Making space — without even knowing it
Moving to Mexico was never a calculated decision. Looking back, I can see it now: I had been preparing to leave for years without consciously knowing it.
I studied massage therapy — a skill I could practice anywhere in the world. I completed my Divemaster certification — guiding scuba trips needs nothing but an ocean. One by one, without a master plan, I was quietly building a life that could be picked up and carried anywhere.
Then I came back from seven months of traveling the world with 14kg on my back, and I knew something had shifted. I didn’t need much. I had lived proof of it.
So I started purging.
The three piles
I went through everything I owned. Clothes, objects, kitchen drawers full of things I hadn’t touched in years. Someone had once shared a rule with me that I found surprisingly effective — the three pile method:
Pile one: clothes I had worn in the last year. Pile two: clothes I hadn’t worn in over a year. Pile three: clothes I hadn’t worn in over a year — but that I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of.
Go through the first two piles. Then go back to the third one — the hard one — and ask yourself honestly: when would I actually wear this? And do I already own something else I could wear in that situation?
The answer, almost every time, is yes.
Keep what fits together. Build something like a capsule wardrobe — pieces that work with each other, that travel well, that don’t ask too much of you in the morning.
Then move to the kitchen. How many Tupperware containers does one person actually need? How many mugs? How many of anything?
The purging wasn’t painful. It was the opposite — it was freeing. I was cutting ties to material things I had never really needed. Every bag that left my apartment made the remaining space feel lighter, more mine.
Looking back, decluttering was my first real step toward moving to Mexico — I just didn’t know it yet.
Making space also means making financial space
Letting go isn’t only about objects. It’s also about the invisible weight of monthly commitments.
I went through every expense. Could I find a better internet plan? Could I share one with a neighbour? I gave up my lease and moved in with a friend — saving over $600 a month. I cancelled subscriptions I had forgotten I even had. I had already given up my car years earlier and had adapted — in a city like Montreal, you don’t really need one.
The goal wasn’t deprivation. It was freedom. Every dollar I freed up was a dollar that didn’t own me.
Knowing without saying it out loud
When I came back from my seven-month trip, I knew Montreal was temporary. Not in a way I announced to anyone. Not even in a way I fully said to myself. It was just a quiet knowing — a feeling that sat in my chest and didn’t leave.
The city I loved, the people I loved — they were still there. But I had changed shape. And the shape I had become didn’t quite fit the life I had left behind.
The evening we didn’t dance
Around that time, my friend Chloé mentioned an opportunity. She had a house in La Ventana, Baja California Sur — a small coastal town in Mexico she wasn’t living in. Four rental units that needed managing. Someone to be there.
It wasn’t an immediate yes. It was more like — hm. Could I?
One evening, Nadia and I went out to dance. We never danced. We ended up on a couch for hours, talking through what moving to Mexico would actually look like. The reasons it made sense. The reasons it was terrifying. The logistics. The dreams.
We talked all night instead.
And somewhere in that conversation, the idea stopped being an idea.
The safety net that made the leap possible
Here is something I wish more people knew: if you work for the Quebec government, you can take a one-year sabbatical without losing your permanent position.
That single fact changed everything for me.
I wasn’t jumping without a net. I was jumping with a very generous one. Moving to Mexico on a sabbatical felt like the sanest leap I’d ever taken.
I told myself: one year. If it doesn’t work, I have a job to come back to. A life to return to. Nothing is permanent.
I also knew, quietly, that I probably wouldn’t come back.
I used that sabbatical. And at the end of it — already in Mexico, already home — I quit. The pandemic had arrived by then, and my employer had refused to let me work remotely from Mexico with occasional visits to the northern communities. That door closed. I didn’t fight it.
It felt obvious.
My first night in La Ventana
I arrived knowing exactly one person: Ferucho, who was living in the house I’d be managing. I got there and the house was unlocked, no one inside. Ferucho showed up eventually, greeted me warmly, and immediately invited me to dinner with friends at Mariscos El Cone — a local seafood restaurant. Of course I said yes.
After dinner, his friends invited us to their jacuzzi. Everyone spoke Spanish. My Spanish at the time was limited to the present tense. I eventually got tired — from the travel, the big emotions, all of it — and asked Ferucho to take me home.
On the way, he said: “Ah man, I forgot to feed my horse.”
I said: what?
He had a horse. In the desert. By south beach. It was 11pm and pitch black. I told him I absolutely needed to meet this horse, and we drove out of town, turned onto a dirt road with no lights, passed through two fences in the dark — and then the car stopped working. Stuck in park. Wouldn’t start.
So we got out and walked.
The desert at night was bright with stars and moon. I could see the shadows of giant cacti stretching across the ground. And then my brain started to panic. Where the hell am I? I barely know this guy. I have no idea where I am. Will something happen to me? The rational part of my mind was catching up to what my body had just agreed to — walking into a dark desert at midnight with a near stranger.
And then I heard something behind us. I turned around — and there was this enormous head, appearing out of the darkness.
Cacho. The Arabian horse of the desert. He had followed us to his food.
The panic dissolved instantly. How could it not?
Ferucho fed him. Made me a bed in his glamping tent. We slept under the stars.
At 6am he woke me up, thrilled — the car had started again! We got in, he tried shifting gears, and it stopped working immediately.
Ferucho looked at me and laughed. “You moved to Mexico because you wanted adventure,” he said. “Here you go.”
So we walked again. Thirty minutes through the desert to a boutique hotel owned by a friend of Ferucho’s, who gave us a ride back to town.
That was my first night in La Ventana.
And that is when my life started being absurd.
The pandemic, the doubt, and the choice to stay
A few months later, the world shut down.
In La Ventana, the pandemic was its own kind of gift. We had our bubble — fewer people, endless outdoors, the sea always close. Life slowed down in ways that felt natural here, not imposed.
This is when I got my first chickens. I learned to spearfish and go clam fishing. I tried gardening in the desert. I camped endlessly and made some of the strongest friendships of my life. The pandemic was a moment of universal presence — and I was lucky to be in an environment where being present meant being one with nature.
Then the calls started. Friends. Family. Everyone asking the same question: aren’t you coming home?
That’s when I started doubting — not because I had thought about going home, but because suddenly everyone else was thinking about it for me. The outside voices created a fear that hadn’t existed before they spoke.
I stayed. I’m glad I stayed.
What I want you to know
I had no idea how it would go. I didn’t know how I would make a living, or what life would look like week to week. There was no plan, no guarantee, no roadmap. Just a deep feeling that this was my path — quiet and unshakeable.
What I’ve come to understand since is this: when you make space, opportunities appear. Not because the universe suddenly becomes generous, but because you can finally see what was already there. When your life is full — of objects, of obligations, of noise — there is no room for anything new to land. But when you clear the clutter, when you lower the weight, when you create margin in your days and your finances and your heart — doors open. And because you have space, you can actually walk through them.
That is what happened to me. The massage training, the divemaster certification, the sabbatical, the purging, the couch conversation with Nadia — none of it felt like a plan at the time. But it was all making room. For Chloé’s invitation. For La Ventana. For Cacho in the dark desert. For the life I’m living now.
Moving to Mexico wasn’t a decision made by my head. It was made by my heart, in a quiet moment that had been years in the making.
If something in you is stirring as you read this — that’s not nothing. That’s worth paying attention to.