A Series About Worries: Concerns Around Moving To Spain

#1: Perspective and logical, not dramatic thinking

Today, we kick off a series about our worries and concerns around moving to Spain.

After we set the scene in this installment, we’ll cover—

Missing family and friends

What if I lose all of my income and we become homeless?

What if I never learn to speak Spanish and people laugh at me when I try?

I’ll always be an outsider expat, but I don’t want to be an outsider expat

Melisse’s major career transition

All meaningful conundrums and conflicts that while—believe it or not (!)—we have thought and continue thinking about, we don’t obsess over. At least not most of the time.

The worst part about telling people we’re moving to Spain has been the chorus of yeah buts, what ifs and—for one reason or another—it’s going to suck to be an expat type of reactions from a small subset of haters and projectors emanating from the peanut gallery.

Aren’t you going to miss …

Don’t you think so and so will be lonely when you leave …

If you don’t learn the language, you’ll never fit in.

Even if you do learn the language, you’ll never fit in.

There’s no work.

The taxes are high. Like they take all of your money.

The list goes on.

As if Melisse and I just fell off the turnip truck and have no idea how to do anything or what to expect. As if we just decided to jump headfirst into moving to another freaking country without thinking about it. Without doing—literally—thousands of hours of research, planning, thinking and, maybe most of all, soul searching.