Episode 1 -- Introduction
This is our first episode, an introduction to who we are and what we're up to, and a preview of what future podcasts will be about.
Hello and welcome to the first podcast of As the Dinason's Turn. My name is Jason Dinison.
SPEAKER_01And I am Tracy Dynason, and we have had quite the adventure. This is our two-month update because we have now officially been in Portugal for two full months.
SPEAKER_00It's really hard to believe. I think it's at least for me, it's setting in that this isn't a vacation. This is actually where we live.
SPEAKER_01But at the same time, I would I would say yeah, it feels it feels real now, but it doesn't feel bad. Like I don't want it to sound like that, like, oh my gosh, this is never gonna end. But I I mean it's all good, right?
SPEAKER_00It feels like we've settled in now. A lot of the paperwork stuff, it's not totally over, but a lot of the paperwork stuff that we had to do and just getting bank accounts set up and that sort of stuff is behind us, and now I guess it's more just we live our life now.
SPEAKER_01So what were some of the things because you were the one who said we need to do this and got the lawyer and everything. So what are some of the things that drove you to say, hey, we need we need to pursue Portugal?
SPEAKER_00So it started well, we've been talking about it for sixteen years, I suppose, that someday Spain was the place that we wanted to to go initially. Um and it had always just been one of those bucket list kind of things that maybe someday we'd do it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was like the retirement dream. Let's retire. And I was like, we could live in a van.
SPEAKER_00You still say that.
SPEAKER_01I know, I still think that there's something about you know, when the kids are gone, like we don't need tons of things, like let's get ourselves a van and we can go everywhere. But yeah, I mean, it was one of those things we always talked about, like, oh, you know, we need to do this.
SPEAKER_00And then in March of 2019, I had a little incident. Guess we have to be careful how we say it. We had an incident at a chiropractor's office uh that landed me in the ICU for five days. Uh that's a long story, but uh that kind of caused uh pause, I guess, on life, reevaluating what we're doing and why. And then it it just happened that two months after that incident, we went and walked the last ten days of the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
SPEAKER_01With our dear friend Taylor, shout out to you. Thank you for helping us with all of the crazies because they are wonderful, wonderful pilgrims, but it was quite the adventure, not something we thought we would be doing. Um, or intent we uh at the uh, you know, come March, we were like, Can can this really happen? And then it did.
SPEAKER_00It did.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there was some bus busing and helping people and injuries and things like that, but it it worked out well.
SPEAKER_00I had thought before the trip that I would be able to keep up with the students and and show them how things were done. Uh, but then that little medical incident happened, and that's my excuse at least that it sidetracked me, and so I walked about five days, and then the last five days I had to take the bus. Um I'm not sure if it was really the medical incident or just that I was a little older than I thought I was, and my uh Achilles tendon wasn't being very cooperative.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, to be fair though, you you missed out on a good like eight weeks, probably close to eight weeks of training. So, I mean That's what it was. Yeah. There you go.
SPEAKER_00I'll help you out. Okay. So anyway, the uh that Camino de Santiago trip, I think, was a good thing for us. It would have been a good thing whether I had had the medical incident or not. Um and it caused a lot of reevaluation of lots of different things, but you know, in the real world and in life, you can't just like, oh, we're gonna do this. Um and then COVID hit.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Like it was yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I guess for me, for the job that I do, I started thinking about why are we doing what we do and why do we not follow our dreams? I guess. You you look at so many people are unhappy with their position in life and the things that they're doing, and oh, I wish I could do that. And I guess maybe it's the way my mind works. I'm like, well, why why don't we do it? And so I started, it would have been the summer of twenty twenty, started investigating how to to make a move to Spain is what we initially wanted to do, move to Spain. And I reached out to an attorney, actually the same law firm that helped us move to Portugal, they have offices in several different countries, and so started the ball rolling, and we were gonna move to Spain, weren't we?
SPEAKER_01Well, we were, but then of course, you know, COVID complicated things, you know, uh as well as being an inspiration. Uh Brexit at the exact same time, everything just kind of came to a standstill, and we had already sold our house. Like I had I had put in my resignation, like it was it was happening, and then it was we oh crap, what are we gonna do? Because it all fell apart.
SPEAKER_00We should probably back up a little bit. When we say as the dinosaurs turn, um our life is always and it's been this way forever. It's surprisingly complicated, always.
SPEAKER_01I would say eventful, but that's okay. I mean, you know, uh I would say that there's never a dull moment, even when you wish there was a dull moment. Um, but that's kind of par for the course and and always has been. So I I think that we we re-evaluated, we kind of regrouped, and we thought, okay, it's just not meant to be, right? We're like, okay, so we'll wait until the kids are grown and gone, and and we'll kind of see what happens, you know. Like we'll we'll wait until they go to college, right? Like that's that's soon enough. Um I guess Jason though had other ideas of if it was soon enough or not. Because I mean, we really like I I worked at a public school for a while. I went back and and worked at um a wonderful college that I love dearly and still love dearly. Um, but I think that we realized that, you know, um COVID burnout, my burnout was really real. I I mean, and I have to say that I still feel fried. Um, and I'm still having like this identity crisis of who the heck am I? And and all of those things, which I can talk about more later, but I I was not okay, and you saw that.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, the burnout, you were very burned out. Um and I know in talking to people it's like you you're I feel like your personality was even different sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um from what it was if you go back to like 2015, 2016, and and then it was just kind of a spiral of burnout from that point forward. But it was for me too. Um you know, we moved on March 15th, right in the middle of tax season, which was not that wasn't the plan, that's just kind of what happened with how everything fell together. Um this was the first tax season, even though I was probably working the same number of hours, it was the first tax season where I wasn't miserable and angry and and just kinda pissed off at the world the entire time, I guess, and it helps because if you've seen the pictures that we posted on Facebook, um if you're not friends with us on Facebook, I guess you probably haven't seen those, but if you follow our blog, though you can see the pictures of what we look at in our backyard, and I mean that in and of itself is just very calming um to look out o' over a field with a cow and and grapevines and well and you know to be honest, like this move couldn't have actually happened, and we left a lot of things behind.
SPEAKER_01So thank you to our friends Dave and Amy and gosh, Becky. I'm just telling you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys really made this so that we could, I mean, we ran out of time. And so we threw everything, everybody got two bags. We had duff bags, and we packed all of our stuff, and it was really like, what can we check? And the animals, we you know, all of those things, and then we we left and we left things kind of in chaos. So, um, because we literally ran out of time. So they stepped up to make that happen, and um, you know, the house is closed and and all of that has been taken care of, and we can hardly wait for them to come and visit and see us. But I think you're right. I always said that I was a single parent in tax season, and I've always hated tax season, I will be honest, because um I working all of the time and then putting in all of your effort and all of those things and then coming home and and it really is a 24-7 ordeal. But I would say I would agree, this was the first tax season that didn't feel horrible. For those of you who are accountants, I'm sorry, but um I am not one and have have zero desire to do this. So I think that you're right. There there was something else, and I don't know if it was because we realized the move was happening, or if it was because of the change of scenery during that last push, because that push uh from March through April, even until now, I mean, there's still more going on, um, is a lot. I mean, it's a lot.
SPEAKER_00So but one of the things, and this is probably a podcast and a blog post in and of itself, but you know, the field that we look out over has this cow in it. I've named her Lady. And and that is kind of prophetic, I guess, for me, because one of the things when I was able to walk on the Camino in 2019, we were walking through some small town in Spain, and there is this guy driving, like herding, one cow down a road, and I guess the assumption is that he was driving it to the pasture, and at the end of the day, he'd probably drive it back to the barn. And in my mind, I was like, and you know, there's a lot of complications with that. I'm sure his life is not perfect, but just think about you get up and that's what you do that day, is you drive the cow down to the pasture, and then you take it back at the end of the day. And then I was thinking about all the crap that we do in a in our lives with our jobs in America.
SPEAKER_01And all the crap we had, I think that's the other thing. We're surrounded by stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I kept saying, I want to be like the guy with the cow. And, you know, that's not realistic to just like say, Oh, I'm just gonna have a cow and that's all I'm gonna do. Um but you know, uh what I say is it's not necessarily meant to be literal, it's more of a metaphorical thing. And so being able to look out over this pasture and see one cow roaming around, and then we go for walks, and like Tracy said, she's named the cow Lady. Lady talks to us.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we have great conversations. I say, How are you today? and she moves, and and then we sometimes she'll walk over and come and see us, and then I'll say, Okay, we'll see you tomorrow, lady. And she moves goodbye.
SPEAKER_00She moves goodbye. And so, I mean, it's it's kind of prophetic, I guess, for me to be able to see that. It it helps a lot. I've actually been able to make some business plans and do things that I hadn't done in three or four years just because the burnout for me is not as extreme. It's still there, it's gonna be there, it's gonna take time for both of us, I think, to get over that. I also noticed that both of us have still that American, like, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, everything's wrong, this is wrong, I'm a failure, it's all screwed up, and we we get so tense about things. And I feel like that's a carryover from life in America where you well, this is another blog post and podcast, but sometimes it's like you have to be perfect in America. You can't make a mistake, and if you do, it's like it all goes off the rails for your entire life.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so um side note, and those of you who know us, we're both extreme perfectionists. So um we're not saying that normal people are like this, however, we are. But I think you're right. We get overwhelmed, and then we're trying to take care of things, and there are times we're like, why is this taking four weeks? Four weeks, by the way, for us to have access to our uh bank accounts. Why does it take four weeks to buy a car? Like it's it's those things and and things that we're used to doing very, very quickly. And then we've realized that you know, our to-do list doesn't need to be a mile long, and that doing one thing or two things a day is reasonable when you also live a life and have a family and work your jobs and and all of those things. Um, I am working for Jason, however, I am still in identity crisis of what am I gonna do with my life and I still feel pretty burned out, but also as a person whose career and identity are so intertwined, I'm not exactly sure who to be or how to be yet. Um so I've kind of leaned into, you know, caretaker and coordinator and making sure the kids have what they need at school and all of those things. But when there's a hiccup there or I worry about something, I I agree. I get I get pretty emotional in trying to deal with it and all of those things because I feel this immense pressure to make sure, as the one who understands the most Portuguese, to make sure that everybody's okay. But at the same time, those moments are few and far between, I think for me. Like I think there have been maybe three or four days where I thought, oh my God, can I really do this? Um, and that's over eight weeks. Um, because everything else just completely outweighs all of this, like the stress and the burnout pieces. We have been so lucky. So, you know, and there are certain things that I think that are just faded. Um found a great realtor. I was started looking at like Portugal expat groups and moving to Portugal Facebook groups, and found an amazing realtor who is in the north, knowing that we are more mountain people than beach people. Um, and he posted that he had a property to rent and I jumped on it, and it is the perfect place. It's small, you know, like we say, it's about 300 square feet, but it's from 3,000, a little bit of a change, but uh in good ways, like we only have exactly what we need and what we like, and nothing comes into the house that we don't adore or love. Um, and so that's a good thing. Um, and then he, you know, thank you, George, for helping us with everything, helped us set up all of our electric and our water and our cell phones. And if we'd had to do that on our own, I mean, I think we'd still be swimming. But, you know, him and uh George and Carla have become family, really. Um, and I think that's true for so many people we've interacted with um in just our day-to-day life. It's just like, you know, you meet you meet the banker who speaks English and you meet with her for four weeks, and Marta's amazing. And and now is, you know, you see her on the street and you have a conversation, and how are you? And you know, the directors at schools, Sandra and Elizabeth are amazing, and Signor Antonio, who you know guards the door to make sure people are doing what they need to. I mean, it's just they become part of your day-to-day life. And so I think that that in a real way, though, it's it's deep conversations, it's not just a hey, how are you? Bye, um, I don't really want to hear how you are. It's an authentic interest and on both sides. Um, and in brutalized Portuguese or you know, all of those things you you can make it happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that you know, we're doing it the difficult way, no doubt.
SPEAKER_01Probably.
SPEAKER_00Um just because I think most people doing this, unless they know Portuguese, they'd probably want to move to some place where more people speak English. Just because you know, we're living at a village of well, the sign says population four hundred and eighty-nine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, outside of the out to be honest, that's like five minutes outside of the larger city that's got about 10,000. There you go.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, I think that if you're planning to move and more people than you would think are like, hmm, you know, maybe I'll do that. I think you have to think about your language skills and and uh you know plan accordingly on where you want to move. Thank goodness for Tracy is the interpreter and and uh you know helping with that, because I would be lost if not for Tracy's help. I don't think that's true.
SPEAKER_01I would say there are a couple of things. I mean, one, I was I was pretty purposeful in choosing this kind of location. I mean language professor here. Um, but I wanted something that was authentic. I wanted the real culture, I wanted a real life, I wanted a real community that we would be a part of, but that we wouldn't be surrounded by people who are speaking English inside of Portugal. Um I think that was the my thing that I wanted to avoid, and that that makes our lives more difficult now because there's a lot of pantomime and charades and you know, misunderstandings or writing things down or things like that. But um I think that that was one of the things that that we both wanted. Um there are wonderful expat communities that are very, very active, you know, not too far from us, and that we can go to their meet and greets. And so um, you know, Braga, the biggest, the bigger city, the biggest city that's close to us, is 15 minutes, 20 minutes away by car. So I mean, we have access to absolutely everything anyone could ever need, including IKEA. And I mean, a steak and shake. Hello, how is that even possible? When we found that, I think we're about ready to like, you know, praise the Lord right there, just drop to our knees. But so I think that there are there are pieces uh of things that we're familiar with that are not too far away. Um but I I'm I'm doing better. I mean, I'm still not done with burnout. Um, but I think I'm back at the point where I can uh go back to therapy and and work on some of those things. I'm taking Portuguese classes to improve my Portuguese, knowing that I want to do something that's more community related um and that I'm gonna need those things. And now that your tax season is done, you can start all of that too. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I think we yeah, this is intended to be an introductory podcast, I guess. All of these things that we've mentioned here are really podcasts in and of themselves, but um yeah, I guess the main thing I would say is this is home, really, for us. This isn't some little jaunt or whatever where this is this is home.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it feels like home. I I mean that's the other piece of it. Like, I mean, even from the first couple of days where we're running around and all of these things and trying to get everything set up, it still felt like home. Even in the chaos. Like there's just something that kind of speaks to the soul that's like, okay, this was a good move. Um yeah. It's a it's been a good move so far.
SPEAKER_00It has been. So two months. Um we'll be doing these podcasts fairly regularly. Uh, me, I'm like, we gotta have a calendar and you know, production schedule. I think that it's more like it's just gonna be when the soul tells us it's time to record a podcast, we'll we'll record a podcast.
SPEAKER_01But just, you know, thank you to everyone who's been, you know, following what's going on and know that um you are here with us in a lot of ways, and um we are trying to purchase a property and all of that piece, all of those pieces. So we are happy to play host. Um thank you to Sharon and Jay Wilkinson for coming to visit us and be our first our first uh visitors. That was wonderful. Um, but yeah, I think that this was a good move and we'd love to see you all here. Um we don't get to travel back for a while, probably. We've kind of shot that one, but um all is good. It's a really good change.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's been good. Well, that's it for this episode. Catch us again on our next one where we'll talk about something.
SPEAKER_01Um I think we need to talk about um what is like I think we need to talk about living arrangements. Let's let's go there because that this is this is a very unique piece of where we are. Um and and the the 300 square feet and you know, all of that. I think we need to talk about what living is like.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Well, catch us again on that uh next episode of As the Dinosons Turn. Thanks, everyone.