No office required?

As you might know by now, I am a personal / virtual assistant. I really love my job, it’s like it was tailor made for me; I get to do some boring and mind-numbing stuff sometimes (a girl needs an empty head from time to time!) but most of the time I get to talk and listen to all kinds of people, follow (and often participate in) interesting projects, plan things and make overviews, book beautiful trips – when I’m booking a trip to some tropical country, I almost feel like I’m going there myself. And best of all, as I’m my own boss, I get to decide wether I can take a long lunch (if I finish everything urgent first, nobody will miss me) or take a few days vacation (if the work can wait, why not?). I have to say most clients and coworkers I’ve had over the almost 3 years I’m doing this, have been wonderful and a pleasure to work with.

Most of those last 3 years, I’ve been working from Amsterdam; of course I would also work when on vacation (visiting my parents in Belgium, a friend in France, or just taking care of business in Spain), but most of the time I would push non-urgent stuff forward until I was home again. So when we decided to move to Spain, it felt logical just to take my job with me… most of it is done through the internet anyway.

Now lately, a few people have been asking me how it’s all working out for me. And my answer to that is: much better than I even expected!

The first week was kind of hellish – we had no internet at home, had to find an internet cafe every time I wanted to work for half a day or so, and worst of all I used up all my mobile internet MB’s (I usually have lots of it included in my mobile subscription) on the 3rd day… and I was really paying the prize for all the extra internet I was using. Of course my (wifi) printer wasn’t working, and the work just kept building up. I reached a low when we finally got wifi at our Spanish house, and it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to use Skype because the internet was very, very slow.

I have to say, I really considered going back to Amsterdam for a week or so at that moment, just to catch up with work.

But then suddenly it all picked up; it turned out internet is very very slow on Sunday nights (probably because most people here spend that time indoors behind their computers?) and using Skype on other days is not a problem – and I started enjoying to work from here. As I’m waking up earlier and happier here than I used to in Amsterdam (difficult not to, with the view from our bedroom), I get to have breakfast, go outside and do a few things around the house before people in Amsterdam even wake up and get themselves behind their computers…

Most of the time, I work hard in the morning (usually 4-5 hours non-stop), then have lunch and do some household chores, and then on sunny days I go spend the “siesta” time on our finca. Working offline, most of the time, and getting or making the odd phone call… as soon as I get a bit chilly (and the dogs have had their fun), I go back to the house to work some more.

Working from our finca…

It turns out I like working from here (even) so much more than I liked working from our house in Amsterdam. The work hasn’t changed, but the atmosphere around here is so relaxing and happy that I get to be happier as well… who would have thought? I certainly didn’t – I expected it to be much more stressful, as I would have much more to do around here than I did in Amsterdam. Turns out time management is much easier than it I used to think; everything that doesn’t happen today, will happen tomorrow. Mañana!

On the other hand, I’m also happy to be going back to Amsterdam next week. There’s always some stuff you just can’t do remotely, even though there’s a few people over there ready to do whatever is needed urgently. And of course, I’ll be really happy to see my friends & family back, see a few movies on IDFA (the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), and hopefully see a first glimpse of Amsterdam Light Festival (planning to go back in December to see a little more of ALF!). But then, after a few weeks there I’ll probably be just as glad to come back to beautiful Matarranya and our ever-evolving project in Lledo. And of course, come back to working with the sun in my back…

First the differences, then the similarities

It’s been exactly 1 month since we got here. A very busy month – especially as time seems to flow differently here from “back home” (in Amsterdam / Antwerp)… Mostly because distances over here are so much bigger: a quick trip to the vet (and we made a few of those) costs us at least 2 hours every time, popping over to the supermarket is a 20 minutes drive (it used to be about 3 minutes by foot), and since I’m leaving my crutches at home a little too often, even walking a short distance takes longer than it should.

Another big difference between “there” and “here” is of course the amount of people we see every day. We used to live close to the city center – on a regular day we saw probably hundreds of people, and probably talked to 1 or 2 of them (the girl behind the supermarket counter, and maybe a neighbour or so). We now live in a village with less than 200 inhabitants (according to Wikipedia, there were 172 in 2013 – compared to almost 813.000 in Amsterdam), but we tend to have a conversation with every single person we bump into. About the weather, dogs and cats, and more about the weather (and its effect on the trees and the harvest!). If you consider the population density is (11 people per square kilometer in Lledo, 4921 in Amsterdam), I think that the less people we have around us, the more there is room to breathe and just be happy and communicate in a normal way.

Of course the biggest perks of being here are the peace and quiet, and the wonderful countryside that surrounds us. We wake up every day with a fantastic view of the Els Sports mountains – we get to see (or at least guess) right away what kind of weather it will be, and as soon as we get downstairs we get to walk the dogs to the viewpoint a bit higher up the road, with a panoramic view of the mountains and the surrounding villages. Compare this to waking up in a closed room, then getting to the living room which has a view of the buildings across the street, and then walking the dogs around the block… Yes, that is a big difference, and we are happy everyday for experiencing this.

But apart from differences, there are also a lot of similarities.

First of all, distance is a very relative. The last time I had to go to a hospital in Belgium, it took us about 45 minutes – the hospital was not that far away, but I made the mistake of falling down the stairs just in the middle of rush hour. Here the hospital is 40 minutes away anyway – but I cannot imagine getting stuck in traffic on the road there… In Amsterdam, we walk about 5 minutes to our favourite restaurant; here we get to the closest restaurants in about 5 minutes as well… albeit by car.

Then there is the availability of things we consider normal: we buy bread at the local baker’s (2 minutes walk, like in Amsterdam); get the same process at the hospital (waiting for a long time, and then getting the best treatment you could hope for); the supermarket has Corn Flakes and Nutella and meat with 85% meat in it – just like home; and last but not least there is internet – so we keep in touch with friends and family through WhatsApp and Skype, read our newspaper on the Blendle website, watch TV on our computer screens, and I just work the same way I have done for the past few years… only with a much nicer view.