Is living the dream anything like a dream?

Writing this article from a small town in Spain, where my husband and I recently bought a finca, I can honestly say that I am living the dream.

Actually, at the age of fifty two I am outliving two dreams I have had for the majority of my life.

Let me tell you about the first one.

This dream I probably share with a whole bunch of people, at least the ones living north of the equator. We all dream of getting away from the cold and dark winters and get to see the sun on a daily or at least weekly basis, and some blue sky too.

Well, I am looking at it right now.

However, my dream of a getaway is not about a one-week holiday spent on the beach with Pina Coladas in one hand and sun lotion in the other.

The dream of an everyday life

My dream has always been about living an everyday life in a more sunny and quite charming place during the winter. A place where I can just be as well as do stuff.

Bring some work with me. Having daily routes for coffee breaks in the sun, and shopping in the local supermarket. Bringing my morning yoga routine with me. Doing evening walks and planning weekend trips. Learning to talk the native language and getting new habits which are fitted to my new place.

And here I am now.

In a small town, in an area where the orange trees grow, three kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea and with the mountains as a backdrop.

We bought a Finca in the ancient part of the town. An old house that needs a whole lot of renovation, with a wonderful roof terrace overlooking the old Castle on top of the hill. There is a three-minute walk to the cafe on the square where the charming old church is. The coffee is good and cheap, and the square is sunny.

When I sit on my roof terrace, (on an uncomfortable and ugly plastic chair because we haven’t got to the terrace furniture yet) overviewing hills and mountains behind the village I can say YES. Living the dream is like a dream.

When I have a sunny afternoon walk by the Mediterranean Sea in January, where I use to sit inside in my house in Denmark in total darkness counting days to spring, I can say YES, this is marvelous.

And when I drink coffee in the sun at my local pasteleria or the café on the church Square, I can certainly say; YES!

Living the dream is like a dream. This is exactly what I wanted, and it is just as delightful as I had imagined.

All the stuff that was not part of the dream

But as you probably have figured out, there is a lot more to it than sunny coffees and afternoon walks. A whole lot of work, unforeseen troubles, uninvited thoughts and feelings, and things to figure out.

How to buy a house. Where to buy a house. How to get a Spanish bank account (not that easy I can tell). Where to get building materials for the renovation. Where to get rid of the old building materials for recycling.

Where to stay while you are making your new house possible to actually live in, and still have some money left to renovate. How to balance the “working hard to get there” with the “you are actually here now, please enjoy it”.

Driving to the recycling site several times in our old car filled with fragments from the wall we tore down to get some light in the kitchen (or what is eventually going to be a kitchen), is part of living the dream.

So is sitting in the bank three afternoons in a row trying to understand the Spanish explanations for why it is that difficult to get the systems to work for a simple bank account.

Helping my handyman of a husband to put op drywall on a wall where you can barely put a screw in, is part of living the dream, making me think of my lovely job as a teacher and facilitator, when I am not outliving crazy dreams during wintertime.

The more puzzled you are with something that should actually be really banal; as where on earth do we find the main tap for water so we can close it, the bigger the relief when you finally find it a few hours before you are driving home for Christmas. (Yes, we did play that song a lot on the motorway through France and Germany).

Getting overwhelmed with the amount of research you have to make every single day, from house insurances to heating systems, and even registrations for being able to buy a bottle of bhutan gas, is part of living the dream. And so is getting impatient when realizing how long the renovation project will actually take.

You buy the dream of a flowering fully furnished house full of guests, showing of the small courtyard and the lovely roof terrace, and then find yourself in the middle of a construction site. It takes patience (which is not one of my core competencies), and it takes persistence to the degree of stubbornness (which is closer to being some of my core competencies) to live out dreams like this.

How to avoid the knockout

Living the dream is anything but easy and predictable. Your unrealistic fantasy of how living the dream will be, that you have spent years to build up, will meet you upfront several times. If you can’t laugh kindly at your naive self, take some deep breathes and then change your perspective (and your plans), you are running the risk of knocking yourself out.

You will need the ability or learn how to actually love the present moment, not just the precious coffee in the sun moments, but also the annoying, troubling “we do not know how to fix this, and it was not a part of the plan” moments. Well at least accept and embrace these moments, love might be too big a word.

What remains unchanged, however, is the fact that you actually did it, tried it, took the chance and the risk to fail big and lose your valuable dream. If you remind yourself of that fact, you will more likely have the energy intact to take in these terrace views and sunny coffees, before you are off to the builder’s merchant.

We actually did it. I am here now. Right now.

Write about it…

Then off course — why not write about it. Write about the ups and downs and confusions as a way to digest them and pass on your experiences to other dreamers.

I could start writing a small piece about living the dream, and simultaneously outlive my dream number two which is about being a part-time writer. I dream of writing articles, poems, novels, non-fiction or whatever is on my mind and at my heart.

So that is exactly what I will do this winter, in between the coffee breaks in the sun on the charming square with the church. In the area where the orange trees grow.

It will probably turn out totally different from what I am right now imagining it to be like.