Jellyfish Mode

A conversation with Annie Knecht & Bill Bangert

Retirees, travelers, community-builders

How a carefully planned move to Porto is teaching Annie and Bill to loosen their grip on the plan—and make more room for creativity, connection and the unexpected.

“You take control by giving up control.”

Watch the Conversation

About this conversation

Annie Knecht and Bill Bangert did not move to Portugal on a whim.

They had traveled extensively in Europe. Their daughter was living in Paris. They researched walkable cities, returned to Porto to make sure it was really the place, and came around a bend one day to see the city and its bridges stretched out in front of them.

Bill remembers thinking: This is it. We’re moving here.

Then, five days after they arrived, he had a heart attack.

“This is not how my script was supposed to go,” he remembers thinking in the ambulance.

It would be the first of several reminders that choosing a new life and controlling what happens within it are very different things.

Their first year in Portugal was less about reinvention than navigation. Doctors. Pharmacies. A new apartment. A new city. New routines. New people. Annie describes it as a kind of “gap year,” when she wasn’t yet entirely convinced that the life they had chosen would actually feel like theirs.

So they began making it theirs.

Annie transformed an apartment that initially felt dark and unfamiliar. She took a sculpture class. Then welding. She began meeting people, bringing people together and experimenting with interests she had never had much space to explore before.

Over time, she found language for something that was emerging in her:

“I’m becoming more of a creative connector.”

But Annie is also discovering that moving thousands of miles away does not automatically change what occupies your attention. She remains deeply engaged with what is happening in the country she left and sometimes finds that engagement consuming days she imagined spending reading, making art, exploring Portugal or simply being present in the life around her.

Art helps.

Nature helps.

So does play.

Bill’s challenge is different.

He likes plans. He likes knowing where the car will be parked, what tomorrow holds and how things are supposed to unfold.

Their family has had a phrase for years for what happens when those plans fall apart: Jellyfish Mode.

Change direction. Stop fighting the current. See what happens.

Portugal has given Bill plenty of opportunities to practice.

He talks openly about how health problems kept him reacting rather than choosing for much of his first years here. Now, as life begins to feel more settled, he is trying to become more comfortable with uncertainty, spontaneity and changing plans.

He still likes his routines.

He still occasionally makes what the family calls a “Bill Face” when something unexpected appears on the schedule.

But he is working on it.

Near the end of our conversation, Bill describes something he would like to do more often:

Go down to São Bento station. Look at the board. See what train leaves in the next hour.

And go there.

It is a small aspiration.

It may also say a great deal about the life Annie and Bill are creating.

They made one of the biggest, most deliberate choices of their lives when they moved to Portugal.

Now they are discovering how much possibility can come from leaving a little of what happens next undesigned.

In this conversation we explore

• Why Porto felt both new and strangely familiar

• What happened when Bill’s carefully imagined retirement went off-script almost immediately

• The difference between moving somewhere and actually making it home

• How Annie used her surroundings, creativity and community to make their new life feel like theirs

• Becoming a “creative connector”

• Why building community requires reaching out rather than waiting to be included

• Annie’s effort to be more deliberate about where she places her attention

• The role of art, nature and play in bringing her back into the life around her

• How health challenges left Bill reacting rather than choosing

• Bill’s relationship with planning, routine and control

• The family philosophy they call “Jellyfish Mode”

• What can happen when we leave more room for spontaneity

• Learning to make choices without needing to know exactly where they will lead
  
  

Memorable moments

“We were smitten.”

“This is it. We’re moving here.”

“You can’t die. We just upended our whole life to move to Porto, and you cannot die.”

“This is not how my script was supposed to go.”

“You’ve got to have intention.”

“I think that’s a good word, just to play.”

“I’m becoming more of a creative connector.”

“I feel like I’ve been reacting.”

“I need to embrace Jellyfish Mode more than I do.”

“You take control by giving up control.”

“Let’s go down to São Bento and see what trains leave in the next hour and go to that town.”

Reflection

There is an appealing idea hidden inside the phrase Annie and Bill’s family has used for years:

Jellyfish Mode.

When the plan changes, you change direction.

You stop insisting that life proceed the way you imagined it would.

You see where the current takes you.

That idea feels particularly fitting for a conversation about moving abroad because relocation requires an extraordinary amount of planning.

There are visas to secure. Apartments to find. Possessions to sell. Flights to book. Documents to gather. Lives to dismantle and reassemble somewhere else.

For Annie and Bill, all of that effort led to a remarkably clear moment:

This is it. We’re moving here.

And then life immediately reminded them that there are limits to what any of us can design.

Bill’s heart attack five days after their arrival is the most dramatic example, but perhaps not the most interesting one.

The deeper story is what has happened since.

Annie has been asking what deserves her attention now.

She has discovered sculpture and welding. She is imagining ceramics, rafting, making art with friends and spending more time in nature. She is building community not simply by joining it, but by creating reasons for people to come together.

At the same time, she recognizes how easily the life she left behind can continue to occupy the life she is living now.

So she is practicing returning to what is here.

Bill is practicing something different.

He is learning that the freedom he hoped retirement would provide may require becoming more comfortable with not knowing exactly what happens next.

That is difficult for someone who likes a plan.

And maybe that is precisely why it matters.

Neither Annie nor Bill presents any of this as something they have figured out.

Annie still gets pulled into things she would rather give less of her attention to.

Bill still likes knowing the schedule.

They are experimenting.

Trying things.

Noticing what works.

Making adjustments.

And perhaps that is one of the more useful ways to think about designing a life.

A good design does not require knowing every detail in advance.

Sometimes it means making one important choice—and then remaining curious enough to discover what that choice makes possible.

Sometimes it means knowing where you want to go.

And sometimes it means walking into São Bento station, looking at the board and seeing where the next train might take you.

A question to consider

What might open up in your life if you left a little more room for the unplanned?