Reentry
The transition from full-time Nomads to normal people has been quite eventful.
Now that we’re about a month into “normal” life after nearly four years of nomading, I’ve made a few observations. For most people, all this is old news, but Miranda and I have not been really living in America. We’ve stopped by and been in the States off-and-on, but we’ve not had our own place. Since we spent most of the last four years in Europe, I feel like I’m experiencing a wave of novelty all at once.
Below are a non-comprehensive list of things I’ve learned since I stopped being a digital nomad:
Part of the Boho design style is random rope dangly things, and I don’t like the dangles very much.
What Japanese Joinery is
That beautiful antique pitcher you want to buy probably contains lead paint.
To get Fiber internet, they drill a hole from the outside of your house to connect the cable.
When they bury the fiber internet cable, if they need to bury it underneath your driveway, they essentially snake the cable under the driveway.
Below-freezing temperatures are a real problem in Florida because the pipes aren’t insulated.
A Tesla supercharger takes 25 minutes to charge the car from near-zero to 80% but the AC and car still run so it’s comfortable.
Tesla self-driving can do u-turns
Florida drivers are awful, and Florida motorcyclists have a death wish
Car insurance in Florida is outrageously expensive
The telephone area code around Cape Canaveral is “321” because of “3-2-1 blastoff”
2700 lumens = warm light which is pleasant.
Costco only accepts debit cards and Visa
TJ Maxx is a great spot to buy random kitchen stuff like wooden spoons and can openers and peelers.
Amazon is not a great deal for kitchen stuff because they need to make the numbers work, so they bundle a bunch of stuff you don’t need (15 cooking spoons when you need 3) to get you to spend $15 when you’d spend $5 at TJ Maxx.
Facebook Marketplace has the best and worst deals. The best deals are the ones I described above. The worst deals are when someone buys something on Amazon and is reselling it for $10 less than what they bought it for.
Kohl’s has stopped doing Amazon returns for the most part
Not all stainless steel pans are equivalent. 5-Ply and 3-Ply are good, will be more nonstick, and will distribute heat more consistently.
How to season a cast iron skillet
A lamp shade costs $50
To make a linen duvet cover not wrinkly, pull it out of the dryer just before it’s totally dry and shake it out.
Most rugs are polyester, and most cheap rugs are polyester plus screen printed. The price difference between wool and polyester is enormous
If you go to a gym with a bunch of old people then the middle of the workday is as crowded as any other time.
There are a few things that I think are worth more explanation.
North America is so convenient
Amazon same-day and overnight delivery are incredible. At 10:30 at night, I needed a new toothbrush. By 11:00 AM the next morning, I had an electric toothbrush and a Water Pik delivered to me. In Europe, that’s a 90-minute activity. Find the store that carries it, walk to the store (if you’re in Italy or Spain, there’s a 50% chance the store is closed because the owner didn’t want to work that day), find the items, check out, and walk back.
Costco is incredible. The quality is high. It’s all right there for you. You can buy essentially everything you need for your entire life right at a Costco.
Instacart is nice, but we don’t use it, and Europe has its equivalents in Glovo and Deliveroo. That has been the only thing that is not meaningfully more convenient.
We ordered our guest bedroom mattress from Costco. It had springs and coils, and somehow it was shrink-wrapped down into a rectangular box about 3 feet tall and 8 inches wide. When the two delivery guys came to set it up, the total time it took them to walk in the door, open the box, set up the mattress, take a picture of their work, pick up their trash, ask for us to leave a 5-star review, and leave was 4.5 minutes. That service and efficiency is not found everywhere.
Our Major Life Change is Everyone Else’s Normal Life
For us, settling down and building a home is a life change as big as graduating college and entering the workforce. I think it feels like a bigger life change than starting to travel because, with traveling, we sold all our stuff and set off with no expectations. We could stop whenever we wanted. With building a home, we’re acquiring stuff and settling down. With acquiring stuff, we are building attachments. Miranda loves her new, Persian rug for example. I love my new stainless steel pans. We both love our Boll & Branch sheets. As we get more comfortable and develop our own routines, changing the routine will get harder. In fact, the first diary entry I wrote the morning after we moved in was a how-to guide for the nuts and bolts and logistics of how we traveled.
But, while, for us this is a major shift, for everyone else it’s “welcome to the club.” I’m more exhausted now than I was at the end of our traveling. It would’ve been easier to fly to Mexico City (which we’ve lived in for 10 weeks), checked into an Airbnb, connected to the WiFi, and called it a day. Our travel systems were finely-honed.
In this case, we need to build all-new systems. Where we put plates and cups. Signing up for internet and utilities. Determining when we go to the gym.
Signing on and off from work is a huge one. The only time we traveled in Eastern Time was in Colombia. In Mexico City and Costa Rica, we were two hours behind. In Argentina and Chile we were two hours ahead. In Europe and Africa we were +5 - +7 and in Asia we were +12 - +14. When North America is signed off (or asleep), it’s easy to either get focus work down or be signed off. When North America is signed on for your entire work day, it’s much harder to get work done. There are constant distractions. Focus-work gets pushed, and then I am unsure when to stop for the night.
All this and, since we also moved to a new city in a new state, we have all the same work we had when we landed in a new city. Finding restaurants, finding the grocery stores, figuring out how to get places, signing up for a gym.
None of these are unsolvable problems, but they’re problems that need solved, and we’re solving them all at once. It’s exhausting.
We have to buy everything
During our travels, we said that “all we own is what’s in our suitcases, backpacks, and our companies.” We joked, but it’s true.
In our life before travel, Miranda and I were the roommates that didn’t buy much. My roommate’s family had a bunch of extra furniture, and Miranda’s roommates came with lots of stuff. So we lived that part of our life without much. I should be clear, we didn’t contribute nothing, but we didn’t leave our leases with an apartment’s worth of stuff, either. Plus, four years went by since we lived in apartments, so we either outgrew what remained, sold, or donated it before we traveled.
We have had to buy everything. Silverware, dinnerware, pots and pans, a mattress, a bed, sheets, towels, a kettle, a toaster, rugs, a couch, a kitchen table and chairs, a guest bed, guest sheets, guest pillows, a TV, desks, office chairs, curtains, glasses, a car, lightbulbs, lamps, side tables, nightstands, wooden spoons, a paper towel holder, a can opener. Everything.
The sheer quantity of things we have to buy is exhausting. It started out as fun, but now it’s a chore. Starting from zero is no fun. This year will be one of the most expensive years of our lives because of it.
Facebook Marketplace is the current great wealth transfer
The great wealth transfer isn’t in real estate or in stocks, it’s in Facebook Marketplace. Find areas where the greatest service you do to the seller isn’t money, but it’s a takeaway service, and you’re getting the deal of the century.
In Columbus, a family in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods was selling a two-year-old Italian leather couch in excellent condition for $500. It’s easily a $2,500 couch. When we arrived, the couple asked if we wanted a free 8’x10’ rug along with it. Then, they said “we actually redecorated our entire house and have a bunch of stuff in the basement. Want to take a look?” Obviously, we said yes.
The next day, we bought a 9’x12’ handmade, wool, Persian rug for $850 from a different couple that just wanted it gone. It’s like a $3,500 or $4,000 rug. It’s stunning. When we got to Winter Park, we picked up a large mahogany table with six chairs for $250 from a woman who’s an interior designer but redecorated. It’s a $1,000 table. Those are the three biggest-ticket items, but we’ve bought way more on Facebook Marketplace that are a similar stories. A handmade, Mexican jar. A handmade, Indian side table. The best deal on the market right now is whatever’s on Facebook Marketplace in the wealthy area of town.
TVs have become incredible
My standards are low because I’ve spent four years watching TV on an iPad, but TV technology is incredible nowadays. From Costco, we bought a 65” Samsung 4K QLED for $500. The first show we watched was Pluribus. I can’t stop talking about how amazing the colors are. It’s so crisp. Next we started The White Lotus. Again, the colors of the jungle are unbelievable. I can’t believe $500 buys that.
Consistency will be nice once I can enjoy it
As far as I can remember, it’s been since December, 2024 (we were in Cape Town) since I slept three weeks in a row in the same bed. I’m not traveling until I hit 7 weeks, which is the longest I’ll have slept in the same bed since the COVID lock down. In our four years traveling, we went to 35 unique countries but had 122 unique stops not including time spent back in the US with family. We stopped traveling not because we got bored, but because we got tired.
Right now, we’ve got a ton of stuff going on and are, seemingly, in constant motion, so I haven’t settled yet, but sometime I will, and it’ll be nice. I’m both excited for it and concerned. I’m excited because I’m hoping to be more recharged and rejuvenated. If I wasn’t looking for that, I’d still be traveling. I’m nervous, though, because we went so hard for so long that I’m afraid the chickens will come home to roost and I will fall off an energetic cliff. We will see.
It’s nice to have the same kitchen and the same gym. Not needing to re-discover that baking sheets are nowhere to be found is pleasant. We also have pots and pans that are nice and easy to use. Another plus.
Place is vital
We moved to Winter Park, Florida, which is like if the walkability, live oaks, and brick streets of Savannah, Georgia had a baby with the homes and neighborhood of Beverly Hills. We love it here so far. Everyone’s nice, it’s beautiful, the food is incredible, it’s super walkable, we’re pretty close to family, and there’s an intercontinental airport nearby. There’s even train transit. It feels like an American extension of our favorite cities from when we were nomading. Had we moved to Strip Mall USA, we’d be miserable. Having the right off-ramp to combine all the things we loved about being nomads with building a more stable life in the US was paramount. While I’m exhausted now, I’d rather be exhausted and happy about where I live than exhausted and depressed.
The future is here, but it’s unevenly distributed
A 3-year old, used Tesla Model Y with 30,000 miles on it is the best deal on the market. It costs $29,000-$32,000, has a 280-mile range, and, if you pay $99/month, drives itself. For less than the price of a new Toyota SUV, I can get a self-driving car. The self-driving works better than I anticipated. I would say it’s a better driver than I am 90% of the time (and I think I’m a pretty good driver) and, when it does something weird, it errs on the side of caution (driving too slow, stopping too long) than havoc. Around Winter Park, there are tons of Teslas driving by.
Someone who lives nearby has a Tesla solar roof. I didn’t notice it before (besides that it looked like a nice roof), but when I walked by it at night, I saw the green lights of a PowerWall, the battery units that store the energy. That home is probably fully-off-grid.
Waymo and Cybercab are coming to central Florida in 2026. Combined with light rail (the central Florida railway system) and Brightline from Orlando all the way to Miami, we have an abundance of options for transit.
But it’s not just that. 500 mbps fiber internet costs $55/month. A smart doorbell with facial recognition AI that backs up securely to iCloud costs $65. My gym has a (somewhat accurate) body composition scanner sitting next to the check-in desk they encourage your using.
We’re an hour’s drive away from watching the Artemis II launch and future Starship launches.
I know I sound like I’m singing Winter Park’s praises (I am), but there’s something nice about walking down beautiful, brick-lined streets to dinner while having a self-driving car drive me to the beach.