A Layman's Journey

For a while the will or urge to write vanished. I could easily say that time is scarce and that I have been busy. The truth is, I have been making myself busy. Busy is the buzzword these days, so let me skip over all that bullshit and go straight to the point.
I have been feeling miserable for a while. Life's great! A few months ago I finally bought a house and at around the same time I was even promoted at work and given an incredible program and I felt invincible for a while. That didn't last. Soon the stress of the responsibility I was carrying at work and at home started to weigh down on my shoulders - the funny thing? I was the one putting that weight on:
At work everyone is happy with my performance so far and my managers have been nothing but complimentary about the incredible progress I achieved in only a few months.
At home life is equally good. We have more space, more time (the house is very close to our offices) and silence - something we had not enjoyed for years in Amsterdam.

So - what's the fucking problem?

I am.

At work I strive for perfection and have trouble relinquishing control as, in my head, if I know that I can do something very well, I will not allow anyone else to do it. Even though I have people hired and paid for (handsomely, I might add) in my team to do it. I also have this Utopian belief that I can change people and that I can be a driving force, an inspiration that makes everyone want to be at their best all the time. While that's largely factual, there will always be someone who either sees things differently or that other someone who is a straight prick. I try to understand the point of view of the first type. I lack the emotional maturity to deal with the second type.
I tend to also forget that done is better than perfect.

At home I guess because what I want today, is not what I wanted six years ago, when I first move to The Netherlands. The hard truth? We don't want the same thing today as we did six years ago. If you have ever made a difficult choice in at any point your life, not only you know how hard it is to make it, but also know how fucking hard it hits you if you realize you've made the wrong choice.
But here's the thing: I didn't make the wrong choice. We didn't make the wrong choice. It just so happens that what you want, at any given point in your life changes. It's a fact and you either accept it and do something about it, or, in fear of maybe proving yourself wrong, try to fill that void with other things and end up miserable. And lately, more than ever, there is one sentence that continuously echoes in the back of my mind: One life. Live it.

So there you have it. This is the background for an actual journey (trip) that I started planning months ago simply because I needed something to look forward to.
We decided that we were finally going to spend some time getting to know Portugal. I was born in Portugal, so it may sound weird, but I was born on an island (Madeira) and the purpose of this trip - or as I prefer to call it, journey - was to get to know mainland Portugal, a country that won multiple tourism awards over the last few years and that, let's face it, is in demand these days.
I had two main objectives for this journey:

1. - Find out what all the fuss is about
2. - Find out what all the fuss in my head is about

The first one I nailed probably within the first four days and spend the rest of the time refining it.
It started on the crossing from Setúbal to a place called Tróia (if you haven't been, get your ass there before it looks like Vegas strip by the sea). The blue of the sky and the color palette, the peace and quiet, the smell of the sea, the sun and even the wind (and a bit of rain) quickly made me feel more alive than I had felt in months.
But you'll say: isn't that always the case when you're on holidays? Yes. So why the fuck am I stating the obvious? So that you and I remember that the person you are when you are on holidays is the person you are when you don't bother looking yourself in the mirror (and yes, I am quoting Tim Ferriss here). And that brings us to objective number 2. What the fuck is happening up there?
I'll summarize quickly, because this brain dump of a post is starting to look more like an actual elephant size  dump:
I started working when I was 19 and have been working ever since, continuously moving up or being promoted. The longest period I had off work work was a full 3 weeks and this was when I left Portugal to move to The Netherlands with a suitcase, a backpack and no job. It happens that during this time I have learned so much at such an incredible pace that it has left me with no time to process it all. I realized I needed time to process and understand what I would do with everything that I have learned.

Now that I have, here's a few findings that may be useful to others:
- Everyone needs help (yes, quoting Tim again). However if I had to summarize what I have learned in  these last two weeks of (and no, I ain't calling it soul searching as that reminds of that fucking awful movie with Julia Roberts) processing is exactly that everyone needs help. You are seldom able to achieve happiness or anything else in life alone. Accept that and you will be a better person because of it.
- The best version of myself appears when I am not worried. Again you're thinking: thanks for stating the obvious, dipshit. But again - I had to say it, because I needed to fucking remind myself and if you're reading this (and if you got this far, congratulations) you probably need to remind yourself too. Without the day-to-day worries, you end up freeing mental capacity to be more creative, spontaneous, to appreciate and to imagine what you would if you could. Well, guess what: I think that you actually can (maybe I'll follow this one up with another post).
- Last one - I promise: give myself some fucking credit. I have a serious problem (again, self induced) with the fact that I never managed to finish a degree at University. But here's a few facts that I used to slap myself in the face with during the last two and a half weeks: I am an extremely accomplished professional that managed to achieve a lot in my career without a degree. Probably a lot more than my friends and colleagues who did pursue academia - and with this I mean no discredit to them - remember, it's about giving myself some credit. I also happen to have an amazing family. A beautiful, special and incredibly gifted daughter (that has a bit of a fucking temper, but with a dad like me: who wouldn't?) and an equally amazing partner who stood and continues to stand by me come hell or high water. And that, is a lot more than I thought I was entitled to growing up, in a poor council estate on an island in the middle of the fucking Atlantic.

And that's pretty much it. Why am I writing all of this shit in English? Fuck knows, but I have so often trained my brain to think and communicate in English that it just sounded better in my head. Also I do prefer to swear in English.
I may write again soon, I may not. But I will try to write about what I decided to do with these findings.

One final note to say that I have recently added a lot of "tools to my toolbox" by reading this book. I recommend that you buy it and use it exactly like that: as a toolbox. So far I have found in it advice for every challenge that I have faced in recent months.