We didn’t move to Spain to drink better coffee. Or find ourselves. Or “live our dream.” We moved because the boiler packed in and something snapped inside my chest while I stood there, shivering, shampoo still in my eyebrows, trying to remember if this was the third cold shower this week or the fourth.

Burnout doesn’t look like it does in self-help books. It’s not all yoga sabbaticals and scented candles. Sometimes it’s just staring at your laptop for two hours, rereading the same Slack thread, and wondering if anyone would notice if you just… stopped.

I’d been “working from home” for years, which really meant slowly merging into my office chair and becoming a brittle, blinking version of myself. My partner, Sam, was in education—burnt out in a completely different flavour. Endless marking, endless admin, kids she genuinely cared about but could no longer help properly in the crumbling system we’d all signed up to without reading the fine print.

And then there was our son, Jamie. Seventeen. Smart, skeptical, full of the kind of teenage scorn that could melt steel. He was glued to his gaming headset most days, surviving the British school system and our endless mutterings about spreadsheets and Ofsted. He didn’t ask us to move. In fact, when we told him, he didn’t say much of anything at all. Just pulled his hoodie over his face and sighed so loud it felt like a protest.

We didn’t have a master plan. No solar schematics or Pinterest boards. Just a listing on a clunky website that said “potential” and showed a photo of a house with half a door and a satellite dish pointing at the ground. The price made us suspicious. The location sounded fictional. But we messaged anyway.

Three weeks later, we were standing in it. Our future. Sam picked up a chunk of tile and said, “This is either brilliant or completely…” and didn’t finish the sentence.

We bought it. Wired over the money. Told a few stunned friends. Packed up the van. Jamie brought exactly one suitcase and his gaming setup. We took the kettle, six mismatched mugs, two old laptops, and a bag of apples that somehow rotted en route.

The drive took three days. Through France, into Spain, down through towns with names that looked like typos. The van’s fan belt screamed through half of Aragon. We camped the last night behind a petrol station and tried to make toast with a cigarette lighter.

And then we arrived.

The house smelled like damp and paint thinner. The lock stuck. The roof had a weird curve to it that definitely wasn’t intentional. The water didn’t run. The lights didn’t come on. Jamie asked where the Wi-Fi router was. I laughed for longer than necessary.

There are things you don’t say out loud in front of your family. Like “I’m not sure we thought this through.” Or “Do we even know how to do any of this?” So instead, we unpacked. One mattress in each room. A camping stove in the kitchen. A half-broken table in the living space. We sat down that first night with bowls of instant noodles and said, like idiots, “It’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t fine. But it was something.

We each made our own plan, without really planning it.

Sam picked up Spanish fast. She’s good at systems, good at people. She found a language exchange in the village, offered to help out at the school, and started writing again—something she hadn’t done in years.

Jamie? He sulked. Loudly. For a while. But he also started tinkering. Figuring out how to fix things. He ran a wire from a solar panel to the router and got the internet working before I’d finished reading the inverter manual. I caught him one afternoon watching a YouTube video on building off-grid power walls. Said it was “just for fun,” which I’ve learned means “I’m obsessed but don’t want to admit it.”

And me? I quit my job. Told them I was done. No remote work, no freelance contracts, no consultancy. Just done. We had some savings, not loads, but enough to buy time. I wanted to write. Not fiction, not a novel. Just… this. Whatever this is.

There’s no structure yet. Just slow mornings, a lot of DIY, and evenings where we sit outside and listen to the frogs try to outcroak each other. The fridge doesn’t hum right. The fuse box clicks. The bathroom still doesn’t have a door.

The other day, a neighbour stopped by to ask if we were “the ones with the English son and the broken antenna.” I said yes. He handed me a chicken. No explanation. Just… chicken.

Somehow, that felt like a win.

We’re figuring it out. Slowly. Sam’s going to teach online part-time. Jamie wants to start some sort of tech repair hustle—phones, laptops, solar junk. I’m going to document everything. The good, the weird, the chicken-related. And maybe turn it into something useful. Maybe even something hopeful.

It’s not a fresh start. It’s not a redemption arc. It’s just different. Quieter. Closer to the ground.

If you want the kind of blog where someone installs a complete permaculture system in 90 days and smiles through composting disasters—this isn’t that. This is three tired people trying to live smaller, think clearer, and stop contributing to the mess.

And yeah, we still mess up. I tried to fix a water tank last week and managed to flood the back room. Jamie filmed it. Sam laughed so hard she dropped the wrench.

But we’re here.

That has to count for something.