Day 169: Nomad or Settle

I’ve been thinking more about where I want to go after Santa Cruz (can’t put my finger on it, but there’s a sense that it’s about time to move on), and I find myself gravitating toward the extremes of the spectrum: Being nomadic and settling down.

Being nomadic is appealing because ever since I went solo-backpacking around Europe 7 years ago, I’ve loved traveling, meeting new people, and trying out all sorts of experiences, from training in free diving to working on a farm in exchange for food and lodging.

Now’s obviously not such a great time to be traveling about, and I’m not trying to be a carrier infecting everyone in my wake.

I’ve had several friends recently obtain Taiwan’s Gold Card Visa, which lets you live and work in Taiwan for three years. I’d be pretty stoked to live in Asia again after having left Japan back in 2017. Wow, how has it already been three years?

At the same time, I feel pulled towards setting my roots down somewhere and investing in a community. I’ve been more or less nomadic since I left Japan, and as much as I love traveling and frolicking about, I also quite enjoyed my time in Austin last year. That was my attempt at settling down for a bit, but then the Hacker Fellowship in New York happened, and then coronavirus, and now we’re here. Austin was great though, and I loved the friends I made there.

And then there’s SF, which has the highest concentration of my close friends out of anywhere in the world. For some reason though, I don’t feel drawn towards living in SF again. I’d definitely miss the variety of meeting all sorts of people because it’d just be tech all day and tech all night.

My sister and I have talked about moving to Asia and living there for some time in the past — I wonder if she’d be down to go to Taiwan?