365 days (or more) have passed since I left home and started writing this newsletter, no rules to follow, no sugar-coating (ni pelos en la lengua).
Spurts of emotion. Tips for those testing out life abroad. How to crawl out from the rubble of unemployment. Or unexpected connections with gastronomy.
A year since I realised that to get through the malas (the bad times), I had to embrace them (aka create a platform where I could share them).
But before I could explain what this space is about, I had to understand it myself.
There are seasons where you work without trust, without focus. Not because you’re lazy, but because you’re inhabiting ideas that aren’t yours. Wearing roles someone else invented. Living by philosophies you didn’t choose.
And so, without noticing, your energy — your best energy — goes into holding up something that never once asked who you are.
It’s not just about “work”.
It’s about where you put your body, your attention, your intention each day.
And if that doesn’t connect with you, no matter how hard you push, you fade anyway.
Frustration doesn’t come from working hard. It comes from working for something that doesn’t let you be.
Because you can’t live fully inside something that doesn’t make space for you to discover yourself.
I spent years like that. Jumping from idea to idea, trusting other people’s projects to avoid my own. Starting things with enthusiasm and dropping them without knowing why. Life Menu was one of those. Just another attempt. Another a ver si esta vez sí (let’s see if this time it works).
But rushing something that doesn’t yet live inside you, that doesn’t even have a name, is like setting a deadline for a seed that’s just sprouted.
Life Menu was born a thousand times. Always rushed. Always with the anxiety of “building something” now. With no real focus, I kept moving, letting time decide the route.
Before daring to really look at myself, I did everything to avoid it. I kept busy. Really busy. Alongside my “real” jobs, I created a character on social media, and for a while, it worked. I wrote scripts, edited videos until my eyes burned, built personas, and had phrases go viral.
From the outside, it looked like it was working. Inside, I had no idea where I was going, or why.
It was like putting glitter on something I couldn’t yet name.
The sensitivity was there. But boxed in. Stored in a pretty container, the kind that looks good on Instagram but doesn’t let anything breathe.
I had something to say, but I couldn’t say it like that.
The real stuff can’t be forced.
The real stuff shows up when you make space for it.
I had to leave.
Change language, accent, seasons.
Be alone.
Mute the noise and urgency.
And wait.
Wait for whatever I had to say to come out without a disguise.
I arrived in Berlin with zero certainties.
Farewelled, directionless, with one single instruction: surrender.
The market didn’t let me keep doing what I knew. My CV wasn’t enough. My plan wasn’t enough. Maybe not this way.
The famous ver qué sale (let’s see what comes up) led me to gastronomy — a world I’d never stepped into. Yet somehow, it had been waiting for me.
Serving new versions of myself, I found belonging in a “family” that didn’t need explanations. I’d found what I’d been unconsciously looking for: a space to meet myself.
That’s when I understood: Life Menu wasn’t a plan.
It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t even a “big idea”.
It was what appears when you stop pushing.
When you let go of what it “should be” and stay with what is.
It’s what’s born in the mientras tanto (the in-between).
In the small things.
In what you didn’t plan, but transforms you.
And so, what I didn’t know… started to make sense.
It wasn’t about where I was going, but how I was driving.
I don’t have five neat content pillars.
I’m not a hashtag category.
I’m a process.
Life Menu is how I explore the invisible things that keep us going:
career changes, new cities, inner searches, lifestyles that don’t fit neatly in a definition, and the kind of food that can bring someone back to life.
Life Menu is transformation, colour, and authenticity.
I write from Berlin and Buenos Aires. But I also write from the questions that follow you anywhere:
Who are you when no one sees you?
What does it mean to have your own voice, even when you don’t know how to use it?
Stories of people who’ve taught me to see differently.
Ideas that inspire me to create.
Reviews that don’t just recommend, they resonate.
Recipes that don’t chase likes, they chase memories.
Questions with no instant answer.
Reflections on what you can’t see, but can feel.
I can’t promise I’ll stay the same over time. I can’t tie myself to traits that might stop fitting tomorrow. But I can transform, over and over, wrapped in the honesty that carries me through these changes.
Because that’s what Life Menu is:
A way of designing your life through what you eat, wear, live and feel.
No formulas. No need to have it all figured out. Just presence.
Today, I don’t have more certainties than before.
But I do have conviction.
That this matters.
That there’s a possible community on the other side.
That living with sensitivity, humour and intuition is also a form of activism.
Thanks for being here. For reading. For keeping your questions alive.
This is just the beginning.
—Abi
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