners, and I do still think I created some really lovely planners and journals but it may have been too niche with an audience that is hard to reach and too far removed from what I want to do. So it’s a shame that my first try at this Etsy shop was not right away what I hoped it would be but I guess it’s better to realise this now and realign to what I love rather than discovering this in 12 months from now. And I’ve learned a lot from it and it’s not necessarily wasted.

More pics from the botanical garden in Lisbon – this is the observatory

But What Should I Do Instead?

So in the past few weeks I’ve been rethinking everything and talking to lots of friends about it who’ve given me some great advice. And then doing some more thinking, going round and round in circles til I was feeling utterly exhausted by it all.

In general the advice has been to simply explore and do the things I enjoy and that interest me even if I have no clue how I will eventually turn any of this into an income source. And trust that some new opportunity that is aligned with my interests will show up…

And this is scary cause I’ve had a burnout in 2017 from financial stress and pushing myself very hard to finally break through in illustration biz. I really don’t want to get back into that situation. Though I’m in a much better situation now in all aspects, financially, physically and mentally than I was in 2017, but there definitely is the pressure of needing to find that holy income grail in time.

The Story of the Sad Seagull

It’s interesting though, something happened this week, which seems like such a good analogy for how I’ve been feeling while I’ve been thinking about what to do next and just not seeing it. It’s a bit of a horror story though.

A big seagull got stuck on the balcony of the apartment next to mine. I’m on the 9th floor and the balcony has a glass balustrade and the seagull has been trying to fly off the balcony but every time he hits the glass cause he doesn’t see it. And he doesn’t seem to realise that all he needs to do is take a step back and simply jump up a little bit and fly over the balustrade. He’s not hurt, he just doesn’t see the glass or how easy it is. He’s been on the balcony for over 72hrs now and is looking super sad. There’s nobody in the apartment and I haven’t seen the concierge the past 3 days either so I haven’t been able to help either. Yesterday two of his seagull friends actually came and sat on the balustrade and were seemingly encouraging him. And he still didn’t manage to do it. So this doesn’t look good for the seagull…

Anyway, I feel like my own situation is a bit like that, I’m thinking about how I could do things again and again and just not seeing a solution at all, like hitting myself against the glass again and again, only getting more and more exhausted. While it’s possible the solution could be super easy if only I take a step back and dare to jump…

So that’s what I’ll do and the good news is that this means I will start posting on this blog much more regularly again very soon! I’m working on a big content plan for the upcoming months. I have found a few interesting permaculture farms and regenerative businesses in the area that I’m going to try visiting. I’ll post about some beautiful nature hikes and trips around here. And I’m looking into all sorts of things I can write about how to live more sustainably, maybe some recipe posts too…

And hopefully while doing all of this something will pop up, an idea or maybe a new connection that leads to something. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, life will be interesting while I’ll be exploring! I’ll try leaving the worrying about finances for later…

If anyone has any advice, tips for places to visit — I’m thinking organic/permaculture farms or businesses in Portugal, people to connect with, vegan restaurants, amazing nature places, eco-retreats, online resources, … Please feel free to comment below or get in touch and let me know. I’m putting out my feelers and just trying to see what interesting things come my way to explore…

digital nomadfiguring it outLisbonPortugalthe journey