What if I don’t figure it out?

Mid-Experiment is a series of long-form interviews with people who are building their lives intentionally rather than defaulting into them. Career switchers, job quitters, life experimenters, and people who want to see what else is out there for them.

Designing a life is mostly guesswork done in private, and these interviews are here to make someone else’s guesswork and uncertainties about building the life they want visible. If you’re able to relate, resonate, or get useful insights into someone else’s messy middle, then the series achieved its goal.

Sofie is a writer, entrepreneur, Somatic Experiencing trainee, and lover of the little things in life based in Lisbon, Portugal. She built a travel blog to 200,000 unique monthly visitors before selling it, successfully launched a new business from her parents' kitchen table during lockdown, built a new life abroad mid-pandemic, and is currently training to become a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. Sofie combines a 16+ year career in content writing, publishing, and strategy with formal training and personal experience in nervous system work to help people build fulfilling lives, and support businesses that promote self-development through their offer and within their teams.

Sofie reached out to me after reading the previous Mid-Experiment interviews because she wanted to share her story. And oh boy, what a story she has! I hope you’ll like reading it.

What does your current, most average day look like right now, from start to end?

I'll wake up between 8 and 8.30 am, go to the bathroom, wash my face, put on facial cream, and go to make breakfast. I'm usually super hungry in the morning, so breakfast is a priority. Unless the weather's really bad, I'll have it out on my balcony to get some daylight into my eyes and fresh air into my lungs.

On a good day, I'll do a little practice after that before starting work. It could be a meditation, some regulating breathwork, some self-talk, or some vagus nerve stimulation. Just a few minutes.

When I'm dysregulated, I'm often feeling a lot of adrenaline and then I need to restrain myself from not starting five different things around the house - none of them which is on my priorities list.

Next, I'll work until lunchtime, which is usually between 12 and 1 pm. I try to take a 10-minute break every 50 minutes I'm working or more often, but lately I've been struggling with that. It's very easy for me to get into "just a little longer"-mode when I really get into a task.

My brain loses power around 2.30 pm so that's when I'll run errands, do groceries, or do a home workout with light weights. Depending on what happens during that break, how long it takes, and whether I have plans in the evening, that break either marks the end or my workday or not.

I usually get a new burst of focus around 5 pm, and if I don't have other plans, I try to ride it until it dissipates, which is usually after dinner. Even though I live in Portugal, I still have dinner pretty early according to southern norms: between 6 and 7.30 pm.

Up until recently, I'd be out most evenings meeting friends, my partner, or going dancing. I dance forró, a Brazilian social dance with a wonderful community in Lisbon, where I live. However, the last few months my calendar was so packed that an increasing number of people complained about how hard it was to get to see me, so I'm currently running an experiment: a month of not planning anything more than 7 days ahead.

It's felt spacious so far, but as I'm writing this, I'm at the (hopefully) end of being sick and, unable to do much, I think I may need to extend the experiment by a month.

Both bedtime and when I wake up have shifted a bit over the last two months. For the longest time, I'd go to bed between 11 pm and midnight and get up between 8.30 and 9.30, but lately I've been going to bed earlier (between 10.30 and 11 pm), which has allowed me to get up earlier too. I do need a good 8 hours of sleep.

How many different “versions” of a career or life have you tried on?

I think and hope I'm on the brink of a new phase now.

Phase 1: From an early age, I knew I wanted to do "something with writing." I studied Literature and Linguistics at university, graduated with a Master's in Western Literature, and added on a Master's in Cultural Management. I quickly got what on paper seemed like the perfect job: I became editorial employee at the Belgian press agency Belga… and I was miserable. I won't go into the why, but when my contract there ended, I moved on to become a copywriter and marketing coordinator for a publishing house. Not a cool literary publishing house, but a pretty "dry" B2B one that created its own publications around topics such as HR and accounting.

In the beginning, it was interesting because there was a lot to learn, but I quickly realized that even though I had a lot of responsibility, I didn't have a lot of freedom to experiment or be creative. On top of that, it had become abundantly clear that just like school with its one-size-for-all (not fits all) approach hadn't suited me, neither did working in a 9-to-5 environment.

Phase 2: In the summer of 2012, I launched a travel blog after complaining to my parents about my discontent over my job. My mom suggested I'd write about travel because I'd always loved writing, and I loved travel. I started very amateurishly on Blogspot but soon discovered there were people doing this full-time, and one could make a living as a blogger.

This was still quite novel back in 2012, but I set out to professionalize. I taught myself basic coding skills, photo editing, and how to do online marketing. By November 2014, I was taking up all of my paid and unpaid leave to go on press and blog trips (+ a holiday with my then-partner) and it got to a point where it wasn't sustainable to continue both the blog and my job. I would work from 7.30/8 am until 4.30/5 pm, come home, have a snack, and work again until 9 or later if my partner didn't stop me or I didn't have dance classes.

So I decided to quit.

Phase 3: I ran that blog until 2023, but the last three years - since COVID hit - I was merely keeping it optimized so I could sell it when the market was better again. It was quite the time. I learned so much about working for myself, hiring freelancers, and working with clients, and while I worked many more hours than I did at my office job, I felt way less drained. Something still wasn't quite right, though, and that feeling only grew.

By the end of 2019, it had become impossible for me to just travel for fun anymore. Everything was a work opportunity; everything could be photographed or logged for an article or a future assignment. At the same time, nothing else was calling me and the blog was doing so well that it seemed silly to move away from it.

Then COVID hit.

Phase 4: While the pandemic was horrible in all sorts of ways, it did provide me with the opportunity I needed to do something else. As Europe locked down, I spent two weeks quarantining before spending three months on the sofa at my parents' house. It's a long story, but I launched a content and copywriting business within those two weeks.

I quickly narrowed it down to content strategy and writing, and thanks to the network I'd been in the previous years, it took off quickly.

On top of that, I'd left my 13-year relationship a few months prior, determined to live in a different city every month of 2020 to then choose my new home base. That middle part didn't quite go as planned, but I did move to Lisbon in the summer of 2020.

While the travel blog had been a lifestyle business aimed at allowing me to work from wherever I wanted, when I wanted, I created the content business to make me money at a time when tourism was halted. Long story short, I worked too hard for too long while giving it my all to build a new life in a new country and starting to date for the first time as an adult (hello therapy). It was too much, and at the end of 2022, my nervous system gave out.

Phase 5: I've written about my crash here on Substack well over a year ago and I'm still in the recovery process, now almost four full years later. I have downsized my content business from working with freelancers to just me doing the work and have drastically cut back on how much I work.

In 2025, I also started a three-year training to become a Somatic Experience Practitioner. I've tried different therapeutic modalities over the year, and this one has by far been the most impactful for me.

While there has been a lot of career movement in this phase, the focus has been on (re)building my emotional and physical capacity, figuring out who I really am and want to be, rewiring hurtful beliefs and behavioral patterns, and learning to trust my intuition.

Phase 6? I finally feel like I have the capacity and motivation to build something new again, but it's happening ever so slowly. Because work played such a big role in my burnout, it's bringing up quite a lot to be working more again, and my nervous system is working hard to protect me.

This may turn out to be one of the hardest parts of this recovery journey, but I'm determined to create a new business path that feels aligned with the new me, supports my nervous system, and allows me to share some of the things I've learned over these last years with others.

What advice would you give to a person who is going through any of the phases you went through? Just pick one of the phases you'd be happy to comment on.

Having a good support network is everything. No matter what you're going through, no matter which career phase you're in or health issue you're facing, having people around you who care and show up for you is invaluable.

Having someone who understands and who is going through, or has gone through, something similar is incredibly powerful as well. I always say I'm both grateful and sad that a close friend of mine deals with a lot of the same things I do. It sucks for both of us, but it does make that we have someone who gets it.

You may already have these people in your life without knowing it. Many of us don't reach out for help because we don't want to be a burden or are afraid of being judged. But opening up and reaching out really is the only way to build supportive connections.

New job, new country, end of a 13-year relationship, and a new life. How much of that was intentional, and how much sort of just happened to you? What exactly was happening in your head and your heart during that period?

For what concerns leaving that relationship: I realized we wanted different lives, and to be able to build the life I wanted, I had to end things. Leaving the relationship was a very conscious decision, and I made it with the plan to move abroad.

I initially wanted to spend each month of 2020 in another city to then decide where I would eventually settle. The pandemic interfered with that plan. I spent January in Valencia, February in Berlin, and then traveled to Lisbon in March, where I ended up in an Airbnb without proper WiFi. Things turned chaotic as lockdown approached, and I decided to fly back to Belgium to wait things out there.

The first lockdown ensued as I touched Belgian soil, and it was during those first two weeks in quarantine that I developed the idea for what would become my content strategy, writing, and optimization service Let Me Write That Down for You. Launching that business was an intentional move, but it probably wouldn’t have happened (or happened so fast) if it hadn’t been for COVID.

I had grown tired of running the travel blog and had just started developing an influencer marketing service when the pandemic started. As my experience was in travel, I chucked the influencer marketing service idea out of the window, put the blog in maintenance mode, and took my chance to do something new.

When travel restrictions loosened, I took a plane to Lisbon and, after just a few weeks there, decided to make it my home. I didn’t feel the need to try out other cities. I knew it was the place for me.

What are you mid-experiment with right now?

While I’m still doing content client work, I’ve carved out a lot of free time to work on my own projects until later this year, and I’m using those hours to follow what feels the most exciting and natural thing to do instead of what I think I “should” do.

I’ve started giving somatic practice sessions and opened up new consulting slots. I’m also pivoting my B2B work (content + consultations) to focus solely on businesses that support self-development. I’ve always been a writer, so it’s interesting to combine those 16 years of professional experience with my new direction.

Interesting, and a challenge, because how do you build a clear personal brand around two things that seem very different? I trust that I’ll figure it out as I keep moving forward.

And I actually just expanded on an experiment: September 17, 2026 marked 1,000 consecutive days of publicly sharing little things that brought me joy on my Instagram stories. It was a project I started during a really rough time, when I noticed I hadn’t consciously felt joy for a while.

It’s played a huge role in my journey and has made me much more aware of all the good around me. Because it was so powerful, I decided to launch a free email series that sends one little prompt a week to help people become more aware of - and create more - joyful moments in their lives.

Have you ever run any smaller experiments on your life that never stuck? What did you learn about yourself?

Probably many more than I can now remember. Some were very short-lived, while others lasted a few weeks or even months. I think they taught me the same lesson as working for myself taught me already a while ago: If it’s not something that I enjoy and genuinely feel excited to do, I likely won’t keep up with it, no matter how great or interesting the idea seems.

You eventually managed to grow a travel blog to 200,000 readers and have a team of freelancers. What did it take to reach that point?

I'll admit I spent a long time looking for some kind of golden nugget, but I never found it. I worked a lot of hours, weekends and evenings included, and it took me a while to admit that social media wasn't my thing and I needed to focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) instead. It's kind of funny that I initially felt resistant to learning SEO because it seemed so technical, and then I ended up creating my second business around it.

What also helped was leaning into the marketing tactics that felt right to me and weren't necessarily what everyone else was doing. Focusing on SEO more than on social media was part of that, as was building a lot of relationships with people in the tourism industry.

My first "hire" was a website developer who is still my developer to this day. While I taught myself some very basic coding and website-building skills, I knew he could do in 15 minutes what would take me hours - hours I could spend on things I was good at. Later, I hired a virtual assistant who helped me with tasks that didn't require my personal input, and a writer who assisted with advertorials and translations.

These things freed up my time to build my audience and do client work.

On top of that, my blog was bilingual. I published almost all of my content in English and Dutch (my native language), which meant that I could tap into my home market as well as reach international travelers.

If you could go back and talk to yourself at the beginning of your travel-blog years, what would you want her to know? I don’t mean about blogging or the business side of things, but about herself?

I'd want her to know that she can trust herself and that she can figure it out. I spent so many years thinking other people knew better, were smarter, or had some type of information that I didn't. While there were definitely bigger and better-earning travel bloggers than me out there, I don't think intelligence was what separated us.

I didn't do certain things that probably would have worked because I was scared to stand out, to fail, or to take a risk. On the other hand, I turned down quite a few opportunities for both audience and financial growth because they weren't in line with my values, and I'm still glad I did that.

You told me you had two 9-to-5 jobs that looked great on paper before becoming self-employed, but that you felt miserable in them. What was it exactly that made you feel like this?

It was a combination of things:

• Having to work a set schedule that didn't work for me.

• Having to be around people the whole day.

• Having to be around people that I hadn't chosen to be around the whole day.

• Doing unfulfilling work.

• Feeling like I was just putting in the time, not building something.

I wouldn't say I'm a big introvert. I lean a bit more introvert than extrovert, but I do identify as HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) and easily get overstimulated. The type of input I get plays a huge role in how I feel, as does the freedom I have to manage my own time and recharge when I need to.

It's also really hard for me to stay engaged with something I don't feel I have a lot of agency over and/or that doesn't interest me.

University had taught me that I was a lot happier not having to abide by a strict schedule, but I had an idealized image of what it would be to work in an environment focused on the written word. I thought the job content would be enough to fulfill me, and my colleagues would inevitably be "my" people.

Neither turned out to be the case, and while I sensed a lot of this and started working for myself before I could really put my finger on everything, it wasn't until I attended DCBKK, an entrepreneur's conference organized by Dynamite Circle, in 2019, that I felt this huge sense of "I'm not alone."

Suddenly I was surrounded by 300-or-so people who were running location-independent lifestyle businesses and were interested in the same types of things I was interested in.

They say you don't know what you have until it's gone, but I think you also don't know what you can have until you've never seen an example of it.

You’ve built things that were objectively successful and still eventually wanted to leave them. What does success mean to you now?

Success is very context-dependent for me. It's also a word I rarely use. I think in terms of fulfillment, so perhaps that's what success means to me? Does a certain activity, relationship, or project nourish and fulfil me in some way? Do I get a sense of fulfilment from what I'm cultivating?

My work also needs to pay the bills but that alone would never make it a success for me. Work that pays the bills simply fulfils the basic need, the bottom requirement of what work is supposed to do. I consider my work successful when I know I've done a good job, there is a desired effect, and I've enjoyed it.

And since I crashed, success also means sustainability. How can I live a fulfilling life without running myself to the ground? How can I respect the needs of my nervous system, and those of my ambitious and very active brain? Finding the answers to those questions is an ongoing process.

You said you don’t have a clear career path forward for the first time ever. How do you feel about that?

Up until a few days ago, excited and very much at peace. In the moment I’m writing this, I’m feeling a little surge of insecurity: “What if I don’t figure it out?”

Of course, all of this would be a lot easier if needing to make money wasn’t a thing, but it is.

I trust that I’ll be able to get back to that sense of peacefulness, though, just like I know that moments of insecurity will pop up here and there. The latter usually coincide with my health dipping. It’s a lot of uncertainty to deal with when your body feels different every single day.

What does “a good working life” mean to you now that you have experienced both conventional employment and working for yourself? What would your perfect workday look like?

Uff, that’s a tough one. It’s one of those prompts so many coaching programs give you: design your perfect day and then work from there. I honestly feel that where I’m at right now in my journey, I can’t answer that question fully.

I do know that I wouldn’t spend 8 hours behind a screen, and that I’d be able to change what I do based on where I’m at in my cycle. I’m much more executing in my follicular phase, for example, and much more strategic in my luteal.

What kind of things make you lose track of time these days?

Working on a project I’m excited about still does. Deeply trying to figure something out. Or studying/learning something I’m interested in. Nourishing conversations over food also have that effect.

What kind of people do you find yourself drawn to? And what kind of people tend to drain you?

I’m drawn to people who are curious, introspective, intelligent, open-minded, and kind. Most of my close friends have a rather calm presence, but are great at being goofy, too. Sometimes, I feel myself pulled towards those with higher energy than me, but then I quickly realize my nervous system can’t keep up.

I don’t think I can adequately describe the types of people that drain me, but I can definitely recognize them when I’m interacting with them, which I think is the most important thing.

What are you curious about at the moment that has absolutely nothing to do with work?

This is a tough one, because I’m so curious about all kinds of human behavior and internal processing, but that’s related to work.

Rather than a single thing, it’s more that I’m constantly curious about things I encounter or things that are mentioned to me. I might research a building I come across on a walk because I’m curious about what it is, or get sucked into a conversation about woodworking because someone I know just started a woodworking project.

What is the quickest way to make you laugh and/or cry?

Oh, neither takes much :) Silly dad jokes and letting me share about things I struggle with or that I’m grieving. The right book or movie can accomplish both things as well.

What do you want people to remember about how you lived, not just what you did?

There’s nothing specific, but I do hope I’ll leave the people close to me with a smile in their hearts. I don’t think about leaving a legacy or a certain idea of who I was and how I lived. I do care about how I can have a positive impact on those around me while I’m here.

What’s making you angry lately - about your work, the world, or yourself?

Gosh, I don’t know if it’s good for my nervous system to get into this one, so I’ll just briefly list a few things:

• War

• The manosphere

• Lack of attention and funding for women’s health issues

• Inequality

• Injustice

• People who care more about their bank accounts than about nature and other humans

You have done workshops, programs, coaching, therapy, nervous system regulation, and worked with a somatic experiencing therapist. What helped you and what didn’t, and how would you do things differently next time, now that you have learned so much about yourself throughout your healing journey?

What helped most was learning to trust that I know better what I need than anyone else, and that I know my body better than anyone else. But I couldn't have gotten to that point if I hadn't tried things that weren't that helpful. Working with my somatic therapist helped enormously as well.

I will say: if you feel like someone is pushing you too hard and you consistently feel worse after having seen a practitioner, they're not for you. It doesn't matter how many people recommend them. You need someone who adapts their approach to fit you specifically, and who can stay within your limits when you can't sense what they are yet.

The only thing that comes to mind that I did that I wish I hadn't, was work with a chiropractor. It was right after my crash and someone recommended him. They said something along the lines of always feeling better and calmer when they left him. Desperate to get help, I spent a lot of money on a bunch of sessions that left me with nothing but headaches.

What I would recommend to someone going through something similar:

Start learning about the nervous system and about nervous system regulation.
The Primal Trust membership program by Dr Kathleen King is really good for this. While it's mostly aimed at people who've been severely chronically ill for a while, the teachings and techniques apply to someone who suffers from anxiety, burnout, depression, … as well. I did the full first two program levels early in my journey.

If you want great short and free content on nervous system regulation, check out Christina Choy on YouTube. She also offers one-on-one coaching. I've done some sessions with her and find them very supportive.

Getting to know your nervous system is important in many ways, but if I'd have to name one, it's that it'll teach you to recognize when you're operating from a highly dysregulated state and would do better not to take any actions or make decisions.

Find a good Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
This can be a bit hard since it's an unregulated field, and just like when you're looking for a therapist, you might need to try a few people before you find someone you click with. I got lucky: a friend of mine recommended my therapist to me and we were an instant click.

Somatic Experiencing is so powerful because you work with the sensations (and sometimes thoughts) that come up rather than getting stuck into the rational story. It's specifically designed to help you process and rewire rather than to go digging into the why.

Implementation matters more than knowledge.
Going to therapy, attending workshops around somatics or interpersonal relating, learning about the nervous system, … It's always the first step. The real work lies in how you implement what you learn and that's something that needs to happen most days.

Is there a specific section in a song, movie, or book that you keep coming back to because you feel that it changed the trajectory of your life? Curious about what exactly changed.

I haven't reread it (I don't like re-reading or re-watching things), but the books Attached by Dr. Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller M.A. and The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron Ph.D. both had a big impact on me.

I read The Highly Sensitive Person soon after my crash and it put my whole being into a new perspective. I definitely identify as being HSP and doing so has helped me respect my needs more.

Someone recommended Attached when I got extremely anxious after entering into a dating dynamic with someone for the first time after my big breakup. It taught me a lot about how I and others relate the way we do and has been a valuable framework for working on my patterns for a long time.

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