Short one today.

At the beginning of the year, I maintained a remarkable consistency in “silent mornings”. Every day, I would wake up and spend the first 2-3 hours of the day without any input. I would avoid looking at my phone, listening to music, or even reading. Normally, that was when I could get my best writing done too.

The year then turned faster, busier, less routine. The silent mornings ceased. Now, as the year winds down, I’m content to have rediscovered them. Silence makes room for the type of thinking that will pull at a thread of an idea. Without noise, it’s easier to follow the thread.

My writing muscles are atrophying the less frequently I use them. Somehow, staying on top of this newsletter was easier amid excursions into Patagonia, cow-feeding sessions on a Brazilian farm, and swinging from a hammock over the Amazon River than it is staying put in Buenos Aires.

That chapter spent flitting between destinations was probably busier than my current state. However, my life feels richer here in Buenos Aires despite my considerable drop in stimulating experiences and adventures (which might explain my correlated dip in writing production).

A busy life does not beget a fulfilling one.

I recently ran my first marathon—a grueling experience that left me with far more than just cramped quadriceps and a medal.

For three months, I ran 3 to 8 miles during the week, with Sundays reserved for steadily increasing long runs.

During these long runs, I often questioned why I chose such a time-demanding goal, especially when life already felt sufficiently full and erratic. Yet, I stuck with it, running each week. As time passed, I began to notice a few lessons that applied beyond running.

The mindset required for marathon training mirrors the mentality needed to tackle many of life’s challenges.

The boy remained silent and looked upon the sailor’s trinkets in the case. His eyes wandered as he imagined himself at the helm of a ship bound for Spain.

Don Facundo watched on, remembering when he, too, dreamed of daring expeditions near Egypt, stormy Atlantic crossings, and moorings off the coast of the Brazils. His father-in-law's tales had been his own dreams once.

Alas, Don Facundo was one of the many who failed to pursue their dream for fear of what that dream would manifest into once turned a reality. Dreams like those are safer remaining dreams.

Much like my routine I describe in this edition (or rather lack thereof), my appetite for writing will disappear for weeks and then resurge in full at a moment’s notice.

I don’t believe in creativity striking. The best writers are the ones capable of sitting down without fail day over day until something slightly better than dribble hits the page.

Likewise, I doubt any of those illustrious writers has ever turned down the rare blessing that is… when inspiration strikes.

Today was one of those lucky days.

This is no argument in favor of complacency. Nor do I encourage anyone to aim for less than their best any given day.

It’s a call for perfectionists, optimization-addicted automatons, and the all-in-or-all-out types to take a breath.

Failing occasionally is natural. Allowing that failure to perpetuate across weeks, months, and years is only when it becomes detrimental.

I was curious to walk this stretch though. What would it be like to cross a border on foot that most cross in a vehicle? What would the feeling of standing between borders be like? Will I be alone? Do I have anything better to do anyway?

The final answer was clear: if there was one resource I was flush with as a solo traveler, it was time. Albeit, having failed to account for delays due to an unnecessary distraction by a momma hen and her chiclets followed by a less agreeable encounter with a posse of stray dogs, I had relinquished even that luxury.

Another car whisks by me, vrooming out of the customs house and kicking up a cloud of desert dust in its wake. A shoulder would be nice on this road. All 35 liters of my backpack sit heavier with each step.

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.

This Ferg’s Focus edition inadvertently turned into an ode to Buenos Aires. While I didn’t plan on it, I certainly do not regret it. May it forever merit its praise. Routines don’t seem too common around these parts, but I have found a loose one nonetheless, granting me the structure to write once more.

Winter is setting in down south. My nomad friends are departing for warmer weather. The leaves have turned golden and now catch the autumn sun in colors unseen by me before. The swarms of mosquitos are surviving amid 8° Celsius (46°F) temperatures. Life is good.

A year later, I’ve joined their digital ranks. While still a fledgling in the brigade in many ways, I’m beginning to understand where the source of this discontent may stem. It is where many nomads deviate from a path ripe with growth opportunities and instead ravage on into a limbo as meaningless as the one they fought to escape at their domestic desk jobs.

This is the existential, privileged, curious case of the disgruntled digital nomad.

Do not be deceived when the guidebooks tell you that the “Buenos Aires experience” is standing underneath its looming obelisk and attending a tango show, for the most authentic thing you can do in Buenos Aires is wait.

I’m finding new thrills in my permanence. Piecing together bus routes on disconnected backroads and haggling for the cheapest street eat have been replaced with piecing together a social life in a city with limitless opportunities and shopping around for a decent-priced cut of beef. Forging stronger foreign language capacity has given way to forging stronger relationships. Perhaps this is the novel experience left unsatisfied by my nomadic chapters. There’s still work to do though.

I’m a recovering vagabond after all.

If we continue to let the tastes of others determine which experiences to try, then we are succumbing to a one-dimensional reality limited by the bias of someone else, akin to allowing the title of artwork to restrict our creative interpretation of it. Continuing to take reviews, recommendations, and titles like these at face value will, at best, achieve a life of experiences that other folks would enjoy more than we would.

Most of us have become well-trained at “saving time” but at the cost of knowing how to spend it.

Someone who spends all their free time building time-saving systems rarely knows what they will do with it once saved. Worse, they don’t even understand why they began trying to save time in the first place.

Time is indifferent to how efficiently we construct our days and is a resource that will diminish at the same rate no matter how much time we vainly amass.

Best not to delay spending it well today.