In late January, I left the US. As someone who has averaged one move per year for the past 10 years, I suppose it was an inevitable next step. It was a decision that felt so natural. I can’t admit to any hesitation in selling all my possessions — and outright throwing so much in the trash. It’s a millennial cliche, but I’m more satisfied by experiences than things. Happily, modern economic forces make this preference especially viable.
For many reasons, I’ve been very much at peace in moving abroad. Travel presents a serendipitous combination of the path of least resistance and that which I would wish to do even were it not. I experience the best version of myself in new environments. The dynamism of travel invigorates and clarifies my thinking and simultaneously allows me to pay homage to Lord Wotton’s plea to “be always searching for new sensations.” Moreover, travel perhaps offers one of the surest cures to my long-standing dissatisfaction with the strictures, monotony, and needless burdens of daily life in the United States. But ultimately, perpetual travel is an exercise in radical simplification so that I may more readily achieve growth — personally, spiritually, and professionally.
My story isn’t unique. A couple years ago I finally learned about this 20 year trend of moving to Asia, which perennially disillusioned westerners have pursued as an antidote to ennui and an elixir for experience. YouTube is littered with tales of a land where $600 per month is manageable in any of half a dozen southeast Asian countries (it’s not). Independent blogs and Instagram channels fabricate needlessly enviable accounts of a Garden of Eden in a ridiculous fetishization of an admittedly picturesque landscape. One easily sees the appeal of what is indeed a blissful part of the world.
Watching other people do it had a way of inducing real action on my part. At some point, I bought a one-way flight and a 44 liter backpack. These small investments pushed me to commit. The Scottish Mountaineer and writer of The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, W. H. Murray, makes just such a point:
“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative or creation, there is one elementary truth…that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence move, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have believed would have come his way. Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”
Somewhere along the way, I took this advice and put my affairs in order to emerge from the slow ether drip of daily existence. Clearly, I’m privileged in that I could return to the US any time and pick up where I left off. And there are those who might be inclined to consider this entire plan an exercise in privilege. To address this issue, those readers tempted to cry privilege only expose themselves as insufficiently introspective and adoptive of the Trumpist shithole mentality. What I mean is that to exempt the neoliberal mixed economy from the abiding tribulations of human existence is itself an exercise in privilege — one where the unaware westerner imagines his own home and daily life so different and superior to that of the rest of the world that he cannot fathom why he would ever have reason to complain.
Some may question what I am running from. In short, my present project is to distill life to its essentials. I’ve long wanted more time to think undisturbed from the distractions of daily minutiae, where my daily agenda is more my own and I’m freer to be my most productive self. The truth is that leaving “home” is a personal strategy in the vigorous pursuit of excellence, where travel supremely recognizes Aristotle’s dictum that life is movement and Schopenhauer’s corollary that movement enlivens the mind.
I’m keenly aware that travel isn’t a cure-all, and many great minds — whose stratum I am not among — needed not move an inch to tap into their deepest intellectual powers. Proust, for example, rarely went outside his cork-lined bedroom, and yet his story is that of incomparable and uncontested prowess in observation and description of the human condition. Pascal submitted that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Emily Dickinson related that she “never had to go anywhere to find my paradise.” And Kant never wondered more than 10 miles beyond his hometown of Königsberg, present-day Kaliningrad.
To be sure, this was a decision I took for a host of reasons, some that are probably petulant but nonetheless personally relevant. For example, I don’t like cooking, cleaning, and commuting. I don’t like leases, car repairs, grocery shopping, and all other associated “facts of life” — not when there are other eminently attainable modes of living. The rise of the app economy in accomodation, transportation, work spaces, and food makes life on the road especially convenient. Globalization means everybody speaks enough English. It also means that I needn’t stress about banking, phone plans, and having various western comforts at-will. Importantly, strong internet is copiously available and enables remote work, which is now not only possible but increasingly a competitive advantage. And of course, there’s Tinder when I want to make local friends.
There is of course no guarantee of happiness or success in this plan. But I’m uncertain that happiness is the goal. I’m more concerned with establishing more meaning in my life and using travel to reveal what exactly that meaning ought to be.
There’s a quote commonly misattributed to Anton Chekhov: “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” Yes. And indeed that is my present task — to ruthlessly prioritize the extraordinary, eliminate the superfluities of daily life, and along the way see the world beyond a desktop wallpaper. So, yes, I’m going west “young man” (so far west, I’ve gone east), and like many other rambling souls for whom travel was a vital component of their story, I follow.
The Future of Roving Clint
So, what does this mean practically? Well, in the coming weeks, this blog will undergo a reconceptualization more aligned with my interests and personality. My aim for Roving Clint is this: a space where I may relate the radically candid early journey of an aspiring internationalist where I offer nothing other than my honest insights and reflections as I meander aimlessly through the world, a kind of travel and lifestyle which largely matches my present state of mind.
Because the nature of what I wish to uniquely contribute precludes a sales funnel for some coaching scheme, advice mill, Instagram envy farm, or any other such tedious internet business trend, you won’t see my content written with an eye for SEO, and therefore much of what you’ll find here will be a sporadically written mishmash of the topics that currently animate my thinking, namely travel, the expat/digital nomad lifestyle, political themes around the injustice of international border controls, and other tangential subjects.
To those seeking guidance, know that I can only write about my own experience as I aggressively pursue a life outside the typical confines of American life. I do not wish to arrogate to myself the ability to advise others in the course of their own action. I also have little to no interest in engaging in the jejune social media practices that are often the primary marketing source for other travel blogs. The requirements for success on Facebook, Instagram, and Google rankings are inimical to the development of a more ascetic and mindful inner life.
As such, I’ve created an email newsletter that will be the primary center for updates. Subscribers may expect what I have suggested above, specifically an assortment of topics, infrequently written, and perhaps useful only to a few. Insofar as I will think and travel out loud, this will be where you may follow. I welcome you to join me along this journey.