The Loulé Carnival afternoon: six words of notes, one of the better Sundays
Week seven of my Pomar stay coincided with Loulé Carnival. All I wrote down at the time is six words. The rest is informed memory.
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Slow editorial about specific places and decisions. Browse by category, or sort by recency or depth.
The Pomar fitness arc: kettlebell in week one, leading the beach session by week seven
I arrived at Pomar with a plan: work hard, workout a bit, fix my social connections. The 'workout a bit' line was the one I had given least thought to, and the one that ended up reshaping the stay.
Five storm weeks at Pomar: what the brochure won't tell you about January and February
Of the thirteen weeks I spent at Pomar, six were objectively bad weather. My weekly notes track the arc with bureaucratic precision. None of this appears on the booking pages — and it should.
The Olhão working day: Pomar's partnered hotel and why I used it twice
An operational quirk Pomar does not advertise loudly enough — a partnership with a boutique hotel in Olhão that lets coliving guests work from a different room for the day.
Pomar has its own farm. You pick the avocados yourself.
The word 'pomar' in Portuguese means orchard. I had assumed this was a poetic flourish; the website was not aggressive about correcting me. Two afternoons of fruit-picking confirmed otherwise.
I came to Pomar to fix my social connections. The diagnosis was right, the medicine wasn't subtle.
Week one's note to myself contains the sentence that defined the entire thirteen weeks: 'Came to Pomar to work hard, workout a bit and fix my lack of building social connections.' Unflattering to admit. Also accurate.
Pomar's community manager changed mid-stay. The cohort kept going.
Coliving brochures rarely talk about the community manager. The community manager is the single most important variable. Week seven of my stay ran a complete handover — and the institution survived the human.
The week I moved out of Pomar — and what living next door taught me
A room-availability gap in week nine sent me to a Fuseta hotel for seven days. Same town, same Nanobrew, same lagoon path. The variable being tested was whether the routines I had built belonged to me, or to the place.
Thirteen weeks at Pomar in Fuseta: what the working week actually looked like
Three months at Pomar on a freelance contract that did not pause for the move. Monday-to-Friday rhythm, multi-timezone cohort that never made noise a problem, and a productivity arc I had not seen coming.