How I manifested my dream apartment abroad in 3 weeks without applying to anything
A year and a half ago I was a junior designer in a US city that never felt like mine, in a shared apartment I hated, barely covering rent. What I'd always dreamed about was a little place of my own in Porto. I'd never even been. I just knew, the way you know things at 2am when you can't sleep.
I found this practice during one of those 2am stretches, through subliminals first. And small things genuinely moved, I want to be fair to that era. Random compliments out of nowhere, strangers warmer with me, free concert tickets twice. But on the things that actually hurt, money and Porto, nothing. I think I know why now. "Money flows to me" in someone else's aesthetic never once felt like my life. There was nothing in those videos my imagination could accept as mine.
So I built the scene myself. I'd tried a board too, but I'm a designer, so at first I did it the slow way, all by hand. One scene, not a mood board. Me on a specific street in Porto, morning, cold hands around a coffee, the azulejo tiles behind me, on my way to a job I actually liked. I used real photos of myself to make it: I'd ask for images of me inside that exact moment, the same way people here use ChatGPT for vision board images, except I didn't stop at a still. The moving part is a separate step and a lot more fiddly, but that's the part that matters, a short clip of me in the scene. It's generated, obviously. It just happens to be generated out of me. Then I stitched the clips together by hand.
Before anyone says it: I know Neville says to imagine from the first person, not to watch yourself from outside, and I agree. That's how it ends. I treated the clip like looking at photos of a trip after you've taken it. I'd watch it in bed as I got drowsy, and the watching handed me the scene, and by the time I was falling asleep I wasn't watching anymore. I was in it, first person, feeling the cold of the coffee cup, hearing the street. I found out later that this is basically just SATS. The video just did the heavy lifting my brain couldn't do at 11pm after a full shift. The imagining is still the part that does anything. The clip only got me into the room quicker on nights I was too tired to get there by myself.
About three weeks in, a recruiter messaged me about a full time marketing designer role in Porto. Relocation bonus, help finding a place. I had applied to nothing. I hadn't told anyone I wanted to leave. I read the message three times in the office bathroom and then I cried at the airport a month later like a complete idiot. The apartment is tiny and it is mine. One room and a half, a window that gets the morning, my name on the lease.
Now the part nobody talks about, and the part I'd push back on myself about. Scenes go stale for me. After a while the same scene stopped producing anything. My brain had memorized it, the way you stop feeling a song you've looped all week. At first I panicked and thought I'd lost the state. But it didn't feel like doubt when I actually sat with it. It felt more like being done. There was nothing left in that moment I still wanted. So I kept the ending the same and just changed which moment I stepped into. Next part of the same story. Landing at the airport. The taxi. Walking my street. Unlocking my own door. Porto was always the end, every night, until the 3D caught up. I guess the way I'd put it now is that I persisted in the assumption. Just not in one specific clip. Honestly the story moving forward night by night made it feel more like memory and less like wishing.
Also, because I don't trust perfect stories either: maybe half of what I've put down has come through. The job is ordinary. I'm not rich or anything. But I feel safe, and honestly safe was the thing I actually wanted the whole time. And there was a stretch after the move where I stopped completely, because each clip took me hours to make by hand and I was alone in a new country. Things drifted backwards fast, the old spiral and all. That stretch convinced me more than the wins did, honestly. It wasn't subtle. The weeks I stopped, nothing moved at all. I eventually automated the making part for myself so a fresh scene is waiting by bedtime, and it held after that.
https://reddit.com/link/1vh7ceo/video/l09d4uagvrhh1/player
One more thing and then I'll leave it, because it's not what this post is about. There was a person I'd quietly given up on before any of this started. A few months after the move he came back into my life, and last month we got married, a small ceremony here in Porto. Same practice, one scene at a time, nothing different. A year ago I would have led with that. I'm not leading with it now because the biggest thing this practice changed wasn't even the stuff that showed up. Somewhere in there I just stopped gripping. The state came first, and honestly everything else just followed it, the job, the street, him.
The video is a demo I made from the photos I was using just before the move, run through my current setup, in case it helps to see what one actually looks like. It crams everything I wanted back then into one. My real nightly ones do one goal at a time and are just the scene, no captions.
Happy to answer questions about how I build the scenes or the nightly routine. This sub gave me the vocabulary for what I was fumbling toward, so this is me paying it back.