Notes on Fear, AI, and Six Months in Portugal

The last couple of weeks have been hard to digest, both cognitively and emotionally.

For some reason, fear has become my go-to emotion lately. It is a very irrational state to be in, considering I have backup plans for many scenarios. Still, ever since I made the decision to move abroad, my life has turned upside down more than I would like to admit, and things feel increasingly harder as tomorrow becomes more difficult to predict.

My digital nomad residency is not going quite as expected

Building and keeping a routine in Lisbon has become a real challenge. It is not by chance that Portugal is known for having high sedentary rates, and for some reason, it has been hard to cut through Instagram and tourist recommendations to find real Portuguese life while staying in Lisbon. A lot of things here have changed as a result of globalization, as is the case in most big cities. That makes me a bit sad, considering the fun in travel is learning about a new culture, and if every culture starts to look more and more the same, I could just stay at home.

If you want, you can go to the exact same specialty cafes, Pilates studios, and stores whether you are here, in the US, or in southern Brazil. Once you realize that, you start looking at purchasing power, tax incentives, safety, and healthcare. You can then make a case that the old line between developed and developing countries is no longer so clear-cut. Still, the place where you live profoundly impacts how you build your daily routine and how connected you feel to the world. That is why I initially picked Lisbon, even though I have not adapted to the weather very well. There are many downsides compared to my life back in Brazil (cost of living being a big one), but the upside of feeling safe and seeing far less inequality (even though it exists, it is much less extreme than in Brazil), combined with the access to culture and the arts, changes how you experience a city. I can also state that the version of me 12 years ago would have jumped to high excitement if she knew she would move to Europe. Of course, back then the world was a much different place, and any version of Europe I had at the time was much romanticized by experiencing only the good parts of it, the food, the people, the history.

This is the main reason why I believe immigration, or simply a residency process, is such an intimate and personal decision: it involves so many more dimensions than statistics on quality of life or living expenses. I am still a supporter of staying based in your home country and traveling abroad. In fact, when I did it for a couple of years, I was much happier as a person. Traveling for a few weeks or months at a time is the perfect balance for experiencing new cultures without the heavy friction of building a new life from scratch somewhere else.

Even when you decide to travel constantly, you are still part of a system. It doesn't feel like it, but you are. The lack of freedom from bureaucracy is a nightmare, especially for weaker passports. You still need to work and pay taxes, and when you really think about it, a person without a European passport has far fewer rights, and the constant bureaucracy with immigration offices can become a real hurdle in your life. I guess, people find ways, but it does feel unfair the way policies from different countries are so fragmented and you need to spend so much time and effort looking into these things to make sure you are not compromising the law.

That is why, going against most of the playbooks out there, my advice is: if you decide to make the move, go all in, and rent a comfortable place because you are actually moving your life. Considering the emotional toll of it all, I would not prioritize squeezing out extra savings over comfort, particularly during the first year. Having savings is essential, of course, so make sure you have that buffer. But if you reach a point where you have to choose between adding a small extra amount of euros to your savings versus paying a bit more for daily comfort, I would choose comfort. I say this from a place of privilege, of course, and it remains a very personal decision depending on each person's situation and life goals.

Lisbon is beautiful, but I am still not sure this is the right place for me, especially after spending months here without a car, holding off on any major financial commitments while I wait for my final residency approval from AIMA.

I guess part of that is my own mistake, and I have made plenty of them. In my head, I treated this move like long-term travel. That is far from the truth: this is my new life in Europe. It is my home, where my dog and I actually live. It is comforting to tell yourself, if nothing goes right, I can just go back. But if you really think about it, your reality has already changed so completely that going back will never feel the same. As immigrants often say, you end up belonging neither fully here nor to your hometown anymore.

My view on AI has changed in the last few months, but I decided to force the optimism

In 2024, I wrote about how AI will not replace humans. Lately, even on that point, I have started to feel a bit unsure, to the point of feeling a strange numbness toward learning and studying new things. You start to think: what's the point? I do not really need to fully understand a concept to put it in production anymore. If you think about it, copying and pasting code was one thing, but what happens when you barely need humans even to write the prompts, and waves of layoffs are no longer a distant reality?

Because I was stuck in a cycle of watching the news, I decided to wipe my YouTube history and start fresh by searching for travel tips, Portugal travel, other expats' stories, and anything that might make me feel a bit less numb toward the world we are currently living in.

Somehow, I ended up watching an interview and came across this internet author, Mr. Money Mustache, and one of his latest writings on AI: Will the AI Bubble Destroy Our Retirement?

I am not sure to what extent his view is delusional or just optimistic, or maybe it is just history repeating itself. He says, and I would like to leave it registered here:

The news is not helping you to keep informed, it’s just poisoning your mind with a hand-picked selection of the scariest stories of each day. If you want to learn about something, go find a book on the subject. And if you want to make a difference, the only thing that counts is not the news stories you watch, it’s only the actions that you take, in other words, your Positive Behaviors.

The article itself is really interesting, and I recommend it! As I close more than half a year in Portugal, questioning my life decisions and getting older, I feel there should be more space for brighter perspectives.

Focusing on good close relationships and being kind to people. Practicing Gratitude and Optimism as your lifelong philosophy. And making sure you pack as many healthy (outdoor) activities into your days as you can.

The world feels very messy right now, but there are so many good things under our control, as long as we pay attention.