What’s your Dreamscape? Is it an island surrounded by emerald green under a sky of cumulus clouds and blue?
Is living the dream working remotely somewhere over the rainbow where sunsets turn electric in kaleidoscope hues?
When my children left the nest, I fulfilled an old dream of living abroad. Before the pandemic, I discovered the Clearwater/St. Pete area thanks to my son. He has since fulfilled his dream of moving to the Colorado mountains, and I’ve remembered an even older dream. When I was a child, I wanted to live on the Gulf of Mexico. After the pandemic closed borders, I continued scouting Florida’s western coast (see the series). It turns out that other empty nester/single mom friends have been doing the same. When I learned that Alba Gonzalez-Nylander of AJ Media Services –a friend for over a decade– is one of them, I asked her to join me on this 2nd getaway/project to live like a local on Anna Maria Island and explore what it offers.
First, a big thanks to Morgan Henderson who invited me to check out her new property 400 steps from the beach. (https://www.floridarentalbyowners.com/listing/2222). Summer 2020 I featured AMI and rented her Bradenton Beach bayside condo (https://www.floridarentalbyowners.com/listing/1321) with my friend, Traci. Morgan was also a guest on my podcast where she educated us on how to own, manage or book (safely) a Florida property. She also showed us how she made remote learning at the beach an amazing educational experience for her kids. Download/stream here or watch here.
If you’re looking for a home-away-from- home for spring, summer, fall, or winter break on a beautiful island… or a new place to land… please watch the video.
I hope, more than anything, you’ll be inspired to remember dreams you’ve deferred and go after them.
To rent Morgan and Dan Henderson’s Holmes Beach condo featured in the video, go here: https://www.floridarentalbyowners.com/listing/2222
To rent the Bradenton Beach condo ( most searched on the Florida Rental By Owners Site in 2020), go here: https://www.floridarentalbyowners.com/listing/1321
The ladies I interviewed have created new lives. So did Alba. I’d interviewed her years ago so I knew of many of her career awards. I also knew when she was 19, she won 2nd place in the Miss Pond’s Cream Prettiest Face in Venezuela and became the first female radio engineer. What I didn’t know until this trip is that while working at the radio station she worked two other jobs– in a production company and media program. Later she worked for a presidential candidate as an audio engineer which allowed her to afford a US university education. Moving here was her dream, and she has been home ever since.
I learned more on my summer vacation…
I tried to replicate recipes for The Waterfront’s Hearts of Palm Salad, Columbia’s 1905 Salad, and Marina Jack’s Watermelon Cosmo. Though the ambience wasn’t the same, all turned out well.
But as is always the case with coming “back to reality,” there were challenges waiting. I started a new semester of teaching, had a second eye surgery, and my Mom made a second trip to the ER that led to a week in the hospital. It helped to remember something I’d learned on AMI…
While working on the lanai, I had looked out at the neighborhood houses– pistachio and apricot colors and surrounded by green, green, green. But another afternoon storm was brewing. Palm fronds were twitching in the breeze. I noticed for the first time so many species of palm trees– from the squatty Palmettos to 80-foot Cabbage Palms topped with short shaggy fronts– tufts that look like poodles’ heads. As I Googled more varieties (thanks Susan!), the sky darkened. I hoped the thunder and lightening would pass quickly, but the coconut palms had started gyrating in an apoplectic dance. Remembering a storm that took down a giant oak in our yard years ago, I wondered how palms weather tropical tempests. Then I read that when the wind blows hard on a palm tree, its roots just stretch and grow stronger.
*By the way, if you’re into palm trees, too, see Brandon Hall’s Palm Spa and how he moved Florida north. On his site, learn more about them, and — depending on your location — rent, buy, or store palms and tropical plants for your home and special events.
Later we walked to the beach where sunbeams shot from the bruised clouds. Beauty pierced the black and blue. Light always pierces the dark.
Mom is doing so much better now. Family and friends celebrated my niece’s fairytale wedding. Postponed by the pandemic multiple times, the dream finally happened and was the most perfect ceremony and reception I’d ever seen.
I don’t like to wait… to wonder when I’ll know for sure what’s next or how I’ll get it. But in the case of moving to Morocco, I see now that moving there was a dream planted in my heart when I was a child, too. These things I believe…
Dreams come in a size too big so that we may grow into them. —Josie Bisset
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.–Henry David Thoreau
I share what I look for in a dream beach vacation or home below because AMI and nearby Sarasota have all. What does your heart desire? What’s your checklist for finding/creating the life you imagined?
