Working from the Clouds

Have you ever arrived somewhere and realized you forgot to actually arrive?

It would be brilliant to tell you that my first morning in Madeira started with some cinematic moment of peace - waking up to fog curling through the mountains, feeling this deep sense of finally being here. But the truth is, the house was cold, I hadn't figured out how to use the heating yet, and all I wanted was to stay under the covers for five more minutes.

That feeling of arrival came later. Much later than I expected.

Twenty-four hours earlier, I walked into the airport lounge in Prague and found my friend sitting there. Not just any friend - a guy I studied with at university, worked with at IBM, cycled with through Sweden years ago. He was there with his family, heading to Tenerife. On bikes. Sometimes life does this thing where it reminds you that the world is smaller and stranger and more connected than you think. We talked, caught up, and then went our separate ways. A small gift before the journey even started.

Then I was pressed against the plane window watching the world unfold below me. First the snowy fields around Prague, then the Alps as we crossed into Switzerland - Mont Blanc rising massive and white, surrounded by lakes that looked like mirrors from above. After that, just clouds for what felt like hours, until we started descending and suddenly there it was: ocean. Ocean from here to nowhere, nothing but water and sky stretching to the edge of the world. When the cliffs of Madeira finally started rising from the Atlantic, dark and dramatic against all that blue, I remember thinking "Hey, this is actually happening." I was pumped. Everything was going to be fine.

It wasn't.

The car rental lady was nice, I'll give her that. Patient, even, as I stood at her counter trying to understand why my virtual credit card wouldn't work. "It's in the terms and conditions," she explained. Terms I didn't read. Classic me. Have you ever had that sinking feeling when you realize you've messed up something basic, and now you're standing in a foreign airport trying to figure out what the hell to do next?

She offered an alternative: I could use a debit card instead, but then I'd need to pay for their insurance. Six hundred euros. For insurance I'd already paid for through Booking. The whole car rental was supposed to cost maybe four hundred total, and now just the insurance alone would cost more than that. I probably gave her a hard time, asking why, trying to find some workaround, but there wasn't one.

What followed was an hour of calls and scrambling. The Booking.com guy was helpful - arranged a cancellation with reduced fees, even tried to educate me about credit cards for next time. Then I remembered my backup: a Czech woman living in Madeira who arranges things for visitors. She was amazing, worked some magic on closing hours, and half an hour later a Fiat Panda pulled up to the airport. No deposit needed. More expensive than planned, but done.

When I finally turned the ignition and started driving - no phone holder, navigating by voice commands and wrong turns - I didn't care. I was moving.

The owner couldn't be there, so his mother met me at the house instead. She didn't speak English and I didn't speak Portuguese, but honestly, after the day I'd had, her warmth was exactly what I needed. This big smile, this genuine kindness radiating from her as she showed me where to park, handed me the keys, pointed at things that mattered. We didn't need words. Sometimes you don't.

When I finally got inside, I realized I hadn't eaten since before the flight, so I went out to find a shop and do some proper grocery shopping. Came back, unpacked, messaged friends about the whole adventure. That feeling of finally settling in after everything - the chaos at the airport, the scrambling, the wrong turns - it all started to fade. I had weeks ahead of me on this island, split between this house and time with friends on the other side of Madeira. For now, I was here.

The next morning brought the cold house and the not wanting to leave the bed. Eventually I did, made breakfast, opened my laptop, started working. The work felt familiar, but every time I glanced up from the screen, there were mountains disappearing into fog instead of the flat fields and construction sites I see from my Prague window.

But the real moment, the one that actually mattered, came later.

I went for a walk up toward a small chapel on the hill, following a Levada - those old irrigation channels carved into the Madeiran mountains, water running alongside a sketchy path that's barely a path at all. There was a small waterfall, and I had my earphones in the whole time, listening to the AI Predictions show that our company founder put together. Still working, in a way, even out here. Taking photos. Always moving, always capturing, always doing something.

When I walked down from the chapel, something made me stop. I leaned against a rock and just looked - at the ocean stretching out below, at the hills rising around me, at the fog rolling slowly through the valley. The wind on my face. The silence, once I took the earphones out.

And that's when it hit me, really hit me: I'm still rushing. Even here, in this bloody beautiful place, I'm still rushing. Earphones in, capturing content, thinking about what comes next. Not actually feeling any of it. Not really stopping to be here.

You know that feeling when you've been running so long you forget you're running? When busyness becomes so normal that even rest feels like something you need to optimize?

The past year was crazy. I wrote about it before - the changes, the lows, the not admitting things to myself. I wasn't really anywhere during all of that. No proper time away. No real stopping. Just pushing through, always pushing through, telling myself I'd rest later, slow down eventually, take care of myself when things calmed down. But things don't calm down on their own, do they? We have to choose it.

Standing there against that rock, looking at the fog and the ocean, I had tears in my eyes. Actual tears. Not because the view was beautiful, though it was. Because I finally understood what I'd been doing to myself. And because, for the first time in a long time, I actually stopped.

I'm here for twenty-five days. Working, yes, but also trying to change how I deal with time - not just while I'm on this island, but maybe after I come back too. It's not really a vacation. I don't like "work-cation" either - that word feels like something a startup would invent to make you feel okay about never switching off. It's more like... work, then explore. Using the fact that I don't need to be at a desk all the time. Dictating thoughts while walking. Planning my days as I want, without bloody millions of meetings filling every hour.

Something in between. I don't have a name for it yet.

But I'm starting to think the name doesn't matter. What matters is the stopping. The actually being here. The letting the fog roll through without trying to capture it, analyse it, turn it into something I can understand. Maybe that's the thing I came here to learn.