Explore my options

In January 2022, I realized that I needed to make a drastic change in my life, but now I had to figure out what would make me happier.

I knew that I wanted to be able to work fully remotely from anywhere. Part of that was covid-consciousness. And part of that was because I knew I was done with Atlanta, but didn’t know for sure where would be next.

So first, I focused on figuring out how I would support myself if I walked away from my tenured academic librarian job making $102K/year. I know that’s not a lot for folks coming from a corporate background, but that was more than I ever expected to make. So walking away from that was a big fucking deal for me.

I did all of career change stuff you’re supposed to do, researching different options, doing information interviews, and so on.

And then I stumbled across a video series on becoming a book coach and fell in love. They were promoting their own training program, which I did not sign up for, but that sent me down a rabbit hole of researching coaching as a profession and the different training programs available.

And then, I talked to my boss about enrolling in a coach training program as professional development.

I had become a department head in 2019, and at some point my supervisor (the library dean) brought up the idea of me enrolling in a leadership development program. But, I didn’t have a high opinion of the well-known leadership development programs for academic librarians, so I didn’t jump on that idea then.

Lots of librarians aspire to attend the Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians. But the two people I knew who had completed that program were incredibly toxic leaders. Looking back on it, I can see that you get out what you put into programs like that – they were toxic before it, and so it didn’t fix them. But at the time, I didn’t see the value in a program that turned out graduates like them.

Even though I didn’t want to enroll in the same programs, I deserved the same investment in my development as a leader that those other department heads received .

So when I made my case, it was approved.

And coaching skills ARE incredibly valuable as a leadership skill. After graduating and leaving my job, I wound up developing a program to teach core managerial coaching skills to library leaders. There’s a growing body of research backing this up as important leadership development!

I started my program in August 2022 and graduated in April or May 2023.

Once that part of my story was in motion, it was time to start exploring where I wanted to go. Some of the factors that were important to me included:

• covid response
• gun policies (I was so sick of playing the “gunshots or fireworks” game)
• cost of living
• time zone conversions
• immigration policies

An unspoken assumption here was that I’d continue mostly working with folks in North America, because that’s where my entire existing network is.

As much as I love some parts of Asia, that was not even an option because the time zone math for when I would have to be awake to meet with anyone in the US or Canada.

I’m a night owl, not an early riser!

I considered Mexico, but decided that their gun policies are too lax. I know that Brasil is popular, but they elected Bolsonaro. Now, I respect that they responded to his attempted coup the way the US should have responded to the Jan 6 insurrection, but then I was still holding it against them that they could ever elect him!

And this is where I came back around to that serendipitous conversation with a neighbor that I mentioned in the last post.

Portugal doesn’t entirely ban gun ownership, but it’s a lot more restricted than it is in the US. And the time zone conversion works in my favor as a night owl – for the first time in my life, I’m happy to meet with you at 8 am, because if you’re in EST, then that’s 1pm for me!

And, my former neighbor told me about the Americans & Friends PT facebook group, which maintains a step-by-step guide of everything you need to get a visa to move here. That meant that I wouldn’t have to figure the process out on my own.

On paper, Portugal looked like a great option. At the time, you could qualify for citizenship after just 5 years of legal residence. (Technically, that’s still the law for now, but the right-leaning Parliament is trying to change that. They’ve passed a law extending the time to 10 years of residency, but that’s under review by the Constitutional Court).

So, my thinking was that if I moved here and didn’t love it, I could stay long enough to get citizenship, and then move somewhere else in the EU. Of course, that mindset is part of why they’re trying to extend the time to citizenship!

But, I had never once set foot in Portugal at this point!

Quitting my job, selling my house, and moving to a country I had never been to seemed like a ginormous leap.

I considered it.

As part of my coach training program, we spent a lot of time practicing on one another – sometimes in class, and sometimes outside of class.

I love being the one doing the coaching, but I sometimes found it challenging to come up with topics to be coached on 😂 So I wound up spending a lot of time getting coached through these decisions about where to move to and how to move forward.

And through that, I came around to the idea of asking to work fully remotely from Portugal for 8 weeks.

I was functionally working pretty much fully remotely at that time still, only going to campus once or twice a semester. So I probably could have gotten away with just going, but I felt better getting approval.

I’ll write separate posts about that journey. But the short version is that I spent about a week each in several different cities, from Porto to the southern coast, to get a sense for whether I’d actually like to live here, and if so, where.

Despite all the problems with Airbnb, I used them on this trip to book apartments in residential areas instead of the touristy areas. I ate at restaurants plenty, but I also went to markets and grocery stores to cook at “home”. And, I did actually work remotely. My goal was to get a sense of what it would be like to actually live here, not just vacation here.

I traveled entirely by train, which somewhat limited where I went, but still left me with plenty of options.

And when I did find myself feeling something like homesick, it wasn’t for the US. It was for the city I had stayed in before moving on to where I was then.

That was my sign.

I’m enjoying telling this story in chronological order, so I won’t say too much here. But it’s been about a year and 11 months since I moved into my apartment here in Lisbon, and I feel as at home here as I have anywhere else that I’ve lived.

Who knows what the future will bring, but for now, Benfica is home.