A week of house viewings.

That was the plan. Have a look around. Get a better feel for the area. See what is out there. Start imagining what life here could potentially look like.

Simple enough.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Because somewhere during that week, one house stood out. Quite clearly, actually. And ever since, our brains have been running at full speed.

All the little wheels are turning. Constantly. And rather inconveniently, they all seem to be turning in the same direction.

Towards this house.

Which is exciting.

And absolutely terrifying.

One answer, seventy new questions

The funny thing about a process like this is that you don’t know which questions you need to answer until you actually get there.

For months, the questions were big and abstract.

Could we see ourselves living in Crete? Could this become home? Is this really the direction we want our lives to take?

And slowly, those questions seem to be answering themselves.

Yes.

At least, that is what my gut is telling me. And I know Ed feels it too.

But apparently, answering one enormous life question simply unlocks approximately seventy new ones.

Literally.

We now have a monster document containing around seventy points that need investigating, answering, calculating or discussing.

Very relaxing.

Welcome to project new life

Because suddenly this isn’t about dreaming anymore.

It is about potentially buying a house in another country.

What do we need in order to buy it? Which documents do we need? Do we need a lawyer? A notary? Which permits exist? What are we allowed to do with the house? What aren’t we allowed to do? What does the estate agent still need to clarify?

And that is before we have even made an offer.

Because first we need to decide what we would offer. What the financial picture would look like. What timeline would be realistic. When we could potentially move in.

And then there is the boat.

Where does she go? Where do we spend this winter? What does spring look like? When do we stop sailing and start living in a house?

Oh, and apparently we would need a car.

And what about all our stuff?

And school?

And work?

And life?

One question answered. Three more appear.

It is basically admin whack a mole.

We’ve done this before

Strangely enough, there is something familiar about all of this.

When we decided to leave on the boat, we didn’t have all the answers either.

Far from it.

There were endless lists, things to arrange, things we had never heard of, problems we didn’t yet know existed and questions we couldn’t possibly answer until we reached the next stage.

And somehow, we worked through them.

One by one.

That seems to be what we are doing again now.

We divide the tasks. We investigate. We ask questions. We make calculations. We add another seventeen lines to the monster document. We use Chat to bring some structure to the chaos. And slowly, things that felt completely unknown a few days ago start becoming clearer.

Not everything at once.

Just the next thing.

But could this be home?

And underneath all those practical questions, there is still one much bigger question.

Could we actually land here?

Because this isn’t just about buying a house.

It would mean building a new life.

On a new island, in a different culture, with rules and customs we are only beginning to understand.

We know Crete reasonably well by now as visitors. We are getting to know this particular area better. Every time we drive somewhere, stop for coffee, walk through a village or look at the mountains, I find myself quietly testing it.

Could this be ours?

Could this become normal?

Could I feel at home here?

And of course, there is no spreadsheet that can answer that.

No lawyer can guarantee it.

No estate agent can tell us whether this is the place where we will actually put down roots.

At some point, after all the research, calculations, documents and sensible questions, there is still a leap.

The scary bit

And maybe that is what makes this so exciting.

We are not choosing a house.

We might be choosing a completely new version of our life.

We don’t know exactly what that life will look like. We don’t know how quickly it will feel normal. We don’t know which problems we haven’t even thought of yet.

Judging by the monster document, there are probably quite a few.

But beneath all the noise in my head, beneath the practicalities and the endless questions, there is something surprisingly calm.

A feeling.

That this is the right direction.

That doesn’t make it less scary.

Maybe it actually makes it scarier, because suddenly this isn’t just another idea we are playing with.

It could become real.

So, for now, we keep asking questions. We keep researching. We keep ticking things off our ridiculous list.

One question at a time.

And somewhere underneath those seventy questions, there is still only one that really matters:

Is this where we are meant to land?

I think we might already know the answer.