I know I said I was going to take 10 days off blogging here, but this popped into my head this morning…
One of the most commented on elements of my recent recording about learning to live abroad, was the fact that when you up sticks to go and live far away from family and friends, it’s easy to feel guilty about those you leave behind. For many years I felt terrible about having voluntarily moved myself so far from my family, even though I’m just 2 hours from the UK by plane, and it’s just 8 hours door to door from here to my parent’s house.
One thing I neglected to mention is that there is one possible lifestyle choice, which although it may at first not seem open to everyone, can make a big difference in removing those feelings of guilt: being self-employed. In March 2006 my mother became very ill, eventually dying in April 2007. It was a horrendous year to say the least, and the one thing that I constantly thanked fate/luck/myself for was the fact that I was self-employed and able to travel to England regularly, and at the drop of the hat. Had I had a full-time job here with a contract, I would have been up against the horrendous rules that govern emergency days off in Spain. But I was working as a freelance translator and building our websites into a business, and as long as I took my laptop with me and summoned enough energy, I could keep things going from the UK while feeling really happy to be able to be around the family and lend a hand.
Now, I was of course very lucky. Not every freelance job will let you have this sort of freedom, the sort of freedom that goes a long way towards assuaging those feelings of ex-pat guilt. But there are many many jobs and businesses that you can set up or aim towards that will allow you the freedom that was so crucial to my life from March 2006 to April 2007. It’s worth thinking about, especially if you are considering a move to Spain or feel trapped here by an imposing job.
I never, for one minute, thought I could be a successful freelancer or start a business that would give me the freedom to travel freely to the UK and beyond. The former, being a freelance translator, was relatively easy in the end. I’m still not sure I could have done the latter, setting up a business, without Marina doing half the work as well. But if you are determined enough, there is no reason you can’t make the life you want in Spain, relieving half the guilt in the process. There are hundreds of freelance jobs that can be done on-line, and many more businesses that can be set up and run over the net. Good luck!
Essential reading: The 4 hour workweek
spaniard
11 Oct 07 at 8:30 pm
Hi Ben, I would love you to make a text about Pakistani integration in the U.K. and British and nordic ( Norwegian, Swedish ) in spain.
Which group do you think are more integrated ?
Do you think is better the british (aka-american ) immigration model than the French one ?
Im very curious about your opinion.
Thanks, and again, sorry for my pathetic english.
Andrew
12 Oct 07 at 9:54 am
The 4 Hour Workweek is a fun book and made good money for the author. To the doctors, nurses, school teachers and the rest of the 99.99% of the people on the planet who keep things ticking, then it is frivolous and just promotes false values.
Anyone who is considering moving to Spain, without money in the bank or the financial safety-net of their family, should make a more sober assessment of their potential to succeed. The practicalities of life that you face in your home country will still be there once you step off the aircraft in Spain. A student, or someone who has never advanced mentally beyond their student years, will find this more easy, but someone with children and a mortgage to pay, will find it far more challenging.
If you can indeed succeed from zero to paying the bills on 4 hours a week then good luck to you. All my friends and family with careers balancing working-life and home-life must be the idiots? I suppose when we pay tax that funds the education of those that will be doctors (working 40 plus hours per week!) to save those who have bummed around, makes us stupid.
Inventing and running an online business sounds easy and is a neat Life 2.0 concept, but in reality most business fail and even more online businesses never make money. In addition, unless the mindset of the Spanish changes, you won’t make a bean marketing online at the Spanish because they don’t spend much money online.
Spain is a truly wonderful country, filled with the most precious people on the planet but we need to get real here.
Jill
12 Oct 07 at 12:42 pm
Ben I’m all for people realising their dream and escaping the rat race but only if they are self supportive. Spain already has too many foreigners expecting to live an easy life in the sun, making no effort to learn Spanish and abusing the health system. It’s hardly surprising “guiris” are really not that welcome. I’m refering to northern europeans – not the poor devils arriving by boat from Africa expecting paradise.
Gary
12 Oct 07 at 2:42 pm
There is a window of opportunity in ones life when such a move is easier. Mine was in the mid seventies and I didnt take it. I have no regrets but I often wonder how things would have turned out.
Yes I have a wife ,a mortgauge, two grown up children but none of that presents an obstacle. No, having elderly parents and close relatives chimes with Ben’s experience, and there’s the grand children that we’d never see and I have a diabetic dog. There’s a job in Gibraltar with the MOD that has my name on it. Thirty years agi I’d have been off but now not so.
No regrets – I spend between 8 and 10 weeks a year in spain, mainly in Madrid and Barcelona and have a whale of a time whilst there.
Bu the time I’m done i will probably have enough to but a property, but I dont think I will – I’ll invest it and use the return to travel to the parts of spain I havent seen – there’s plenty to go at!
BrianA
14 Oct 07 at 7:53 am
@Jill – without the influx of Northern Europeans modern Spain would not be the prosperous place it is. It is the Spanish who in the main have built the housing in areas that Spaniards do not generally want to live in so they should not be too surprised if they fill up with foreigners!
@Ben – what you say is an argument for self employment anywhere. Unfortunately not everyone has your drive & skills, but even so they should give the alternatives a try rather than spend the rest of their lives regretting possible missed opportunities. Another possible route is contract working, where you go abroad as a worker for someone else. That worked for me.
Ben
14 Oct 07 at 8:42 am
@Andrew – I agree, the title of the book is ridiculous, I’m sure the author does far more than 4 hours a week, but it does have some very interesting ideas on how to work for yourself and be far more efficient and productive. I think it is worth reading – everyone can get something out of it.
@Jill – I agree, I’m all for people supporting themselves!
Andrew
14 Oct 07 at 10:01 am
Ben, I agree that the book has some interesting ideas but they need to be put into context. I wish I had written it
$$$
I do think that sometimes Spain gets a raw deal on the expat front. Maybe I should add Fuengirola to your Worst of Spain listing.
Andrew
14 Oct 07 at 10:09 am
@BrianA
Maybe you should add 2 other factors: without the influx of Northern Europeans, without a huge injection of European Union cash, and without a strong desire on behalf of the Spanish to change post-dictatorship, modern Spain would not be the prosperous place it is.
Your Northern European point will be tested in the next few years as property prices tumble.
Geoff Harrison
22 Oct 07 at 6:34 pm
I also make my living from the Internet now, having finally managed to extricate myself from the London rat race and move to Barcelona 2 years ago. The matter of motivation was never issue when I was in London and dreaming of life in the sun, and I always managed to find time to develop the website even though I also had a full-time job. However what I didn’t foresee was that having realised the dream of moving to Spain and working for myself, the motivation to carry on spending hours every day sitting at home in front of a PC completely evaporated and was very hard to re-capture (of course financial reality eventually kicks in and that brings its own motivation!).
If you’re a self-employed person moving to Spain to carry on your business, I would seriously consider renting a desk in a communal office at least for a few hours a day. Not that expensive, a great way to meet people, and it will instil enough routine in your daily life to help you resist at least some of the distractions that life in Spain offers.
Ben
22 Oct 07 at 9:34 pm
Good advice… I did go a bit mad at first working at home… and now quite often from two many hours of computer!
Tom
2 May 08 at 8:26 pm
1993 – Sign painter in London, but plastic computer lettering catching up fast. Sitting in Macdonalds Victoria Station. The only free newspaper left was the Manchester Guardian Appointments. (Teachers etc.) Then . . An article on how British bar owners survive the winter. A photo of a menu board – British breakfast! Sunday lunch! My fist came down on impulse. “BINGO” People turned and frowned. (Another drunk!)
Did a Laurie Lee and hitched hiked. Sleeping on building sites and eventually on Fuengirola beach for a month. Hit a lucky time. No plastic lettering! The only signwriter in town. Everyone getting ready for summer.
Ha! Ha! Guess what? Plastic lettering has caught up again! Digital indeed!
Back to square one !!
Took 15 years though . .
steve
2 May 08 at 11:14 pm
Ben, that was a great post. For the past 10 years I’ve been trying to come up with a way to move abroad. I think I’m afraid to pull the trigger because of friends and familyand also monetary reasons. I’m very scared I’m going to wake up one day and realized I should have gone with my instincts. i guess I’m still kind of young so I’ll see what I can do!
Thanks again
Steve
Maria S.
2 May 08 at 11:28 pm
There were times when I felt guilty for having packed up and left. But yet I could not have stayed either.
One sibling – of four – made charges that I was lucky not to be around to care for ailing parents. A hard chore to do, I know, but I had no one to leave my own young children with to run home and help.
And then, the ones left behind, tell us how lucky we are to have gone places. Of course, from their view point, our trials are unknown. But yet, I would always tell them it was not luck, but sheer determination which got me where I am now.