🙏 Thank you and welcome to Post Nomad!

But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.

- Hunter S. Thompson

Hey there,

I’m Russell. Thanks for signing up. 🙏

Post Nomad is about finding meaning by staying in place.

What do I mean by that?

I’ve been location-independent for 10+ years, and I’ve visited more than 40 countries—but at some point, I realized I’d actually been over-valuing freedom and novelty, and under-valuing community, relationships, and investing in something that lasts.

For a long time, I made choices to preserve my options; I wanted to work from anywhere, go anywhere, accomplish everything.

Eventually, though, I began going back to places that felt like home:

• I bought an apartment and settled in Barcelona.

• I pulled back on obsessive goal-setting and reoriented my life to better follow Hunter S. Thompson’s advice about finding a way of life.

• I started thinking more about my own legacy, and started talking to and learning from others about what they plan to leave behind.

• And finally, I fulfilled a dream by buying an old, stone fixer-upper in Spain, a renovation that is ongoing.

I still travel, but nowadays it’s about finding places, communities, and ways of life that I want to keep going back to.

✍️ P.S. If you’re currently on a similar search, or have a great story about a community you found, a place you love, or a legacy you admire, reply and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

What you’ll find in this newsletter

Here, you’ll find me talking to others about how they think about finding home and building a meaningful legacy, as well as tracking that journey for myself.

I’ve recently written about living in New Zealand, kitesurfing in Mexico, salsa dancing in Prague, and house-hunting in Italy—with more to come. 🇮🇹 🇲🇽 🇨🇿 🇳🇿

Some of my most-read posts though are about finding meaning and the stories we tell ourselves about our life and work:

1. Metaphors: the ‘Life Path’ and Denali. Life doesn't have paths—it's a wilderness, and you have to choose a direction

2. But beware of looking for goals. Ways of life and returning from Mexico

3. Europe could fix you, actually. A defense of the idea that where you live really does impact your health and wellbeing (my most viral piece).

4. The fifth value. How I do annual goal-setting, simplifying life, and why I started taking away goals rather than adding them.

5. How I fell out of love with Washington D.C. My decade in D.C., raising my son, and how I changed from the kind of person who goes there.

💸 Why pay?

I have the luxury of being able to write this newsletter as pure play. I do it to exercise my creative muscles, but also because it gives me purpose. Every time someone emails me back from a post and tells me that I was able to put words to things they’ve been thinking about or dealing with in their own lives, I get enormous satisfaction.

Nothing is more rewarding than hearing directly from a stranger that my writing has impacted their lives for the good.

A close second, though, is this: someone gives me their hard-earned money just because. To support my work. To motivate me to keep going. And to signal they appreciate what I’m doing. If that’s you, by all means:

What you’ll get:

• Every post, including the occasional paid ones.

• Access to all issues in the archives

• Ability to participate in subscriber-only comments

Thank you again, and please don’t hesitate to just reply to these emails to get in touch.

Best,

- Russell