In Transit: Part 03
Nowhere Fast
I’m sitting in a London flat, looking at my calendar for the next three months. New York. Athens. Back here briefly. Then Egypt.
Two years ago, that list would have felt electric, proof I was really living, the way most people only dream about. Now I look at these city names and feel something quieter, something I’m still learning to name.
But that's not where this story starts. It starts with an ocean I’d never seen before, in a country where I couldn’t speak the language, standing at the beginning of what I thought would be the answer to everything.
Portugal was my second stop after that first week on the road. I left London for my friend’s childhood home in Ericeira. Looking out over the Atlantic, I remember thinking how strange it was that ocean water could feel so different depending on which edge of the world you stood on. This wasn’t the Pacific I’d grown up with, but something else entirely. The morning light would catch it at unfamiliar angles and the sound of the waves rolled differently against Portuguese shores.
My friend, (or who I refer to as my “little sister”) was my host. We met through an online sorority we’d both joined a few years earlier, and she’d only ever existed in my phone until this moment. Now I was standing in her childhood bedroom, about to explore her city together like we’d always said we would.
This is my life now, I kept thinking. This is actually my life.
On Instagram, it looked like a dream: golden hour over terracotta rooftops, wine at sunset, a perfect candid laugh. But what I felt in private, in those early mornings before the house woke up, was something harder to distill into a caption. Lucky? yes. But also this overwhelming sense of disbelief. Like I’d slipped through a crack in the universe into a version of life I wasn’t meant to access, and any minute someone might notice the mistake and send me back to reality.
Back then, I measured success by motion. By how many cities I could string together, like beads on a necklace. Every new stamp in my passport felt like evidence that the leap I’d taken was paying off.
Those first few months felt like the montage scene of a coming-of-age movie: Lisbon to Málaga to Paris and back again, hopping between countries with the kind of spontaneity that only exists when nothing ties you down. I’d wake up in a new city and think, What could I discover today? A question that felt limitless, like standing at the edge of something vast and unmapped.
My introduction became automatic: “I’m a digital nomad.” I’d say. It felt like an identity that sounded official even if I was still figuring out what it meant. I was working remotely, which gave me just enough structure to feel legitimate while keeping my days wide open. Mornings were mine. Afternoons too. Evenings stretched into late-night conversations with strangers who became friends for exactly as long as we shared the same city.
Every spontaneous decision, a last-minute bus to a town I’d never heard of, saying yes to dinner with someone I’d just met, changing plans entirely because of a festival two countries over, it all felt like proof I was doing it right. That I was becoming the kind of person who could trust her instincts, who could make a life out of movement itself.
I was collecting experiences like they were currency. Each one feeling like an achievement unlocked, another story to tell, another piece of evidence that this unconventional choice was working. More cities meant more growth, right? More experiences meant more living. The logic felt airtight.
I don’t know exactly when the shift started, only that it crept in quietly until I was standing in the middle of it.
Cities began to blur. Lisbon’s yellow trams became Athens’ white buildings became Málaga’s blue coast, until I couldn’t remember which sunset belonged to which rooftop. Airports that once thrilled me now just felt like waiting rooms.
Conversations followed the same script: Where are you from? How long are you here? Where next? Even “What do you do?” started to sound hollow, like describing a character instead of a life.
At a beach event in Málaga, everyone was lovely, welcoming, already intertwined by shared history. I laughed at the right moments, but underneath was the awareness that in a few days I’d be gone and they’d still be here, still building something together.
In Athens, a group was planning spontaneous day trips, adventures I would’ve joined instantly months before, but I had work deadlines. That’s when it hit me: I wasn’t really a traveler anymore. I was working, living, trying to build something sustainable while constantly moving. And the two no longer fit together.
Morocco was where it all came to a head. I went with someone I was dating, and somewhere between Marrakech and the coast we began to fall apart. Small tensions became bigger arguments and we broke up a few days before leaving. Sudden, inevitable, and shocking at the same time.
The worst part was the airport. He was going home, while I was going to my next destination. I stood there crying in the terminal, calling anyone who might answer just to hear a familiar voice. Travel was supposed to be freedom. But in that moment, it felt like the opposite.
I started craving something I couldn’t name. In Lisbon, a girl who also worked remotely invited me to cowork at a café. Nothing profound happened, just laptops and coffee, but it felt good to be around someone who understood this life. That’s when I realised what I’d been missing wasn’t novelty but consistency. Not new faces every week, but familiar ones that stayed.
I went to Egypt and stayed a full month, the longest I’d been anywhere since LA. At first it felt wrong, like I should be moving and seeing more. But then my body exhaled in a way I didn’t know it needed to.
I found a routine. I knew where to get coffee. I made friends I saw more than once, shared meals, inside jokes, small rituals. My nervous system finally settled.
That’s when I understood I’d been using travel as a crutch. Not intentionally, but it’s easy to hide behind “I’m just traveling” and let that be the whole story. Maybe I had been hedonistic, chasing experiences as if they were proof of something. But you can’t run your way into meaning.
Standing still in Egypt, I saw the difference between exploring and running, between freedom and drift. Exploration has intention. Running is motion as avoidance. I’d been doing both without realising it.
Being back in London now, I don’t feel the rush I used to. But I don’t feel dread either. What I feel is closer to curiosity, maybe even wisdom, though that still feels too big a word.
I don’t regret that early phase. It taught me things stillness never could: how to trust my instincts, how much newness I can handle, how to build a life without a lease or a five-year plan. But it also showed me what constant motion costs: depth, the chance to be known, the ability to build something that requires showing up day after day until the showing up becomes the foundation.
The version of me who landed in London the first time thought freedom meant being able to go anywhere. And it does. But maybe real freedom also means knowing when to stay, even when staying feels scarier than leaving.
What happens when exploration stops feeling expansive and starts feeling repetitive? When you realise movement isn’t the same as growth?
I’m still figuring it out. But I think it starts with recognising the difference between the rush of novelty and the deeper satisfaction of actually knowing a place, between collecting moments and living them.
The answer isn’t to stop moving. It’s to move differently, more intentionally, with awareness of what’s worth staying for when you find it. And that’s what I’m exploring now, what comes after the rush, what happens when you slow down enough to let something, or someone, finally catch up to you.
This is the third post in “In Transit,” where we follow the messy, non-linear journey of building a life while constantly moving. Last month, we talked about leaping before logic. This month: what happens in those first exhilarating, exhausting months after you jump.
Have you ever chased something that looked like freedom but felt like running? We’d love to hear about it. We’re figuring this out together.
Next months piece is focused on: why belonging might be the scariest kind of freedom.
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