No places to be, no reason to stop

I wrote previously about starting yet another chapter. I’ve now been running my own company for a while, and it’s been a ride. Figuratively and literally.

My plan was to reduce my belongings to minimum, and try to not build any anchors in the new city. What I didn’t quite realize at the time that no anchors literally means no anchors.

I was supposed to go on a two week trip to South East Asia, to get some sun and because it was snowing in Tbilisi. My return flight got cancelled and I just… kept going. No places to be, no reason to stop. Two weeks turned into four months, and into a trip around the world.

Running your own business with paying customers means unprecedented level of freedom in how to live. Instead of paying rent and utilities, I pay for flights and Airbnbs. It’s not a cheap way of life. Often paying for full flex air fares because plans can change, and staying in central locations, because working full time eats into exploration. But this tradeoff makes the better story.

Physical toll is real. You catch the occasional flu or food poisoning, jetlag hits you on longer transitions, and you carry everything you own. The last part is both curse and a blessing. When you carry literally everything by yourself, both physically and mentally, it makes you to have a hard look at what you actually need.

It’s actually easier for me to get rid of physical possessions, than acquiring new ones. Two international relocations taught me that I almost get high when I get rid of things I don’t want to own. But when I actually need something new? No permanent address means no internet shopping, so any need turns into a quest in a foreign city. Sometimes it means hunting for a new bag for a week.

The mental payload is simultaneously both easy and hard. People’s decisions are often limited by employment, money, geography and other people. I’ve now decoupled employment both from money and geography, but I still worry what other people think more than I’d like to admit. That’s starting to change.

Constant travel is certainly a life of solitude, but it’s also exactly what you make of it. The exposure to different cultures becomes the litmus test of what you value. I’ve come view my time in Switzerland, its corporate culture, and the country itself very critically, and reached some fairly bleak conclusions. Enough for a complete book. But the most important change: my mental health went from the absolutely bottom to absolute peak in less than a year.

In hindsight it’s obvious. Constant lies and fake posturing doesn’t build anything sustainable. Honesty and little Latin American chaos just might.