First up: A very warm welcome to all the new subscribers who arrived off the back of the release of Poolsuite V3 on web, iOS and Android! I'm Marty, founder of Poolsuite. This newsletter is a mix of my thoughts on "the good life" and hot things the team & I have stumbled upon in recent weeks.

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Dearest internet friends,

I write to you poolside, somewhere in the Caribbean, our new home. An undisclosed location for now, but not for long if all goes to plan...

I’m kind of amazed by how not-that-hard it was to move our entire lives from Lisbon to the other side of the world. I didn’t fully realise you could just have a moving company come to your house, take all your unpacked stuff, pack it perfectly, and ship it across the world, including disassembling your bed and furniture and rebuilding it at the other end...?

I’ve previously lived for extended periods in Scotland, Spain, the Dominican Republic, and Portugal, and each time I’ve found myself a bit shocked by how doable it is to relocate your whole life. Heavy caveat: I don’t have kids and my businesses are all 100% remote. Sure, there’s often the usual tangle of admin, stacks of visa paperwork, long queues for passport stamps and trying to get through the airport while wrestling four XXL suitcases. But none of it is actually hard. Just things you write down on a list and trudge through. A list of very doable things.

Six months ago, I floated the idea of this move to my wonderful partner, Alyssa, who, without even ten seconds of thought, said: “Fuck it, I’m in.” And now here I am: feet in the pool, sun on my face, a Caribbean breeze taking the edge off the heat, sipping my coffee (latte with coconut milk, the gold standard) and writing this into my notepad. There are hens and roosters wandering around the garden like they own the place. I nearly stepped on a baby hermit crab that popped back into its shell (home?) when it saw me coming. A full-size crab was knocking on our patio door earlier; island hospitality I suppose?

Last night, I noticed the sky turning a bright orange and pink gradient, so I walked down to the sea with a cup of tea in hand and had a little moment of gratitude for the people in my life, and for the strange and eclectic chain of events that have led me here. And for the first time since I ended up on a beach in the middle of nowhere in the Dominican Republic at the height of COVID (a story for another time), I said to myself: I’m so happy I’m like this.

Much love,
Marty

Finding your paradise

A few years ago, I was feeling incredibly lost on where to move next, to the point where I literally typed “how to decide where to live” into the search bar. In that search, I came across the work of Melody Warnick - author of “This Is Where You Belong” and “If You Could Live Anywhere”. 

“If You Could Live Anywhere” is about creating a location strategy for yourself: figuring out what’s important to you and choosing a place to live that fulfils those needs. 

For me, sunlight is a big factor. I love where I grew up in Scotland, but - and this will come as no surprise to you - I find the long, dark winters particularly hard to handle. Living somewhere I can build a friend group of likeminded people is also naturally important to me. When I lived in Barcelona, there was this huge group of us, which made me feel 100x more settled. That sense of community is something I work to actively create everywhere I go.

Where we live is probably one of the most tangible forms of curation (and I can’t believe I didn’t mention it in the last episode). What we look for in a place - our idea of paradise - is so reflective of who we are. Thinking about what makes you happy, and then moving to a place that makes you happy, is a sure-fire way to live a better life. 

7 questions to ask yourself when choosing where to live

☼ What kind of energy do I enjoy?: Upbeat, quiet, or somewhere in between? For Alyssa and I, Kyoto is the perfect balance. It's on our list for the future.

☼ Who do I want to spend time with?: Would you like to move closer to family? Live within walking distance of your best friends? Or stay somewhere that makes it easy to meet new people? A personally hard-learnt lesson is that a new city won't give you a group of new friends - you have to be incredibly proactive about how you're going to meet your people.

☼ Do I find this place beautiful?: A study from the Knight Foundation and Gallup said that ‘aesthetics’ is one of the top three contributing factors of enjoying where you live. I remember walking around Barcelona and realising how often I'd stop to take pictures. It's feels so good to live somewhere beautiful, somewhere you're constantly appreciating as you go about your day to day.

☼ What do I want my days to look like?: Our daily routines contribute massively to our happiness. So if you find yourself using up all your annual leave to go surfing, your next hometown should probably be somewhere on the coast. A friend of a friend lives in a small surf-town in Spain and opened a little sushi spot by the beach, which he operates on the bare-minimum opening hours. He just needs to make enough money to pay his bills, and then he spends all the rest of his time doing what he loves - surfing. A true lifestyle business. Needless to say, he's a very happy person.

☼ What’s the cost of living there?: Housing’s one thing, but also consider stuff like transportation, groceries and income tax. Nomads.com is a great place to grab those stats for any given place.

☼ What are my non-negotiables?: Good weather? Walkability? A good coffee shop within 10 minutes from your front door? Mine were fairly simple in considering this recent move: 1. Drinkable tap water, 2. can flush toilet paper, 3. the beach within a 5 minute walk.

☼ How long can I see myself living there?: Your next move doesn’t have to be a permanent move, and I think that’s what stops a lot of people from making a bold change and experiencing some of the best adventures of their lives. Just focus on where you see yourself living next. It could be for 6 months or a year. Throw your stuff in a storage unit and it'll be there waiting for you whenever you're ready to come back.

Hot Hyperlinks

☼ A giant pool is on-schedule to launch at Pier 35 in New York by next summer, and the new pool at The Davis Centre in Central Park is open now.

☼ Savouring these videos from Simon Porte Jacquemus, inspired by his childhood summers in the south of France. We wrote about Simon in the very first episode of The Palm Report. 

☼ I like that CD players are getting the same aesthetic treatment as record players. Will accept bribes in the form of the Syitren R300.

☼ Are we guilty of outsourcing living? This perspective from Antonio has been on my mind for about two weeks now.

☼ Meet Korean illustrator Lee Me Kyeoung and her beautiful drawings of quaint corner shops around the world.

Hotter Hyperlinks

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