I recently stumbled across a motivational quote on social media that resonated with me; it said: “Don’t have a dream, have a plan.” For many families, however, the challenges, logistics and planning attached to pivoting into a whole new ‘dream’ lifestyle of slow travel and remote work feels insurmountable. 

Rewind to exactly one year ago - as I locked the front door of our family home in the UK for the last time, posting the keys back through the letterbox for its new owners to find - I still wasn’t sure what my ‘dream’ was, but NOW I had a plan. 

Skip back in time further to the depths of the pandemic lockdown. For so many people this became a period of reflection. The ‘mandatory pause button’ had been pressed on the increasingly monotonous soundtrack of our life and it ultimately prompted us to change its rhythm. 

My husband and I both wanted to explore the world, but after having children, we felt like our window of opportunity had passed for anything more adventurous than a 2-week vacation. We had big plans to travel post-retirement, but the pandemic highlighted the obvious fact that, sadly, the future is not promised. We desperately wanted to accelerate our plans, but were - quite frankly - clueless as to where to start! Were we asking too much to be able to combine travel, remote work AND find a viable solution for continuing our kids’ education and socialisation?! 

Then I read the book that changed everything for us. The book is called ‘Choose Life’ by Daniel Prince. If you are on the fence about undertaking a life of slow travel with children I would wholeheartedly recommend you read this book! It shares “The Tools, Tricks, and Hacks of Long-Term Family Travellers, Worldschoolers and Digital Nomads” and was all the motivation I needed to move my ‘dream’ into the ‘plan’ phase. 

Sidenote: You can, as I did, use it as mandated reading material to convince un-convinced partners to get on board with your cunning plan 😉.

Right! I’m metaphorically rolling my sleeves up now. I’ve read the book. Got the dream. Let’s go!!!

Let’s gooooooooooo……[tumbleweeds]. 

Paralysing doubt crept in insidiously. One in particular: ‘Can I become my children’s full-time educator?’ 

Lockdown teaching had not been an entirely pleasurable experience and felt fraught and counterproductive at times. My son recently told me that he enjoyed it - which was both a surprising and guilt-soothing revelation. However, I could not say the same. 

There was another part of me that felt selfish for not wanting to give up the career that I had spent more than a decade carving out for myself. It was a huge part of my identity and, whilst not all a bed of roses, had been the source of much personal growth and a significant stabilising factor in my life. Did I truly want to give all that up whilst my husband became the sole breadwinner? Would that become a source of resentment? 

Maybe this wasn’t meant to be after all. Maybe reading the magic book wasn’t enough and we just weren’t cut out for huge life changes?! These were the preserve of the bold and the brave and I was increasingly feeling I was neither.

It was then - through pure serendipity - that I stumbled across a random Facebook comment from someone called Mauro Repacci. He and his team had a dream to curate a solution for remote working families by providing a combination of accommodation, coworking space, and - most importantly for us - a micro-school in different locations across the globe. 

In February 2022 the team’s dream that became a plan came to life in Sintra, Portugal. Boundless Life was born. In April 2022, the family that had never taken more than a 2-week vacation - my family - arrived with four suitcases to our name. Boundless provided the perfect soft landing for us. It converted the doubters to believers and it’s been a pleasure to witness it do the same for so many families since. 

We have now been with Boundless almost continuously for one year and have spent time in all of their locations. Our kids have seamlessly transitioned between their Education Centres, often reconnecting with friends and educators they have met in other Boundless locations. 

I remember during my introductory call with Boundless acknowledging the privileged position we were in: “We have a good life in the UK. I’m not running away from anything, but now I feel like I’m running towards something.” I still feel incredibly fortunate to have had this opportunity. I had a dream. I kinda had a plan. Boundless had both covered. 

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