Houseboat or Castle? What's Next?

So, The Sighing House in Italy up for sale. The purchase of the house was so bizarre and funny it inspired me to follow my dream to write again, and I published a book in 2020 about moving to Italy and buying a derelict villa.

The house kept on giving. It gave more stories and more laughs about renovating and living in Italy that I just had to keep on sharing them.

There are now seven books in the ‘A Rosie Life In Italy’ series, I am a full-time author and the sales of the books about the house has brought in more income than the what the house cost when we bought it. So the house has effectively paid for itself.

PLEASE NOTE: I’m still be doing my Women’s Writing Retreats and Fabulous Midlife Retreats in Tuscany (I don’t host them at the house) and hope to continue for many years to come!

1. The main reason is because my intuition is telling me to. I’m a firm believer in following intuition. Whenever I’ve done that in the past, it’s turned out to be the right thing. And every time I delayed, I later realised I should have trusted myself sooner.

2. I feel life is too short to stay in the one place. And when this itch gets triggered, I’ve realised the best thing is to go with the flow and see what happens. Follow my intuition.

3. I am currently doing a three year course in ‘Modern Matriarchal Societies’ and through this, and my women’s retreats, and the women I’ve researched for the historical fiction I have written, and hosting women at our home, my compassion and empathy for women (past, present and future) has expanded hugely, and I am inspired to explore doing something on a bigger scale for women. (More about this in a future post).

4. I’ve written all I can about this house! I need new material to keep my readers amused! I’ll be keeping readers updated with ideas as I figure out what’s next — which will hopefully involve more humour than tears.

5. We don’t need a huge house to ourselves. If I opt for a big place I want to be able to share it with likeminded people and this house doesn’t quite fit what I have in mind.

It’s time for the house to pass to someone else who needs it, someone who can take it on its next journey.

Perhaps it’s already done what it needed to do for me. Although, to be fair, it still hasn’t given me any bloody clarity about what comes next.

But I’m going to start figuring that out; start looking at places, exploring different ideas, and working out what feels right and the practicalities.

It feels a bit like when I started my blog six years ago on the 10th March 2020, that somehow it turned into an eight-book series (Book 8 is available on preorder!).

Honestly I’m considering everything at the moment: everything from a tiny one-bedroom place, to something the size of a boutique hotel where a coven of women could live together and support one another – a convent, or a freaking village we can take over. Who’s up for that?

This morning alone I was checking out houseboats in the UK to hide away on (I always fancied the idea of being a pirate) :

Boat house 1: Massive! Would be a hilarious project to do.

Boat house 2: Walk-in ready. Suitable for someone more sane than me.

To a monastery to buy with a group of other like minded women:

Want to share living in a mountain hideway with an infinity pool with me? Look at this.

I don’t know what the future holds — but none of us do.

We can make all the plans we like, but what makes life exciting is trying new things.

However, after renovating and living in Italy, I’ve learned so much about buying property here, renovating here, and what’s really involved.

As I look at places, I’ll share the reasoning behind decisions — the practical realities, the pros and cons of every place and every possibility.

This journey isn’t only about finding a place to live as quickly as possible. For me, it’s about exploring life and writing about it.

Just like I wrote books one to seven by following the journey as it unfolded, I’m going to do that again… but different.

And I hope you’ll stick around for it.