It’s hard to put into words what I’m feeling.

Excited? Yes. Nervous? A bit.

I am leaving for Portugal, and it’s a strange sensation.

Otherworldly? Yes. Surreal? Absolutely.

Looking for the right words

It’s been almost exactly a year since I set out on this quest. My quest for Portugal.

When I started, I simply knew I couldn’t keep living like I was. Desperately unhappy, I went through the motions. I realized I had been doing that for years.

It was a sudden discovery, like switching on a light in a darkened room. It barely takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, and even as they are, you’re taking in your surroundings, cataloging mentally what you see.

What I “saw” made me even more sad. Wasted years, just doing what had to be done. Trying to enjoy the little moments of joy and telling myself that was enough.

Then, just as suddenly, I knew I had to change – all of it. My life, myself, my thinking, my surroundings – everything.

Making a plan

As a Gen Xer, I am practical and pragmatic, and I needed a plan. Granted, it wasn’t well thought out – I barely spent any conscious time on it. But it was a plan. (And in hindsight, it was pretty solid, so maybe my subconscious had been working on it for a long time.)

I wanted to live other places. Portugal would be my first, and from there I would travel and figure out where I wanted to go next. I would get a remote editing job I could do from anywhere in the world.

Hard to put into words

Other pieces fell into place. Some things worked out, but not as expected. I could have done some things differently, and it might have made it better. Or not. I guess I’ll never know for sure.

But in the course of one year, I completely changed my life, myself, my thinking and my surroundings.

When someone asks me how I’m feeling, I’m not sure how to respond. There’s so much more than just going to Portugal. It’s a year of emotions, of huge changes, shifts in thinking, realizations. That’s hard to put into words, even for a writer.

Pleased? Very. Happy? Perhaps.

---

Be a Better Writer Tip

Finally, a bit more about preparing questions for an interview.

Write more questions than you think you’ll need. It’s a terrible feeling to go through all of your questions quickly and not have anything else to talk about. Some people don’t interview well, and they might give you really brief answers.

Write down your questions. You might not need to refer back to them, but you might not remember to ask all of them, either, if you don’t write them down. Referring back to your questions is a way to give yourself a moment to pause and think, too, during the interview, to see if there’s anything else you want to ask.

Not every interview will be hard hitting or in depth. Sometimes at the newspaper, I’d do a 5-minute phone interview – enough to get a quote or two for a story. Of course, we tried to avoid single-source stories, so I was looking for at least two other people to talk about the subject at hand.

For those types of stories – particularly breaking news – I didn’t have time to do a lot of background work. Instead, I would rely on the most basic questions and try to get to the heart of the matter quickly, all while trying to get the best quotes possible. (We’ll talk about quotes another time, too.)

This also sounds like a lot of work – planning for an interview. Like anything, the more you do it, the easier and faster it becomes. As a professional journalist, it was second nature. Breaking it down into steps can help you feel comfortable interviewing, even if you’re new at it.