Sometimes the quietest way to measure your growth is by how far you’ve had to walk from the noise.
I can move my entire life to a new country in two days and I haven't stayed anywhere long enough to have a favourite restaurant. Every lease I've signed in three years has been month-to-month. Every flight booked one way. I don't own furniture. Two bags and a backpack. My whole existence can relocate before the weekend.
I used to say that with pride.
A woman I was seeing in Lisbon asked where I'd be in six months. I said I don't plan that far ahead. She looked at me like I'd said something sad. I thought it was a flex. She just said "that sounds exhausting" and went back to her wine. That's the trap.
You build a life with no commitments because commitments are what crushed you the first time. No long leases. No partnerships. No plans past next month. You call it freedom. You call it flexibility. What it actually is, is a refusal to choose anything you can't walk away from by Thursday. I spent ten years locked into a logistics company that owned every hour of my day. Employees who needed me. Clients who expected me. A five-year warehouse lease that felt like a prison sentence by year three.
When I finally got out, I swore I'd never be stuck again. Never sign anything long. Never need anyone. Never build something I couldn't shut down with a single email.
So I built a life where nothing sticks. And for a while it felt like winning. Then I noticed the pattern. I'd find a city I liked and leave right before it started feeling like home. I'd meet people I connected with and move on before it got complicated. I'd get a regular table at a coffee shop and then switch to a different one because the barista started remembering my order and that felt like too much. A barista knowing my name felt like too much. That's how deep this goes.
The worst part is it doesn't feel like avoidance. It feels like clarity. You tell yourself you're staying light. You've seen what happens when you get locked in and you're not doing that again. Except smart and scared look exactly the same from the inside. I was so afraid of being trapped that I made sure nothing I built could hold me. Which sounds like wisdom until you realize the things that hold you are also the things that matter.
My parents raised nine kids in the same house. Same jobs for decades. Same neighbornhood their whole lives. I used to look at that and see the thing I was running from. Now I'm not sure they were the ones who were stuck. You know this.
Maybe you turned down a partnership because it meant depending on someone for longer than felt comfortable. Maybe you keep your business deliberately small because growing means hiring and hiring means people count on you and people counting on you means you can't disappear when things get heavy.
Maybe you've been somewhere two months and you're already scanning flights. Not because you want to leave. Because staying feels like a decision you're not ready to make. Maybe you ended something good because it was becoming something serious.
Turned down a project that excited you because it had a twelve-month timeline and twelve months sounded like a life sentence. Optionality is supposed to be a tool. Something you use to make better choices when the time comes. But when you hold onto every option all the time, you never actually choose. And a life where you never choose anything is just a life where nothing counts. I counted the other day.
Cities I've spent more than a month in since I sold my company. Eleven people from any of them I still talk to two. Places I could go back to and feel like I belong to zero.
Three years of total freedom. That's the receipt.
I'm in Mexico right now. Five weeks. The other day I caught myself browsing apartments with six-month leases. Not because I need one. I just wanted to see what it felt like to think about staying somewhere long enough that leaving would actually hurt. I closed the tab after ten minutes. But the fact that I opened it felt like something.
There's a crew I've been surfing with since I got here. Mornings mostly. One of them asked me yesterday if I'd be around in October. I said maybe. He shrugged. "Cool. We'll save you a spot either way." That sentence sat with me the rest of the day. Someone saving me a spot. Not asking for a commitment. Just assuming I'd show up.
I haven't had that in years. Not because nobody offered. Because I kept leaving before they could. The opposite of being trapped isn't being free. It's being willing to stay.
— Best, Jose
