What's next?

We're back

Some of you noticed that we haven’t posted in a few weeks.

We didn’t discuss taking a break around the holidays. And while we were busy (some good stuff, some not-as-good stuff), we could have made time to write if we’d really wanted to.

The break just sort of … happened. Organically.

Which got us talking.

This blog began as a way to update friends and family. As we got more and more subscribers who didn’t fall into those categories, we realized lots of you were interested in how to make the same move we did and found our posts helpful both in navigating the nuts and bolts and deciding whether or not it was the right choice for you.

And we’re thrilled to be helpful. We continue to want to be helpful in any way that we can. Please always feel free to reach out if you have any questions (or just to say hi).

We’ve also met in person a few readers who have made the move - and others who are still in the planning stages - and are grateful to have those people in our community.

What we’re realizing now, though, is that our lives in Portugal are less about lives in Portugal and more about … lives.

We’re done moving here. We’re done with the vast majority of the paperwork and bureaucracy.¹ We’ve bought an apartment.

While we still have beautiful cobblestone sidewalks, lovely tiles, fascinating doors, astonishing murals, and iron work as far as the eye can see, we’ve written about these things. (We’ve organized all of our posts into a table of contents, which you can find here.)

Come to think of it, we haven’t talked about sculpture and architecture yet…

We both appreciate having an outlet for our thoughts and our creativity. But those thoughts aren’t as focused on “the next thing we have to do to settle in” as they used to be. Our lens is expanding a bit more now that there aren’t as many Problems That Require Action. There’s a wider world we can, once again, pay a bit more attention to.

So this place we’ve carved out, this little corner of the interwebs we’ve been developing since June 2022, will shift in focus a bit as we move forward.

The thing is, the wider world isn’t always a pretty place. While we certainly hope that each of you is leading an idyllic life free from problems and fears, we also very much doubt that’s the case. It certainly isn’t for us.

What does that mean for this space?

We don’t really know.

It’s possible, though, that there will be more writing about topics that ordinarily we are counseled in polite society to stay away from - politics, religion, money and the like - since all of those are on our minds from time to time. And it’s possible likely that not everything we write will be rainbows and unicorns (not that it has been thus far but there are worse things than arriving in a foreign country with no luggage, catching Covid, or a particularly bad day).

We’ll still write about our experiences here, of course (the good and bad), and any travels we take around Portugal, Europe, and hopefully Northern Africa. And whatever else pops up.

Perhaps the best way to summarize is to say we’re moving from
“our nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty truth about living in beautiful Portugal” to
“our nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty truth about living (in beautiful Portugal).”

Life is life regardless of where one chooses to live it.

We understand if you decide this is not what you signed up for. No need to clutter your inboxes with stuff that doesn’t help you - life’s too short for that. We won’t be offended if you unsubscribe. Thanks for sticking with us as long as you have.

Also, Nazis

Yes. For those who may be unaware, Substack (the platform that hosts this blog) has, for lack of a better term, a Nazi problem. In a very small nutshell, Substack is choosing to allow white nationalist, neo-Confederate, and explicitly Nazi newsletters to publish freely.²

At first we were torn. Free speech and all that. And then we thought, is speech really free? We can’t go in into a crowded movie theater and shout fire. Or defame or slander folks. Or plagiarize. Free speech, it turns out, is more complicated than when we were naive idealists in our early years spouting “I will defend to my death the right for you to say (horrible thing).” With age comes areas of grey.

The real kicker for us is that Substack benefits financially from those newsletters who have paid subscribers.

We are not happy about this for obvious reasons, and neither are many other content producers on Substack.

We also don’t currently see a viable alternative for our blog at the moment, nor does Substack actually make any money from us since we don’t charge you to read our content (we’re basically a drain on their resources - which we’re totally fine with).³

The situation is still in flux, more and more pressure is being applied to Substack to do … something. What, if anything, will happen is anyone’s guess.

So we’re taking a wait-and-see approach for now. And we’re keeping an eye out for other ways to host our blog.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, if you have any.

That’s all for now.

Love from Lisbon,

Amy & Scott

PS. A vlog from Josie.

1. Scott actually got his Portuguese driver license in the mail about ten days ago; oddly, we’re still waiting on Amy’s even though she began the exchange process before Scott did.

2. They make “free speech” and “censorship is bad” noises to defend their position. They also explicitly prohibit pornography and other “adult content” from their platform.

3. Substack makes money by taking a percentage of the fees writers charge to their subscribers.