SheenNobody plans to collect a life they don’t want. It just happens. Gradually. Quietly. One subscription at a time.
Let me explain.
The Life I Was Performing
For a season, I was a licensed realtor. And I played that role completely. The clothes were right. The car was right — I was pulling up in a GV80, looking every bit the part. I was busy and professionally helping others get to the “American Dream.” I was doing what made sense on paper for someone with my discipline and background. I thought I was happy.
But somewhere between the open houses and the client calls, I wasn’t actually happy. I was just occupied. And there’s a difference.
I had also, somewhere along the way, become a collector. Not intentionally — but life has a way of filling up when you’re not paying attention. I became an esthetician and had my own shop until COVID closed it down. I was licensed in phlebotomy and a nail technician/manicurist. Each one made sense at the time. Each one added another layer to a life that was getting heavier without getting richer.
I was holding space for a version of myself I had never actually chosen.
The Floors Changed Everything
It started with the floors.
I got the the floors redone in the house. Simple enough. But when you redo floors you have to move everything — room to room, corner to corner — and suddenly all the things you’ve been stepping over for years are right in front of your face.
I started going through everything that I owned. And I mean going through them. Carefully. Slowly. Tags still on. Things I didn’t remember buying. Things that fit the realtor version of me but had nothing to do with who I actually was. I started making piles.
Keep. Go. Gone.
And then I wanted to change banks. After researching the best one that allows you to handle business internationally…secured. Moved everything.
The Subscriptions That Told the Truth
When you look at a bank statement with fresh eyes it tells you exactly who you’ve been pretending to be.
Netflix. Hulu. Peacock. Subscriptions stacked on subscriptions — digital versions of the tagged clothing, things I had signed up for and forgotten, things that were just quietly drafting from my account every month like a tax on a life I wasn’t fully living.
I started canceling. One by one. And something about that felt like breathing.
Because here’s what I realized — every subscription I canceled, every bag of clothes I donated, every item I sold was me saying out loud: I don’t need this anymore. This was never really mine.
That’s not minimalism. That’s excavation. I was digging myself back out from underneath a life I had accidentally assembled. This was decades of digging through a hoarded life.
Becoming the Butterfly Was Messy
People love the butterfly metaphor.
They always skip the part where being inside the cocoon is uncomfortable. Where you have to break down completely before you can become something else. Where the process is not pretty and it is not fast and nobody is watching you with admiration while it’s happening.
I was in that part.
Selling things. Unsubscribing. Getting rid of. Letting go. It wasn’t dramatic. It was methodical. Very on brand for someone who spent years inside of a military machine — I don’t do chaos, I do process. And the process was simple even when it was hard:
Does this belong to the life I’m building or the life I’ve been performing?
If it didn’t belong, it went.
What I Was Moving Toward
Here’s the part people don’t ask about enough. They want to know what you’re leaving. They rarely ask what you’re running toward.
So let me tell you.
Healthcare that doesn’t feel like a negotiation. In Portugal, private health insurance runs a fraction of what Americans pay — and the quality of care is genuinely good. I’m not crossing my fingers every time I need to see a doctor. I’m not calculating whether I can afford to be sick. That alone is worth the price of a one-way ticket.
Safety that is not a conversation you have to have every day. Portugal consistently ranks among the top five safest countries in the world. I can walk home at midnight and the biggest threat is uneven cobblestones. Let that sink in for a moment. I spent years serving a country where that kind of peace is a privilege, not a given.
Food that is fresh, local, and affordable. Seafood pulled from the Atlantic. Produce from markets where people actually know where things come from. A pastel de nata from a bakery on a corner that costs less than a dollar and tastes like it was made specifically for you. The food in Porto isn’t just good — it’s honest. And after years of reading labels and calculating macros against a grocery bill that never stops climbing, honest food matters.
A pace of life that does not require hustle just to survive. Portugal moves differently. Not slowly — purposefully. There is a culture of presence there that America has largely traded away in exchange for productivity metrics and a news cycle that never stops screaming.
Walkability. Community. Calm. In Porto I don’t need a car to live my life. I can walk to the market, walk to a café, walk to the river. My neighbors will know my name. The city will hold me in a way that a car-dependent, drive-through, next-day-delivery culture simply cannot replicate.
A government that is not a daily source of anxiety. I’ll leave it at that. You know what I mean. We all do.
I’m not saying Portugal is perfect. No place is. But I am saying that when I laid what Portugal offered next to what I was experiencing at home — the division, the noise, the cost, the exhaustion of just trying to feel settled — the choice became less like a leap and more like a logical conclusion.
What I Was Actually Building Toward
While I was clearing things out I was also, quietly, building something.
Not loudly. Not on social media yet. Just in the background of my real life — researching, planning, visiting, falling in love with a city that had the audacity to not impress me at first.
Porto crept up on me. And while it was doing that I was making myself lighter, more portable, more ready. I was trading an SUV for a vision. Trading the subscriptions for a one-way ticket. Trading a full house for five bags.
I sold my truck, got rid of the clothes and canceled everything that was drafting from a life I was leaving behind.
And I started building Really Porto! — not because it was the safe next step, but because it was the true one.
The Exit Was Always the Plan
I want to be clear about something: I’m not leaving America in a rage. I’m not running from anything in a panic.
But I am clear-eyed about what I was watching unfold around me. A country that feels increasingly divided. A cost of living that keeps climbing. A political climate that makes it harder and harder to feel settled. A sense that waiting for things to stabilize might mean waiting forever.
I’m a veteran. I served this country for over twenty years. And I also know that loving something doesn’t mean staying somewhere that no longer fits.
So I planned. Sacrificed. Prepared. I did the thing that my Air Force background trained me to do — I assessed the situation, I identified the objective, and I executed.
In about twenty-two days from now I will land and start a new life…in Porto.
Not because I had to.
Because I planned my exit — and everything about this moment is exactly on schedule.
