(8 Minute Read)
“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”
I spent last night sleeping on a plane again.
This was my 32nd flight for the year. I think of that scene in Forrest Gump after Jenny left him and he started running across the country for the next three years. He said he “just felt like running.” When I began this journey of nomadic living, I just felt like running. But now as the miles add up I resonate more with that famous scene on route 163 when he slows down to a dramatic jog, turns around, and says, “I’m pretty tired now…I think I’ll go home.”
Me too, Forrest, me too.
Last fall, I was in a weird burnt-out-traveling-nomad funk. I spent nine weeks living in Boise, Idaho and went to jiu jitsu four to five times a week to stay sane. Along with therapy, it was my therapy. Getting to be around the same people, on the same mission, almost everyday, was the semblance of social stability I needed. We were all just trying to get better at breaking bones and choking people out. I didn’t know what most of these people did for work or even what their last names were. That was okay. Through this process, you didn’t need words to get to know people. With every sweaty exchange, you felt who was technical, who tried too hard, who was scared, who gave up, and who had heart. Last names didn’t matter.
After nine weeks, I said goodbye to my fellow comrades and left to start the next chapter of my nomad life. As I drove off, an unexpected sadness broke through and before I hit the highway, my vision blurred with tears. I barely knew these people, what was I crying for? Then it hit me. The endless cycle of goodbyes was finally getting to me. Somewhere along the way, the lifestyle of a digital nomad had become an existence of isolation. What you see isn’t what you get.
Instagram is a highlight reel — here are the outtakes.
Addiction
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
The first step in the famous twelve step program is admitting “we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.” Isn’t that telling? I’m grateful I’ve never been addicted to anything crazy that could seriously ruin my life. Que the pothead days.
During my early days in college, getting high was an hourly routine. The worst of it lasted a few months. I got high all day, every day. I’d wake up and hit my bong even before brushing my teeth. Priorities. Then it was before class, after class, paired with every meal, and before bed. Classic. That grade-A frosty California bud had its claws dug deep into the soft tissue of my mind. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve taken some desperate measures to get high at times when I ran out of weed.
Once I dug up my old stem collection and picked off every tiny leaf from every stem. Then I used a thumbtack to scrape the marijuana dust between the grooves of my grinder to sprinkle on top. Finally, I was armed with a smokeable one-hitter-of-a-bowl in my pipe. I lit the bowl and inhaled deeply to fill every cubic inch of my lung capacity. When my lungs maxed out, I held my breath for as long as I could to absorb it all. I didn’t want to waste my chance. At last, I let my breath go, I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and relaxed my posture with a satisfying sigh. This was some major crackhead behavior.
It gets worse.
There was another time I didn't have weed so I salvaged marijuana scraps off the table, carpet, and even the trash bin. I had enough weed but still didn’t have a pipe to smoke with so I hollowed out a banana. Yes, a banana. Disposable, organic, creative, and resourceful right? So embarrassing. I’ve used celery sticks, apples, wrench sockets stuck into empty pens…you name it.
After three months went by, there came a point when I was so disgusted with myself and finally had enough. That day I called it quits and threw away my weed, grinder, and pipe. I got rid of it all. They say rock bottom makes a great foundation.
Since that day, my relationship with cannabis has continued to mature. Through my travels, I’ve noticed that Peruvians use these plants in surprisingly thoughtful ways. I’ve seen them close their eyes and whisper a small prayer before they partake. With prayer, they hope to connect with nature, spirit, and each other. That subtle moment of intention transforms the experience of getting high from compulsion to ceremony. Imagine slapping a wine bag at a frat-party on Saturday night versus having wine at communion the very next morning. Same wine, different experience. Intention matters. When looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, intention transcends our behavior from the bottom of the pyramid to the tippity top. From survival to self-actualization.
I’ve realized that weed was a mirror that reflected my addictive nature. Luckily, I’ve traded that addiction for healthier ones, from marathon running, rock climbing, chess, and now bowhunting and jiu jitsu. I’m grateful for every season of obsession but it’s still the intention that matters most. When love turns into going through the motions, the fun disappears.
I’ve noticed that my addiction is driven by the inability to sit comfortably with this moment. Right here just isn’t enough. We need something else, something more. Another snack, another smoke, another swipe – anything to escape the present. It happens when we’re bored, but especially when we’re in pain. Sitting still wasn’t good enough, so I started traveling. But after a year and a half, my intentions faded. I was going through the motions because I had no lease, nowhere calling me home, and nowhere I belonged.
I got used to it.
The flurry of new places and new people distracted me from the truth that I was alone. But I’ve been alone before. I’ve solo backpacked for many long nights in the woods. And last year I spent four days in total darkness, in solitary confinement, to meditate and observe my mind with no distraction. I thought I was good at being alone. But eventually, being alone turned into loneliness. Two years was too long and for some reason, my own company wasn’t enough anymore.
Netflix gives you five seconds after season one to toss you into season two. I couldn't see that I was sitting there by myself, staring at the screen, engrossed with the next episode. I was on autoplay. Every shiny city became my escape. I was asleep at the wheel, drifting with the momentum of the race for more.
What finally woke me up was a painful message, a reminder of what I was missing.
Community
“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it’s warmth.”
Last summer I went to my high school reunion for the first time. It was ten years in the making and I knew I was in for a trip. When I showed up at our local brewery, a dream-like sensation struck me as I saw a room full of faces I knew, but names I couldn’t recall. The air was stiff and awkward so I rescued myself by finding my old group of friends.
With the help of a few spirits, we slipped back into our senior year selves and settled into the drunken night ahead. The night brimmed with laughter between telling stories, catching up, and dusting off memories that were now a decade old. Reunions are momentary flashbacks of the good ol’ days. A reminder of a time when we were still innocent to the initiation of growing up. Back when it was normal to see your best friends every single day.
The night ended and the next stage in my travels was up in Vancouver for two months. The next morning I had Advil for breakfast and began the 16 hour drive up to the Canadian border. As I was driving I felt an achy sensation start to coil up inside me. Maybe it was the anticipation of living somewhere new, the afterglow from reunion highs, or the lingering hangover. I couldn’t tell. But as I got further and further from home, it felt like losing a game of tug of war. You want to hold on, but you have to let go. I was starting to miss the feeling of belonging. The reunion had an unforeseen impact on me and the whisper of what I was missing only grew louder.
The loudest message came exactly ten weeks later when I was camping in the desert wonderland of Burning Man. Now that was a whole lot trippier. Burning Man, or “Black Rock City”, is a temporary city built by 70,000 some-odd citizens. Those in attendance agreed to be their authentic selves, weird as they are, knowing that they’d not only be tolerated – but celebrated. Within our big little world, everyone was expected to bring gifts to share.
So camps built everything. There were cafes, bars, jazz clubs, libraries, gyms, showers, restaurants, and everything in between. You could find events like “Spiritual Life Coaching”, “Ecstatic Dance”, “Blindfold Wine Tasting”, martial arts, yoga, breathwork, and thousands of others. That utopian bliss filled me with a sense of belonging, love, and acceptance that I hadn’t felt in years.
The spectacle lasted nine days. I didn’t want it to end. Community felt rare with the lifestyle I was leading and for nine days I was part of one — and it was ending. I was sick of goodbyes. I still am.
At that point on my travels, I was planning future destinations a few months at a time. My plan for the next year of digital nomading was to move up to Vancouver for six months. Foreigners can’t stay longer, and I was okay with that. Or so I thought. As Burning Man began to wrap up, the looming sadness of having to tear the city down and get back to life on the road tainted the image of moving to Canada. The truth is, you can’t grow roots if you keep repotting yourself. I imagined building a life abroad for six months and then having to uproot again. Then I thought about how when Burning Man ended, people returned to their communities in the real world, and mine was temporary. It always was.
I felt my Vancouver plans were starting to crumble. And then one night at the burn, they fell apart. I went to camp to grab a coat for the long cold night ahead. I was alone, and it was dark. I got off my bike, turned on my headlamp, and started walking through camp. Out of nowhere a question popped into my head that made me pause.
“What if I just move back to San Diego?”
Hearing the voice in my head made me freeze like I’d been spotted when I wasn’t supposed to be seen. The truth was there, like a track in the dirt, pointing to the path. My journey of nomadic living was coming to an end. And for the first time, I was okay with that.
And just like that, Burning Man came to an end. Being stripped from such a loving community back to the reality of glorified homelessness was jarring. After the burn, I returned to Boise. That was tough. I missed my friends. I wanted them around me. This is why jiu jitsu kept me sane at the time. From then on, every goodbye got harder and harder.
Connecting with all these different people in all these disparate places is exciting, but short-lived. Life as a vagabond makes it hard to have a steady community, and Burning Man was just another reminder of that. The message was screaming four inches from my face.
We weren’t meant to be alone.
Chaos and Order
“When you get the message, hang up the phone.”
Along the journey, I’ve been lucky to immerse myself in shockingly different lifestyles. I spent months in Manhattan to explore what the “city that never sleeps” had to offer. Nights were spent between overpriced restaurants, craft cocktail bars, downtown rooftops, and staying out till 4am. Contrast this to slow living below the equator on a farm in Calca, a remote town nestled in the Andes mountains of Peru. Early mornings and weekends were spent transplanting tomatoes, weeding carrot beds, feeding ducks, and taking care of other garden matters.
Living in such diverse environments gave me the space to observe myself in new ways. The constant flux of nomadic living is great for discovery, but comes with tradeoffs. I felt like I was living in the middle of the ocean constantly wading through water with nothing to stand on.
One of my mentors shifted my perspective on this struggle by looking at life through two simple forces: chaos and order. He described chaos, or instability, as the force that initiates growth. Chaos pushes us forward. Take a look at the chaos we go through at the gym. Our muscles rip and tear through pushing and pulling, and the chaos under tension sets off the growth process. By contrast, the force of order, or stability, helps to integrate that growth. Order gives us the space and time to heal and rest. Muscles actually grow when we sleep. Chaos initiates growth and order integrates it.
Nomadic living optimizes for pure chaos.
The lifestyle is defined by never ending novelty and adventure on the horizon. The experience is wide, but shallow. After a while, I started to feel like a conference junkie. You know those people who jump from ceremony to ceremony, conference to conference, retreat to retreat, but never practice at home? Too much back-to-back chaos doesn’t allow time or space for integration. Typical information overload.
Over the last two years, the longest I’ve slept in the same bed has been 32 days. Six months were spent in Spanish speaking countries. And my Spanish is still terrible.
So what was it all for?
It doesn’t matter if I’m a decent guy on my travels, at Burning Man, or on retreat. The real measure of who you are takes place when you return home. As Ram Dass wisely said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.”
So I’m going home.
P.S. After a two-month travel stint through Europe, I’m finally moving back to San Diego. I always thought I might end up there. Just had to make sure.