The Best Job in the World: How Did I Find My Passion

How an indie traveler turns into an indie writer.

Last week I traveled south. Algarve is a peaceful and warm region of Portugal. Great fish, astonishing beaches, and not enough tourism to bother me.

Three hours from my hometown, here I go to rest, eat, drink excellent wine, meet with some old friends, and write.

Being an indie writer makes you be able to work wherever you want. I picked up south to rest and search for inspiration. Tavira was my first spot.

It has been my refuge in recent summers with a beautiful and peaceful fishing town with desert beaches, welcoming and straightforward people. But being in Tavira in June is a remarkable thing.

Breakfast in the central square, listening to the birds and smelling the sea air, without the frenzy of tourists, is priceless.

My sleep program was carefully adhered to, with eight hours of uninterrupted sleep for four straight nights. Waking up with a fresh brain, going down to the historic center of Tavira, and having a refreshing breakfast, returning to the hotel, and start another day of writing, is something I never imagined, not even in my most beautiful dreams.

Algarve is yet in the Atlantic ocean, but it has a Mediterranean environment. The average air temperature in June is 25 to 28 degrees Celsius. This time it hit 33 degrees maximum temperature.

The heat got tight, but only would I go to the beach, taking advantage of the perfect temperature to get a tan, lie down on the sand to read, and appreciate the incredible sunsets that the Algarve offers us.

At night I would join a group of friends, we would eat the best fish in the world, accompanied by a bottle of sparkling white wine.

The breeze was blowing. The characteristic carob scent entered our nostrils. Carob is a very distinctive plant in this part of Portugal. They make cakes and bread with a carob aroma and flavor; to eat and cry for more.

Laughing with laughter at the stories that were told, eating and drinking, and walking through the historic streets where the Moors of Africa once lived, is for me, a writer, an incredible source of inspiration.

So, here are my top list of advantages I think we, indie writers, have related to traveling and writing.

1. Friends are the siblings God never gave us.

Sometimes life gets silly.

We get older, have kids, a tedious and stupid boss, and our lives went in a loop of futility and routines that almost kill our essence.

Often our friends save us from these dangers. They are the ones who show us the other side of the mountain and make us realize we sow to continue harvesting.

A conversation with someone who knows us better than ourselves, sometimes, is enough to wake us up again and realize that life is two days and that one day has almost passed.

Time is our greatest treasure, but it can be our ally or our enemy. And friends are always there to remind us we have to take advantage of our time, as it becomes increasingly scarce and doesn’t give us second chances.

Enjoying life without taking advantage of friends is like being born into a family and never seeing them. It makes little sense.

2. We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.

Before the pandemic, I’ve made a trip through Spain into Biarritz and Bayonne, France. On my way back, I passed through Pamplona and Valladolid, Spain.

I was walking after lunch on the historical streets of Valladolid. Still, almost everything was closed because the Spanish have La Siesta, where everybody went home to sleep a little before they come out and invade every single street to drink, laugh and eat.

I love Spain because they have a high quality of life and live in the streets, in the coffee shops, and on terraces.

As I walked in a random street of Valladolid, I noticed a poster on a wall advertising an exhibition with wooden models of humans used in the Renaissance period for medical students to use in their classes.

Among the pieces was an original by Leonardo da Vinci.

At first, I thought it would be a copy, but when I entered an impeccably restored monastery and walked through the rooms until I reached the last open space, only then did I realize that in the middle of this room was a showcase with a model made of wood, with little else than sixty centimeters, carved by Leonardo da Vinci.

There I was, in Valladolid, strolling without great expectations through the city streets, when I literally stumble across one of my Renaissance heroes.

My soul was flooded with incredible sensations. The emotion was so great that tears were running down my face.

That trip will never leave my memory again. That moment will remain forever marked as one of the most intense ones I’ve had, in a city I passed by, in a street where I was walking, in a week where that exhibition was by chance being presented.

Luck is sought, and if we are curious to launch ourselves on trips and adventures like the one I did, the prize is always greater than what we can imagine.

3. You can make everything by writing.

Being in a strange place where you’ve never been before, sit down to drink a coffee and appreciate the views, observing people’s behavior, and feeling the city you’re visiting; then opening your desktop and start writing randomly is pure freedom.

Being an indie writer is having the power to travel physically and spiritually to wherever places you want to be.

You can pick up your car and start driving, and see where fate takes you. You just need some pants, some t-shirts, a notepad, and your desktop.

The rest of what you need will be where you end up; a new friend, a beautiful street, a breathtaking landscape.

You just need a place where you can sit down to write, and the magic happens.

To be an indie writer is to be free. To be an indie writer is having the magic art of sharing knowledge, arousing dreams, developing curiosities, adding a period and a comma to the beauty that our world already has.

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