A week with nothing checked off

We got nothing done on the move this week. Not one box checked.

I want to write that down honestly, because most of what you read about moving abroad is written from the other side, by someone with a finished timeline and a tidy story about how it all came together. That is not what this is. This is week whatever of a move we are actually in the middle of, and this week the move lost.

Here is what happened instead.

We had a tire incident the week before. Monday we finally got the rental car sorted. The only appointment anyone could give us for the damage appraisal was Tuesday morning, which would have been fine except I had client travel and needed to be in Atlanta. So I dropped the car, took a Lyft from the body shop, and got on a plane. Caroline stayed for the inspection and drove the rental home.

The plan had been that we would both look at some move things that week, me from a hotel in Atlanta in the evenings and her from home in Austin. That did not happen. My in-person days ran longer than in-person days always run, and she had a couple of clients who needed more than the usual that week.

That is not a failure of discipline. That is a Tuesday.

What the dashboard actually says

I am going to keep reporting these numbers whether they are flattering or not, because a progress report you only publish when it is good is an advertisement.

Foundation phase: three of fifteen complete. Two in progress. Ten not started.

The two in progress are the Portuguese NIF and confirming every passport is valid well past our entry date. The NIF has been one step from finished for longer than I would like. Ten items have not been touched at all, including the monthly document pack, three years of tax returns, and the letter from my employer about working remotely.

That is the real state of it. Not a setback, not a crisis, just genuinely not much.

Two things did happen, and they were both quiet

I poked around in the app during a hotel evening and looked at what is actually available to rent in the places we are considering. The question I was really asking is whether the rent number we have been planning against still holds for the kind of place we need. Not a studio. Something with room for two people who both work from home, and four cats.

It holds. The market looks stable in the range we have been assuming. That is not exciting and it is worth a lot, because the rent figure sits underneath almost every other number in the plan. If it had moved, a dozen things downstream would have moved with it.

The other thing is that I confirmed the euros from last week's transfer actually landed in Wise. We are converting in stages over a long window rather than in one nervous transaction at whatever rate happens to exist on the day we need the money, and each rung only counts once you have watched it arrive.

Neither of those is a checkbox. Both of them are the plan staying true.

Why I am not worried, and why that is the whole point

This is exactly what the runway is for.

We started early on purpose. Not because we are unusually organized, but because I have spent thirty years watching projects fail on timelines rather than on effort, and I did not want to learn that lesson again with our own life. When you begin twelve to eighteen months out, a week like this one costs you nothing. It gets absorbed. Nobody notices.

Run the identical week three weeks before a visa appointment and it is a different week entirely. Same tire, same client, same longer-than-expected days, and now it is rush fees, a rescheduled appointment, and a document you cannot get in time because the person who signs it is on holiday.

The events do not change. Only the buffer does.

So the honest version of this week is that life happened, the move waited, and that was fine. Which is the least dramatic thing I can tell you and probably the most useful.

We have the long weekend now, and a short week after it. We will see what we can get done in the app. No stress.

What is the thing on your own list that has been one step from finished for weeks?