Between Worlds (Pt. 1): The Messy Middle of a Creative Reset

New starts require a lot of work

Aug 08, 2025

Anita, Pookie, and I kayaking Lake Arenal

Anita, Pookie, and I are in a kayak in the middle of a lake. There’s a volcano in the background. I breathe in deeply and take it all in.

There’s adventure in every day now, but there’s also a stillness I didn’t know I needed.

Two months ago? We were coming towards the end of our never ending task list.

Pookie taking a much needed break during the Storyteller Summit

Anita and I sit at our folding table, laptops balanced on top. It’s one of our last pieces of furniture.

Boxes line the hallway. Pookie is pacing. We still have items on our to-do list.

And we’re somehow also hosting two live sessions for the Storyteller Summit—an 8-hour commitment we made months ago before realizing it would overlap with moving out of the country.

We’re tired. But we make it through. Another line scratched off the list.

We knew moving to another country meant paperwork. But what we didn’t realize is how much of our life would start revolving around it.

For Costa Rican residency, you need:

Birth certificates
FBI background checks
Bank statements proving income
A letter from your employer saying they’re the one paying you
A bank letter saying how the money arrives
And more stuff we need to do while in Costa Rica

Each one of these documents had a wait time. A process. And all needed an apostille—a fancy government stamp you can only get from your state capital.

For us, that meant a four-hour drive to Tallahassee.

We left at 4:00 a.m.

The sun wasn’t even out yet, but we wanted to be first in line. Mail-in apostilles had taken weeks before. This was one of our last shots to get them in person.

To our surprise, the process was painless. Quick, even. The hardest part was finding the building.

Naturally, we realized after the fact that we still needed one more document… which meant a whole other trip.

It's a Wednesday afternoon in Costa Rica. We're walking out of the bank, one of our many visits, but also our last official stop before submitting our residency application.

Six months. That’s how long it took from the moment we requested our birth certificates to finally getting every last form filled out, stamped, notarized, and submitted.

Now we play the waiting game…

Have you ever found yourself caught between the life you’ve known and the one you’re building? I’d love to hear how you navigated that in the comments.