Leaving tomorrow.

Read time: 3 min.

Tomorrow I'm going to Croatia. A villa in the mountains with a view of the sea. 10 full days of nothing that needs to happen.

I've been looking forward to this for a long time.

Not just because I need the rest. But because for the first time in months, everything is actually done. The book is out. The channels are running. The people are in place. I'm not leaving chaos behind me.

I'm just leaving.

That feels different.

One of the hardest months of my life

This past month has been one huge test.

Blow after blow. Things taken away without warning. A period that barely gave me time to process one thing before the next one arrived.

I'm not in that period anymore.

And sitting here tonight, bags almost packed, I keep thinking about something. Without this period, without my favorite festival being cancelled, my book being illegally reposted, my Instagram account being banned, and all the personal things I couldn't share, I wouldn't be here.

Not in Croatia. Here. This version of here.

The clarity I have right now about what I want to build next, the willingness to work with people instead of around them, the sense of what truly matters, none of that was available to me one month ago.

The hard period burned away everything that wasn't essential.

And what's left is exactly where I want to be.

What I'm bringing with me

There's an idea I've been carrying for a while that I haven't had the space to properly think through.

The book, The Art of Intentional Living, introduces people to a way of thinking. 101 lessons. A framework for living with more intention. And the response has been everything I hoped it would be.

But there's a gap between reading about something and actually doing it. Between consuming information and applying it. Between knowing what intentional living looks like and building it into your actual life.

That gap is what I want to close next.

A community. A system. Something that takes people from the idea the book plants and helps them turn it into real, lived change. With accountability, with guidance, with the kind of structure that makes transformation actually stick.

I don't know exactly what it looks like yet. That's what Croatia is for.

But when I think about it, I feel something I've learned to trust completely.

My feet pointing toward the horizon. A smile I didn't put there.

That's enough to know it's right.

The full-circle moment

I started this month being tested.

And somewhere at the end of it, without planning it, I found the next chapter.

Not despite the hard period. Because of it.

That's the thing about setbacks I keep relearning. They don't just take things away. They make space. For clarity. For the next step. For the version of you that couldn't have existed without going through exactly what you went through.

I leave tomorrow.

And I'm more excited about what comes after this vacation than I've been about anything in a long time.

Much love,

— Martijn