Permanence on a Silver Platter: The Disgruntled Nomad (Part Two)
“How would I treat this if it were permanent?”
That question rattled in my mind at the start of August 2023. I was working a construction gig in Miami to pay the bills while battling an adrenaline dump from freshly returning stateside after 10 intense months of vagabonding in South America.
Re-entry back into the U.S. hadn’t been a walk in the park, and I was disappointed to find myself reverting to old, undesirable habits despite the personal journey I’d just come off of. I scrambled frantically to make heads or tails of my experience abroad, determined not to let the hard lessons I had learned be done so in vain. That’s when Pops asked me if I wanted to go lift A/C equipment in the Florida summer heat.
He could only give me a month of work, but I graciously accepted. Anything was better than toiling without a plan in my parents’ house.
I was hardly convinced this short stint in the Sunshine State would bring me much direction either. No, I resolved this was to be another of my many “patient” chapters where I delay the pursuit of certain goals until I have a clearer, more stable vision of what I should do next.
I told myself that vision would come after leaving Florida with some pocket change. It’d be better to address the existential problems in the next chapter. Besides, I’d be shortchanging myself otherwise by spending a month trying to get ahead instead of taking advantage of being in another new city.
Living only a month in a given place was nothing new—my lifestyle had been a series of singular-month chapters for almost a year leading up. I had grown a knack for making surface-level friends quickly, dating noncommittally, and compressing as much experience into a brief period as possible.
That untethered speed of life allowed me to easily dispose of one version of myself after another once I felt like I was bored of its familiarity.
Facing another month with a predefined end, my instinctual inclination told me to:
a) Compact as many interesting experiences as I could into a single month in Miami
b) Neglect the routine habits that normally balance me out like exercise and sleep
and
c) Treat relationships here as nothing more than short-term, passing, and unworthy of a prioritized focus
This time though, I tapped the brakes. I had a good idea where that instinct would lead.
Enough reps of a listless lifestyle had passed me by, and the prospect of another transient stint made me sick. I was tired of being patient and was weary of the dangers of too much empty “I’ll do that one day” self-talk. On top of it all, I felt alone and was the only person capable of fixing it.
I recalled my days post-return from my travels in Oklahoma City where my family demonstrated its utmost compassion during a time when I was certainly not a joyful person to be around. Those days, I puttered around my parents’ house, pissed off at the world for not serving me “meaning” on a silver platter as a reward for a harrowing solo journey south.
I then remembered my final days in Brazil, toiling with the anxiety of returning stateside still lost in my direction. My curiosity was close to extinguished, and I was just trying to make it to the end of my travels to address a question I didn’t have the answer to.
I even thought back to my former career in Oklahoma City before I hit the road, constantly looking for a way out of the state I grew up in. I had then refused to call it home, despite the reality that my two feet (and more importantly my source of income) were there for over a year post-graduation from university.
As those languid memories came flooding back, one common thread was evident.
Principally, I had been unjustly placing more weight on where I was going than where I presently was in each of those eras. The result? I felt transient wherever I was, merely delaying my life until I was “settled” in my next chapter.
Defining the end of chapters in life before the story is written is a sorry and flawed approach to our brief time on this planet. By living within the comforts of a temporary state, I put off certain goals, avoided emotional investment in those who perhaps deserved it, and maintained a rather rotten, flippant attitude to anything that would tie me somewhere for longer than my proud, future-oriented mind had planned.
I had discarded months, if not a couple of years of certain experiences in my 20s by simply convincing myself, “This chapter will not be for much longer; then you’ll be able to start living.”
My community had been suffering the most at the hands of this hubris. I no longer felt tied to Oklahoma where I grew up, nor Arizona where I attended university. I was completely detached from any place, and it was part and parcel because I had neglected to try and plant roots anywhere.
No more, I resolved. There was a way to break out of this transient loop—I just had to experiment with a different tactic.
I determined to approach my month in Miami with a new thought framework, led by this question:
“Even though this chapter will surely be over in a month, how would I act if it was where I was meant to be permanently? How would I treat this place if this is where I was for the rest of my life?”
Remarkably, it (sort of) worked.
What happens when you apply a long-term mindset to a short-term experience?
For me, it fundamentally changes my priorities. Short-term experiences (i.e. temporary experiences and life chapters) encourage high sensitivity to time, neglect of select healthy habits, avoidance of long-term relationships, and overall burnout when gone on longer than we can bear.
The moment we perceive a situation as less than “permanent”, we abandon the daily practices that only pay off in the long run.
In Miami, I decided to pursue those practices despite my dwindling days. These were the habits that would normally feel like they were stealing precious hours from my limited well of time. These are also the habits that make me feel like the best version of myself. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the community and relationships that I typically missed came naturally as a byproduct of my pursuing my own interests.
I spent my time in Florida doing what I would do if I were set to be there for the remainder of my life.
To supplement my health, I consistently visited the gym each evening. I went solo to “meet-ups” to find friends in a new city. Instead of trying the latest restaurant every night, I began cooking according to my nutrition principles (a tall order in the face of hundreds of hole-in-the-wall Latin joints). I attended church to continue studying my religion. I even started reading again, a habit that is normally first to go when clawing for time in a new environment.
None of this is to say that I didn’t venture out of my routine to explore unknown neighborhoods, eat mountains of congri at the local Cuban gas stations, or enjoy the odd Miami night. I simply did it a bit less.
While I departed Miami later that month with perhaps one or two fewer experiences than I could have, I had different rewards to show for my stint there. I had friends, I was feeling fitter than ever, and I had made progress in my reading and writing projects.
It meant I could enjoy the unremarkable in life without fearing I’d miss out on precious seconds of extraordinary moments. I gave myself permission to be present where I was and save the worries of where I went next for when I arrived.
For this was never a mission to eliminate my love for movement around the world but to deepen the very reason for continuing it.
The biggest folly of digital nomads is a personal inability to permit commitment to a place.
The gap between a host community and guests appears too great to span in an abbreviated timeframe. We instead give in to the fast-action, shotgun-approach lifestyle, and condense tours, trendy restaurants, and first dates into a period previously unfathomable in our home communities.
Time scarcity makes us almost desperate to use it as it comes. We convince ourselves this isn’t our “permanent” life. One day, we’ll stop moving. Then, the long-term chapters begin.
Yet, for a population so hell-bent on taking advantage of time abroad, we are readily eager to forfeit it when it comes to pursuing those long-term values that last.
I cannot say what makes life behind the cubicle appear any more secure than one dictated by variety and spontaneity on the road. The perceived stability of it, perhaps.
Just because we can see the end in sight doesn’t mean we should approach our days differently.
The future remains just as unknown for the accountant with the family and home in the suburbs as it does for the gig worker hopping from country to country barely making enough dough to keep going.
They are both at the whim of uncertainty and could be toppled by it or significantly benefited by it on any given day.
The only difference between the two is that one has worked extensively to reduce the unpredictability of life while the other has embraced the very prospect of it.
Based on my success in Florida, I applied the same thought process to my subsequent lives on the road in the months following.
In Cali, Colombia, where I stayed for 2 months, I was able to ingratiate myself with the local gym community by participating in group workout sessions. Treating my time as more permanent, I made an effort to ask for the names of my local shopkeepers and remember their plans for the weekend to ask about on Monday.
Back home in Oklahoma over the holiday season, I resolved not to look ahead to my uncertain future but to treat my hometown as my home once again even though I had plans to leave. Throughout quality time with my now-adult siblings and days spent laying low with my extended family, it became my most cherished Christmas yet.
Nowadays, I feel freer to continue this practice of long-term habits in potentially short-term situations.
It’s by this that I’ve been open again to making genuinely close friends in a lifestyle that most believe begets them. It’s why I’m able to date seriously again. It’s why I can cook without worrying about missing out on a new restaurant and can sleep for a night without missing out on going out.
While personal direction or purpose can remain elusive, I’ve found that deep relationships and community are the path to creating it and not more novel experience.
I don’t know how long I’ll sustain being in Buenos Aires. Time ticks on my legal visa days, and who can say when I’ll reach my wits-end with remote work?
The only certainty is that I’ll have a more enriched experience treating it as long-term than just waiting to move onto somewhere else.
Critics might argue it’s delusional to treat a life chapter with a defined end date as permanent.
I would argue it’s equally delusional to treat a life chapter with an undefined end date as such.
