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I’ve been back from Mexico for a little shy of three weeks, and it just feels…weird. It sorta feels like it never happened—like it was just a really awesome dream.

While I was there, I had the realization that it felt like home. Turns out, it feels more like home than my actual home.

In some ways, I think it doesn’t feel like it actually happened because I’ve purposely not thought about it too much. I think missing my life in Lo de Marcos will overwhelm me if I let myself really go there.

I miss the beach. The animals. The community. Walking to the grocery store. Making pico de gallo a couple times a week.

Life felt more full there, yet somehow simpler and more chill.

So, to keep the “homesickness” at bay, I’ve let my nine weeks there feel like a dream.

I guess that’s part of the process of this experiment I’m conducting in building my ideal life—learning what home actually is.

Sometimes it takes leaving a place to show you where you really want to belong.

Returning to Lo de Marcos was already the plan before I even left. But now I wonder if it will end up being a more permanent return.

Maybe that’s something I’ll figure out along the way.

For now, I’m trying to let myself remember the dream without letting myself get too sad that I woke up.

And maybe the point of this whole experiment isn’t necessarily to find one place that I can call home forever.

Maybe it’s to figure out what makes somewhere feel like home—and then build a life that gives me the freedom to find those places again and again.

So…did Mexico actually happen?

I think it did.

I just think a little piece of me is still there.

I am officially launching this blog on Sunday, July 26, 2026—exactly one year from the date when I saw a video about Thailand and realized that my life could look very different.

For quite some time, I’d felt stuck in my life. I didn’t want to be where I was, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go. June of 2025 was one of my lowest points…and I felt completely broken. Yet only a few weeks later, a spark of hope was lit that life could be better.

I went down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos about beautiful beach towns that were also incredibly affordable. My first focus was Thailand, then Vietnam, then the Philippines, Albania, Egypt, etc. The seed was sown, and I knew I was going to start traveling soon.

My last pet passed away in January of 2026, and I took that as the signal to begin traveling immediately. He passed on the 4th, and by the 7th, I had a one-way flight booked to Bangkok, Thailand.

Fast forward to today, and I’ve now spent two months in Southeast Asia and am currently finishing up a little over nine weeks (less than two weeks left now!) in Mexico doing a dog sit.

These trips have taught me a lot, and in particular, they’ve taught me more about the way I want to live my life.

I don’t actually really like to travel in the conventional way. I want to be a seasonal slow traveler, which for me means going somewhere for a season and getting into the temporary local groove. I like being in one spot long enough for it to feel like home.

I’m essentially a homebody. I just like homebodying in multiple places.

The purpose of Mermaid Abroad is to document the experiment I’m conducting on how to build my dream life.

I’m figuring out what it means to create a life where I can spend a season in Thailand, another in Mexico, another in Europe, and then come home to Georgia for a while. A life where I can have routines and favorite restaurants and local grocery stores in places that aren’t technically “home.” A life where I can experience the world without constantly feeling like I’m rushing through it.

I want to see what happens when I stop thinking of travel as something I take a break from my life to do—and start thinking of it as part of my life.

I’ll be writing about slow travel, seasonal living, pet sitting, working remotely, the practical realities of making this lifestyle work, and all the little everyday things that make a place start to feel like home.

I’ll also be writing about the places I visit, the things I discover, the animals I meet, the people I encounter, and the inevitable moments when this whole dream life thing doesn’t go quite as planned.

Because let’s be honest: I’m figuring this out as I go.

And, in the spirit of full transparency, this first post is very much a “just get the damn thing published” post. I’ve been thinking about launching Mermaid Abroad for…well, let’s just say longer than I care to admit. Naturally, I procrastinated until the literal last day of my self-imposed one-year anniversary deadline and am now publishing this approximately ten minutes before midnight Atlanta, Georgia time.

So no, this is not the perfectly polished, beautifully designed, fully realized version of Mermaid Abroad.

Yet.

The glow-up is coming. There will be photos, prettier pages, more stories, and (hopefully) a slightly more organized approach to all of this.

But I wanted to be able to look back one day and say that Mermaid Abroad officially began on July 26, 2026—the one-year anniversary of the day I first realized that my life could look completely different.

So here we are.

I’m a homebody. I just like homebodying in multiple places.

Welcome to Mermaid Abroad. 🧜‍♀️🌎

Let’s see where this takes me.