I was born and raised in the city. Back in the day, the city was big but not too big, if that makes sense. Well, the city's size is pretty subjective. I know people who never left the neighborhood, let alone needed a passport, but the city was big for me.

I still remember how you could hop on a bicycle in the summer and cruise through the city at night. Most of the residents were on holiday, so there wasn’t much traffic. It felt like you owned the city.

Or how, on winter nights when we still had snowy winters, you could sneak out and walk around the city. The sound of snow beneath boots. That muffling effect snow makes. No one on the streets, like being the only person on Earth.

Over the years, it grew bigger and bigger. More people moved in. So did the number of buildings. But not the infrastructure. No new, bigger roads, no improvement in public transportation, no incentive for people to use anything else but cars.

So traffic became a nightmare. Jams became the norm. Something that used to take 10 minutes was 40 now, and the amount of stress, nervousness, and rage was at an all-time high and rising.

The image of the city I had while growing up was replaced with the new reality of an overpopulated metropolis.

As my other reasons for staying in the city faded and something once mandatory became a nice-to-have, the idea of moving out of the city grew bigger.

But where?

So we started looking for a place where we could build our dream life.

Five years of searching. Driving all over the country. Checking a classifieds site daily. Learning every listing by heart. Talking to agents. Walking neighborhoods so I could look up owners in the land registry and ask if they’d sell. Eventually, we found our plot.

Just before we did, my better half said: “Why couldn’t we inherit some land?!” And it wasn’t from a financial perspective. Au contraire. It was from having options.

When the search began, I had must-have, must-not-have, and nice-to-have lists. By the end, I had only one must-have and was willing to give up on it, too.

Which got me thinking. Maybe we bought this plot because we were too tired of searching. Maybe we settled. Or maybe the thing I envisioned doesn’t exist.

At the end of the day, I’m happy we got that place. Or as a friend of mine advised me: “You won’t find it. It will find you.” And he was correct.

We visited this little town half a dozen times, checking the needed infrastructure like kindergarten, schools, transport links, pharmacy, and such. We went to see every ad and dismissed it, except listings from one agent, because he was reluctant to pinpoint where his plots were.

So I met up with him and visited all his listings. As a last resort, he mentioned one I’d already found without his help. The Missus and I had visited it, liked it, but the asking price was way too steep. I’d declined. He was persistent, so we went to see it again

While standing on that plot, he casually mentioned that one just across the street was also for sale, but he never got to put the listing up. It was double the size for almost the same price. I played it cool and couldn’t wait to get home, go back there again with the missus, and get her thoughts.

It was the first, and last, time we made an offer.

Either way, I learned that having options doesn’t make your life easier. Just the opposite: a blank slate lets you go in any direction. The hard part is making yourself move.