TLDR: I have lived in Sri Lanka for 10 years and it has been the best decade of my life.

The long version:

Ten years ago I got off a plane with nowhere near enough possessions and a plan that was not fully formulated.

Everything after that was improvised. I sold up in the UK, which felt reckless at the time yet now feels like the most sensible decision I ever made. I bought land I had no business buying. I built a home I had no business building and somehow it’s still standing, which says everything about my brilliant builders and nothing at all about my judgement.

There were rogues along the way. There were frogs: kissed in optimism, regretted at leisure. There were people I gave far more chances than they’d earned, because arriving somewhere new makes you generous with your patience in ways you never were back home (many of you will be surprised to hear that I have learned a modicum of tolerance).

And then there was everyone else. All of whom I love and cherish more deeply than they will ever know. The ones from every corner of the globe who landed here for their own reasons and stayed (or left) for reasons they’re probably still working out. The local friends who took me in long before I’d earned it, and never once made me feel like the guest I technically was.

Ten years in, I still don’t entirely know what I’m doing. But I absolutely know I’d do it again — every rogue, every frog, every reckless decision — without changing a single thing. I love the life that I have chosen and still sometimes wake up scared to open my eyes lest I find that it was all a dream.

JFDI, and failing that, come visit!