24 year old dream
When I was in secondary school, I went with my father to visit my relatives in Australia and spent one amazing month there. They lived very close to the ocean, so it was my first time ever tasting this kind of life. Going to the beach whenever I want, watching the sunset with the ocean horizon, everybody was smiling, asking me where I am from, what I am doing there. I was shocked. People smile at me for no reason? And talk to a stranger? Not to mention the weather, which was sunny and warm every day even during the winter. I absolutely loved it. Younger me thought that living by the sea is the answer for everything, only when I entered my adulting phase I found out that it is not completely true of course, BUT still has hundreds of benefits on my mental and physical health.
My only justification for the fact that I love the sea so much was that my zodiac is Pisces (I am not astrology‑obsessed at all, I just always search for reasons why things are happening), until I started reading more about it. Actually, there have been many large‑scale population studies done on inhabitants living close to the sea, and the outcome is undeniable: significantly better mental health, lower anxiety & mood disorder rates, lower psychological distress and the highest happiness scores. Viewing and listening to the ocean waves have a significant effect on our heart rate, blood pressure, and respiratory rate. All of this reduces activity in the amygdala (when the amygdala is stressed out in the long term, it functions as a hyped danger detector making us more sensitive to anxiety) and shifts the brain from "fight‑or‑flight" mode toward parasympathetic “rest‑digest” activity. What I feel every single time when I am close to the ocean is backed up by real science.
Before this Australian trip, our family went to a couple of vacations to Croatia and Greece and it was very cool, but I was younger back then so my thinking process didn't go that far. Only in Australia something changed in my mindset and I started paying attention to everything. When I compared that whole month to my life in central Europe, I realized that there is another way of living life. And I couldn't stop thinking about it because I had this teaser of what life could actually look like. From my perspective, it looked far beyond awesome, and my mind said: "YES, THIS IS WHAT WE WANT!" And from that moment, this dream has been living in my head for a very long time — 2026 is my 24th year. It is like a permanent loud neighbor there who starts screaming at me every time I spend time by the sea.
Why 24 years? Sometimes, many times, I forgot about this dream. Unfortunately, I didn't know myself enough and I was living the life of other people. And now, now I don't have excuses anymore because I live for myself now. On the other hand, I am pretty resourceful in anxiety, overthinking and self‑doubt, which is not really helpful when it comes to making a huge step in changing my life.
The last time I enjoyed the time at the beach was 4 years ago in Costa de Caparica in Portugal, alone and completely happy. I came there to figure out if Portugal can be my next home and the answer was no. So I came back a little bit sad because I didn't have an idea what to do next. Since then I went into deep research regarding other countries like Spain, Italy, Greece and Croatia. I was desperately searching for the best fit for me, thinking which language I should learn next.
In the meantime, this year was a huge corporate roller coaster for me, I will write about corporate life in my blog posts for sure. Something switched in my mindset again and I suddenly realized that I don't want to depend on one specific location. I moved abroad in the past and I know what it costs to do that: starting from zero, without support, building everything again. And now my dream took a little bit of a different shape. Independence is so important for me. I would like to be free to choose the place where I work from, so for the next 365 days I will do my best to make possible what seemed impossible for 24 years.