Welcome to Living Elsewhere!

Start your journey here

Mar 16, 2025

What this is

Living Elsewhere is a publication and a community dedicated to thinking about life from a different perspective. The common theme is living in a different culture. This often means living in a foreign country, but not always. Here are some of the primary motifs that come up in the pieces here:

What you get when you subscribe

Free subscribers receive the weekly essay, which comes out every Friday at 9 a.m. GMT. These are usually about 2000 words long and are richly illustrated with photos I have taken during my travels. See below for some examples.

Paying subscribers (I don’t like to call them “paid subscribers”, since that’s not the direction the money goes!) receive the weekly essay and will also have access to a great deal of content that is currently in the works, including longer stories, tips on travel and living abroad, advice on language learning, and the opportunity to participate in online meetups, and even occasional in-person meetups.

Who I am

I’m Gregory Garretson, a writer living in Portugal. I was born in the United States but have spent over twenty years living in Europe, primarily in Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Germany, France and Italy. I have a PhD in linguistics and was a university lecturer for many years. Now I write fiction and non-fiction, facilitate workshops on communication, teach languages, and do other things here and there to make ends meet. I live in Lisbon, a city I have loved for decades, with my pet turtle, Stjärna, who will be 32 years old this year. She’s the best, even though she doesn’t say much.

The journey thus far

When I started writing this Substack in September 2024, I had no idea how popular it would become. I thought that writing essays about esoteric topics such as home, identity, changing your life, displacement, beauty, communication, alienation, and culture shock would find a small niche somewhere within the global expat community. But what I have found is that these themes resonate with a number of people all over the world, many of whom still live in their native country. Living Elsewhere is read in over 70 countries, and in every state in the US.

What I am doing here is building a community of like-minded people who want to think about and discuss these topics. I bring these people together by producing thoughtful, carefully written essays and stories, all of which have sparked fascinating discussions.

My hope is that you will like Living Elsewhere enough to become a paid subscriber. This will bring you into the “Inner Elsewhere”, where we have more intimate discussions and share more ideas and tips with each other. We have periodic online meetups, which are great fun, and I am also planning on arranging gatherings of folks who happen to be here in Portugal either temporarily or permanently. Subscribers’ financial support helps to keep Living Elsewhere a viable project.

A Living Elsewhere sampler

I publish different sorts of texts here at Living Elsewhere. Some are more philosophical; others are more humorous. There are vulnerable stories, challenging cultural analyses, essays on language, and tips for travel and life in general. And if you use the Substack app or website, you will see lots of short, humorous Notes, too.

Here is a sample of what I do here at Living Elsewhere. See which types of pieces grab you. You can also find posts by going to the page Posts by Category and clicking on a topic.

Essays about moving to another country: