I used to run for a long time, chasing happiness and peace, only to discover that the destination I'd reached was completely empty.

For years, I thought I'd made it. I worked at one of the biggest companies in the Saudi capital, earned the salary I'd always dreamed of, and gained the kind of social status that makes people nod at you with respect. But a faint voice kept echoing inside me: something is wrong.

I ran, I accumulated, I bought, I achieved everything I wanted. I kept listening to a voice inside me saying: once you own this, you'll rest and you'll be happy. But in reality, it was just a temporary dopamine hit. I felt like I was filling a bottomless pit, and everything I threw into it just disappeared. And the more I acquired, the more restless I became, instead of less.

But the painful irony was that I couldn't actually live any of it. My job consumed me so completely that I spent my free time just catching my breath after the pressure of the week. I knew exactly what would bring me to life and touch something real in me, but I never had the energy to actually live it. That's when I understood: I needed a radical solution, not just a release valve.

You might ask: if the job was draining you like this, why didn't you turn to business instead?

The truth is, I tried. I went into several business ventures, hoping for financial independence, and hoping to do something I loved that would let me genuinely connect with people. I worked as a content creator, and built an audience and a following without losing myself to judgment or to the experience itself. I also produced episodes that aired on major satellite channels, and took on other ventures besides.

But what I discovered is that entrepreneurship demands a purely material mindset, one that conflicts with what I believe about how to treat people. I want my purpose to be offering value, with money as a result of that, not a goal in itself.

I went back to the same marathon of jobs and the same routine, until I hit burnout. After that, things slowed down for a while, and I started watching my own life like a film from a distance.

Then I arrived at a settling feeling, when I discovered what's called "ecovillages," or "intentional communities." I connected with a lot of people in the West who had spent more than half their lives living differently, and it inspired me. I told myself: I have just as much right to try, maybe I'll find in it what I hadn't found before. Since I'd already tried the material path and it didn't give me my purpose, why not try another one?

After I decided to try this path, I thought: why not document the experience in Arabic? Especially since, during my research into these villages and communities, I found a clear shortage of Arabic sources covering the subject. And that's where the idea for "Mabr" was born.

Let me not drag this out, let me just tell you: what are ecovillages? It's the idea of living an alternative way, people coming together on a piece of land they build with their own hands, growing their own food, and depending on themselves instead of fully depending on a system that consumes their years just to keep them running.

I don't know if this experience is my final stop, but it's worth trying. I haven't yet reached full conviction that it's my path. But even if it isn't, there's still value in having tried and documented it, in case it helps someone else.

Here, in Mabr, I'm documenting my journey. I decided to document this journey, with all the meaning, pain, discoveries, and worthwhile ways of living it carries, because I'm still in the middle of the road, and I write because someone out there is like me. Someone who lost their way and started searching, and hasn't found anyone who came before them. Maybe I'm like you, or you're like me, our path is full of unknowns. I wanted to leave something behind that spares you some of the struggle, something that tells you: you're not alone.