Becoming More
A conversation with Matt Bays
Writer, storyteller
How building a life in Porto is changing the way Matt Bays experiences home, creativity and the world around him—and expanding his sense of what might still be possible.
“I feel something different about me. I don’t know that I can fully explain what it is, but I know it’s more.”
Watch the Conversation
About this conversation
Matt Bays didn’t come to Porto with a plan to reinvent himself.
He and his husband had talked about living abroad someday, and when the possibility became real, they decided to explore it. Matt wasn’t even convinced Porto would be the place. Then they arrived.
Within an hour, he knew.
What has happened since is less dramatic, and perhaps more interesting.
Matt has created a home that feels like his. He walks almost everywhere. He has built new friendships and a more active social life. He gets up early and wanders through Porto before the cafés have opened, when it can feel as though he has the city to himself.
And he writes.
Since moving to Portugal, Matt has written two books. He talks about being inspired by the languages he hears on the street, the architecture, the cobblestones and the small encounters that become part of his work.
But our conversation eventually moves beyond what Matt is doing in Portugal to what living here may be doing to Matt.
He talks about becoming more comfortable with what he doesn’t understand. About seeing other cultures differently. About becoming less judgmental and more open. And about being surprised, at 55, by a growing sense that there may be more possibilities ahead of him, not fewer.
It’s a conversation about finding home, creating a life with purpose, staying curious—and allowing yourself not to know exactly where any of it is leading.
In this conversation we explore
Why Porto felt right almost immediately
The difference between feeling comfortable somewhere and calling it home
Creating community from scratch
How walking changes the experience of a city
Why Portugal has become such a productive place for Matt to write
The inspiration he finds in languages, architecture and everyday encounters
Finding purpose and deciding what you want these years to be about
How living in another culture can challenge the way you see the world
Becoming more comfortable with uncertainty
Why Matt feels that “more is possible”
Memorable moments
“You fall into life here, and things just start making sense.”
“There’s two kinds of at home. There’s comfortable, and then there’s like, this is my home.”
“Your whole life can’t be vacation.”
“How do you want to enjoy these years? What do you want them to be about?”
“It opens up your mind and you become less judgmental and just more open.”
“I think I’m proud of how I’m changing.”
“I definitely feel like more is possible.”
“We learn how to do this by doing it.”
Reflection
Something Matt says midway through our conversation gets surprisingly close to the heart of it:
“Your whole life can’t be vacation.”
There is a point at which moving to Portugal stops being about the move.
The paperwork gets done. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. You know where to buy groceries and order coffee. You develop favorite places. You stop translating every word on the menu.
And then a different set of questions begins to emerge.
How do I actually want to live here?
What do I want my days to contain?
Who do I want around me?
What deserves my time now?
What might I do with this chapter that I didn’t have the space—or perhaps the imagination—to do before?
Matt’s answers are distinctly his.
He has made writing central to his days. He has chosen a home that feels good to live in. He walks. He explores. He meets people. He pays attention. And he’s allowing himself to live without knowing whether Portugal is a two-year chapter, a ten-year chapter, or something much longer.
None of those choices is particularly dramatic on its own.
Together, though, they are shaping not only the life Matt is creating in Portugal, but the person he is becoming within it.
Near the end of our conversation, Matt struggles a little to put that change into words.
He knows he feels more open. More compassionate. Wiser about a world he once understood primarily through the culture in which he was raised.
But then he says something simpler:
“I know it’s more.”
Maybe we don’t always need to know exactly what we’re becoming.
Sometimes noticing that our life—and our sense of ourselves within it—is expanding is enough.
A question to consider
Now that you’re here, what do you want these years to be about?
