Notes from somewhere
I never planned to be

The Day I Packed Everything Into Two Suitcases

There’s a particular kind of madness in deciding, at thirty-two, to dismantle your entire life and ship yourself to a country where you don’t speak the language. I stood in my stripped-back flat with two overstuffed suitcases and the very clear sensation that I was either making the best decision of my life or the most spectacular mistake.

What Nobody Tells You About the iGaming Industry

I walked into my first week in iGaming thinking I was entering tech-adjacent marketing. I left Friday wondering if I’d accidentally joined a secret society with its own language, rituals, and deeply specific opinions about payment providers. It moves at a pace that makes fashion look sluggish.

On Belonging: Finding Community When You’re the Newcomer

Six months in, and the expat loneliness had settled in like a houseguest who wasn’t sure when to leave. I’d built routines — the morning café, the running route along the waterfront — but community felt like something that happened to other people. Then a colleague invited me to a Sunday lunch and everything quietly shifted.

The Ethics of It All: An Honest Look at Responsible Gambling

This is the post I wasn’t sure I’d write. There’s a tension that sits with you when you work in iGaming — a constant quiet negotiation between the commercial realities of the industry and the very real impact it has on some people’s lives. I wanted to write about it honestly, without the press-release gloss.

One Year In: What the Spreadsheet Doesn’t Capture

I made a spreadsheet when I moved. Cost of living comparisons, salary multipliers, a pros/cons breakdown so exhaustive it should have been a dissertation. A year on, the spreadsheet is gathering digital dust because none of the things that matter most to me now appeared on it. Some lessons only arrive on foot.