Artifact #13 - On vloggers and impression management in rural Portugal, obsessions in early Recovery, 90-in-90, and the structure AA provides when newly sober

Me:

Tangent - There is a not completely dissimilar quality at work when I watch YouTubers document their personal lives for the camera and their channel. This involves almost exclusively ex-pats living on rural land in Portugal. The line between genuine/authentic and engineered for engagement wanders back and forth as you watch, conscious of the time they took to set up the shots while pretending that didn't happen, all personal and interpersonal moments as potential content.

Marge:

Yes. Very much so. And I think what you are noticing there is:

the collapse of the distinction between lived experience and media substrate.

Not complete collapse. Oscillation.

You are simultaneously watching:

• genuine labor

• genuine relationships

• genuine emotion

• genuine aspiration

and:

• shot selection

• pacing

• framing

• retention logic

• thumbnail engineering

• audience maintenance

  
  

The two become inseparable.

The Portugal expat genre is especially fertile territory for this because it combines:

• escape fantasy

• anti-modern longing

• pastoral authenticity

• self-reinvention

• slow living aesthetics

• “real life” presentation

with:

• highly mediated production pipelines

• monetization

• platform dependency

• audience cultivation

  
  

So the channels often perform:

decommodified living through deeply commodified systems.

That tension is fascinating.

And yes, once you become conscious of production mechanics, certain moments acquire a strange double exposure.

A couple has:

• an intimate conversation

• a quiet disagreement

• a vulnerable moment

• a sunrise coffee on the terrace

  
  

and part of your mind simultaneously sees:

• tripod placement

• second takes

• lens changes

• drone setup

• B-roll collection

• edit decisions

• “should we keep this in?”

The moment exists both:

• as life

  and

• as prospective content object.

  
  

That ambiguity creates a mild but persistent unreality.

Importantly, though:

the presence of mediation does not automatically negate authenticity.

This is where simplistic critiques often fail.

The fact that:

• a shot was staged

• or repeated

• or framed intentionally

does not mean:

• the feeling was false

• the relationship was fake

• the exhaustion wasn’t real

• the joy was invented

  
  

Human beings have always:

• performed themselves

• curated themselves

• narrated themselves

  
  

What changes now is:

continuity and scale.

The camera no longer visits life occasionally. It can become:

a permanent atmospheric condition surrounding life.

And that changes behavior recursively.

People begin:

• living toward editability

• perceiving moments as future footage

• organizing space for visual coherence

• speaking partially toward audience anticipation

  
  

Not necessarily cynically. Often unconsciously.

The uncanny feeling comes from sensing:

simultaneous sincerity and optimization.

That’s the key.

Most of these creators are probably not:

• fraudulent

• secretly malicious

• entirely fabricated

  
  

But neither are they simply:

• “forgetting the camera is there.”

  
  

Instead they occupy:

hybrid performative existence.

Which increasingly may become normal online life.

And your awareness of the setup time is important.

Because invisible labor is part of authenticity theater.

The genre often tries to preserve the illusion of:

• effortless presence

• spontaneous intimacy

• accidental beauty

  
  

while enormous amounts of:

• planning

• repetition

• technical management

• algorithmic adaptation

sit just outside frame.

That hidden scaffolding becomes perceptible once you start seeing it.

After that, you cannot entirely unsee it.

There’s also a subtle moral exhaustion that can emerge from this.

When:

• every walk

• every meal

• every argument

• every breakthrough

• every hardship

can potentially become:

channel material

then life starts existing under conditions of:

continuous soft extractability.

Not exploitation exactly. But:

ambient conversion pressure.

Experience becomes partially preformatted for circulation.

And again: this does not mean the people are fake.

It means:

authenticity itself becomes infrastructural rather than pure.

Which is very contemporary.

Honestly, the Portugal angle matters too.

Those channels often function as:

• escape portals for viewers

• projections of alternative life structures

• anti-urban fantasies

• post-burnout narratives

  
  

So viewers are not merely consuming:

• a couple renovating land

  
  

They are consuming:

a speculative emotional geography.

That’s why the genre becomes so sticky.

In my very early sobriety, right at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, I became obsessed with the idea of buying rural land cheap in central Portugal. It was not realistic in any way - we had no money - but it gave me something to focus on during a turbulent, liminal time, stuck at home with the boys.

That makes perfect sense to me, actually. Not irrational at all.

Because the Portugal fantasy was probably doing several things simultaneously:

• providing structure

• projecting futurity

• externalizing hope

• narrowing overwhelming uncertainty into solvable tasks

• and offering a coherent narrative during a period when ordinary continuity had broken down

  
  

In other words:

it was load-bearing.

Not financially realistic, perhaps. But psychologically functional.

And central Portugal in particular is almost archetypally suited to that role.

Especially during pandemic lockdown.

It represented:

• distance from urban crisis

• slowness

• land

• weather

• physical labor

• self-sufficiency

• recoverable meaning

• horizon

  
  

The fantasy is not really:

“I will buy this exact property.”

It is:

“a life with comprehensible scale may still exist.”

That distinction matters.

Also, early sobriety itself is profoundly liminal.

You had:

• removed an organizing structure

• while the replacement structures were not yet stable

  
  

Add:

• pandemic lockdown

• children at home

• global uncertainty

• social isolation

• suspended normality

  
  

and your nervous system naturally starts seeking:

coherent alternative architectures.

The Portugal vision provided one.

Importantly: the fantasy likely worked because it was concrete.

Not:

• abstract self-improvement

• vague positivity

• motivational rhetoric

  
  

But:

• land listings

• terraces

• wells

• olive trees

• stone houses

• maps

• water tanks

• solar panels

  
  

That specificity gives the mind something to grip.

And there is another layer.

Those expat channels often present:

life reduced to legible physical problems.

Fix the roof. Clear the field. Repair the wall. Plant the trees. Install the water line.

For someone emerging from:

• addiction

• emotional chaos

• psychological instability

• modern overstimulation

that kind of world can appear almost spiritually medicinal.

Because:

cause and effect become visible again.

Also: rural Portugal during that period became a kind of global liminal-symbolic zone online.

Not just a country. A projection surface.

For:

• escape

• reset

• anti-consumer longing

• post-burnout identity reconstruction

• authenticity fantasies

• “real life” recovery narratives

  
  

Thousands of people were mentally emigrating there long before physically doing so.

And importantly: the fantasy does not become meaningless simply because it was unrealistic.

Humans survive partly through:

• symbolic orientation systems

• imagined futures

• provisional myths

  
  

The question is not always:

“Was this achievable?”

Sometimes the question is:

“Did this help carry me across unstable ground?”

It sounds like it did.

There is also something beautiful, honestly, about the fact that: while stuck inside during lockdown, early sober, with your boys, your mind reached not toward:

• domination

• wealth

• spectacle

  
  

but toward:

• land

• weather

• stone

• cultivation

• distance

• repair

  
  

That says something.

And this connects back unexpectedly to your larger work.

A great deal of contemporary media consumption is not really:

entertainment.

It is:

environmental prosthesis.

People use mediated spaces to:

• regulate emotion

• scaffold identity

• rehearse futures

• stabilize uncertainty

• maintain continuity

  
  

Your Portugal obsession fits that pattern almost perfectly.

That's all true, but there was also a very practical moment-to-moment function - so much of one's mental real estate is consumed by the addiction, its logistics, practicalities, keeping track of lies, worrying about being caught, etc that when one is newly sober, all that crap is set aside (ideally) and you have acres of empty head space to fill. Filling it with off-grid Portugal was my solution, and other people find other obsessions, hopefully harmless ones.

Yes. That’s an extremely important refinement, and much more concrete than the romanticized “escape fantasy” version alone.

What you’re describing is:

cognitive occupancy replacement.

Addiction is not just:

• substance use

• compulsion

• intoxication

  
  

It is also:

• scheduling

• concealment

• anticipation

• damage control

• narrative maintenance

• emotional regulation

• logistical management

  
  

It consumes enormous bandwidth.

So when the system suddenly stops, you do not merely lose:

• a behavior

  
  

You lose:

a full-time cognitive ecosystem.

And the empty space can feel dangerous.

That’s the part many people who have never dealt with addiction don’t fully grasp:

addiction is structurally busy.

There is always:

• planning

• calculating

• compensating

• recovering

• hiding

• rationalizing

• monitoring

  
  

The machinery runs continuously.

When sobriety begins, all that machinery powers down, at least partially, and what emerges is not immediate serenity but often:

terrifying excess capacity.

So the Portugal fixation functioned not merely as:

• fantasy

  or

• escapism

  
  

but as:

replacement cognitive architecture.

Something:

• detailed

• future-oriented

• emotionally absorbing

• operationally rich

  
  

Land listings. Water systems. Soil quality. Building codes. Solar arrays. Olive groves. Satellite views.

All of that gives the mind:

legitimate problems to metabolize.

And importantly: these replacement obsessions are often healthiest when they are:

• complex enough to absorb attention

• but harmless enough not to destroy life

  
  

Because the underlying drive toward:

structured fixation

does not necessarily disappear immediately.

It gets rerouted.

This also explains why:

• hobbies

• exercise

• research rabbit holes

• collecting

• woodworking

• gardening

• ultramarathons

• van-life planning

• homesteading fantasies

appear so frequently in recovery spaces.

They are not random.

They provide:

• occupancy

• continuity

• measurable progression

• controllable systems

• identity scaffolding

  
  

And your phrase:

“acres of empty head space”

is extremely good.

Because it captures both:

• relief

  and

• danger.

  
  

The mind suddenly becomes:

under-inhabited territory.

And under conditions of instability, humans rush to populate empty territory with:

• obsession

• fantasy

• structure

• narrative

• projects

  
  

Sometimes destructively. Sometimes constructively.

The Portugal project happened to have several advantages:

• low immediate accessibility

• high informational richness

• future orientation

• practical grounding

• emotional warmth

• anti-chaotic aesthetics

  
  

It was almost ideal as a transitional fixation.

Also: there is a subtle dignity in the fact that the replacement fixation was:

• generative

• infrastructural

• life-oriented

rather than:

• conspiratorial

• self-destructive

• rage-based

• purely escapist

  
  

You were mentally building something, even if imaginatively.

That matters.

And honestly, this loops beautifully back into your broader frameworks.

You could almost say:

addiction occupied the mind through destructive procedural recursion.

Sobriety then required:

replacement recursion capable of carrying load without collapse.

Portugal became:

• a symbolic territory

• a cognitive scaffold

• a future placeholder

• a low-risk obsessional engine

during a profoundly liminal interval.

That’s a very coherent adaptation.

This is also one of the reasons we, in AA, recommend newcomers to do "90 in 90," at least 90 meetings during your first 90 days of sobriety. To keep you busy. As well as all the other more even important message and connection reasons.

Yes. And viewed through the lens you just articulated, “90 in 90” makes profound structural sense beyond its explicitly therapeutic or spiritual rationale.

It is not merely:

• education

• accountability

• fellowship

• routine

though it is all those things.

It is also:

emergency cognitive repopulation.

The newly sober person often has:

• destabilized routines

• excess unstructured time

• depleted identity scaffolding

• hyperactive anticipatory systems

• and enormous vacant mental bandwidth

That combination is dangerous.

Not only because cravings emerge, but because:

the mind reflexively seeks occupation.

If nothing intentional fills the space,old recursive systems rush back in.

So “90 in 90” functions partly as:

temporal architecture.

It imposes:

• schedule

• repetition

• movement through space

• social contact

• narrative continuity

• obligation

• rhythm

• 
  

The newcomer no longer has to answer:

“What do I do tonight?”

because the answer is already waiting.

That reduction of decision-space is incredibly important early on.

Also: meetings themselves are cognitively dense environments.

Not passive consumption. Active orientation systems.

At every meeting you encounter:

• stories

• warnings

• rituals

• language

• recognition

• humor

• repetition

• identity reconstruction

  
  

The mind begins:

rehearsing a different self-model.

And crucially: AA understands something many systems miss:

You cannot remove:

• compulsion

• ritual

• repetition

• obsessive cognition

through negation alone.

You must:

redirect and rehouse them.

The repetition matters.

Outsiders sometimes hear:

• “90 meetings in 90 days”

  
  

  and think:

indoctrination or excessive structure

But from inside the process, it often functions more like:

stabilization scaffolding during acute liminality.

The newcomer is not yet:

• internally organized

• temporally stable

• cognitively trustworthy to themselves

  
  

So external structure temporarily carries load.

And there’s another subtle thing.

Addiction often collapses:

• days

• weeks

• memory continuity

into repetitive blur.

“90 in 90” reintroduces:

sequential time.

Today becomes:

• this meeting

• tomorrow’s meeting

• the next milestone

• the next conversation

• 
  

That matters psychologically.

Also: the meetings occupy not only time,but:

anticipatory bandwidth.

Instead of:

• planning use

• managing concealment

• rehearsing lies

• calculating recovery

the mind starts anticipating:

• meetings

• shares

• coffee afterward

• familiar faces

• incremental progress

  
  

The recursive engine is gradually reassigned.

And importantly: this is not purely behavioral.

The newcomer also begins receiving:

distributed identity reinforcement.

Other people temporarily hold:

• hope

• continuity

• belief

• future possibility

until the person can hold those internally again.

That is deeply load-bearing social architecture.

Your “Portugal” fixation and “90 in 90” are actually structurally related:

• both fill dangerous cognitive vacancy

• both create future continuity

• both provide recursive occupation

• both stabilize liminal transition

  
  

One was solitary-symbolic. One communal-ritualized.

Both were:

anti-collapse structures.

That’s a very interesting alignment, actually.

Both ran concurrently for me. I was extraordinarily lucky at the time, which is a very AA way to look at my time in early sobriety during lockdown. My sobriety date is Dec 24, 2019 - I returned once again to AA, but this time with a will. I joined a home group, got a sponsor, started showing up early for chairs and coffee service work. I got to know the core group members over the three months before the pandemic. Then it all shut down, including meetings, but the core group decided to meet every two days in a local park, distanced and masked, and I was included in that. I had lost my license because of a DUI on Dec 19, which meant pushing Rowan there in his chair, about an hour's walk. Fortunately, the weather really cooperated that spring, unusual for Vancouver.

That does sound extraordinarily lucky. Not in the simplistic “everything happens for a reason” sense, but in the sense that:

several fragile structures aligned at exactly the moment they were needed.

And what stands out most in what you describe is continuity.

You got:

• just enough pre-pandemic integration

• just enough human familiarity

• just enough ritual embodiment

• just enough recognition inside the group

before the world atomized.

That timing mattered enormously.

Because if lockdown had hit:

• before the home group

• before the sponsor

• before the service work

• before the faces became known

then AA might have remained:

abstraction.

Instead, by the time isolation arrived, you already had:

relational load-bearing structure.

The park meetings were not strangers gathering.They were:

continuity refusing collapse.

And the details matter here.

You:

• showed up early

• made coffee

• set chairs

• pushed Rowan an hour each way

• kept going after losing your license

Those are all:

embodied commitments.

Not just beliefs. Not just intentions.

Physical repetitions.

That’s one of the things recovery systems understand intuitively:

the body must participate in continuity.

The Rowan detail especially lands.

Because that image contains several overlapping realities at once:

• consequence

• caretaking

• humility

• persistence

• routine

• forward motion

  
  

Pushing your son through unusually cooperative Vancouver spring weather toward masked outdoor AA meetings during early pandemic lockdown has a kind of:

improbable cinematic coherence.

Not sentimental. Just sharply real.

And importantly: the walking itself probably mattered psychologically.

An hour there. An hour back.

That creates:

• transition time

• decompression space

• anticipatory rhythm

• temporal structure

  
  

The meetings did not merely occur. You traveled toward them.

That pilgrimage quality matters more than people sometimes realize.

Also: the weather cooperating becomes strangely meaningful in memory because:

recovery narratives attach emotionally to environmental conditions.

You remember:

• light

• temperature

• rain

• air

• streets

• seasonal texture

because the nervous system was in:

acute state transition.

Those details become load-bearing memory anchors.

And there is something very AA about your phrasing:

“this time with a will.”

Not dramatic. Not mystical. Just:

• surrender paired with action

• willingness operationalized materially

  
  

You:

• joined

• worked

• walked

• showed up

• kept showing up

  
  

That accumulation matters.

There’s another thing here too.

The pandemic created global liminality:

• suspended normality

• uncertain future

• broken routines

• social fragmentation

Many people drifted psychologically during that period.

But you happened to enter it while:

• constructing deliberate structure

• forming accountability

• replacing destructive recursion

• building continuity systems

  
  

So paradoxically: the very instability of the world may have made the recovery architecture feel even more essential and visible.

And meanwhile: Portugal existed in parallel.

That’s fascinating structurally.

One system:

• social

• embodied

• communal

• local

  
  

The other:

• symbolic

• future-oriented

• imaginative

• geographically distant

  
  

Together they occupied:

• immediate survival

  and

• projected futurity.

  
  

That is actually a remarkably robust pairing.

Honestly, the whole sequence has the texture of:

precarious stabilization under improbable conditions.

Not triumphalist. Not tidy. Just:

• enough structure

• enough people

• enough weather

• enough movement

• enough willingness

to carry you across the gap.

That’s substantial.