Mikes Writing

People are Leaving

I’ve been watching some of the nomad and escape YouTube channels lately. People are getting sick and tired of whatever life they had. One person left with just a few hundred dollars in his pocket because life there was not doing it for him. Instead he has spent years walking in the UK. There has been no plan because I think he got planned out. Another person or persons tired of the rat race. Many people have retired and decided life wherever was just not going to work. We all have choices to make about the things we face and those we are gonna drop. Some of us spent years getting into debt with cars, homes, properties, even work. Work causing debt I don’t think is something new. We suddenly are achieving. We can “afford” something else. But when I worked as a contractor in the Silicon Valley, jobs were as ephemeral as blue skies in the Bay Area. I could have a thing, invest in it, and then find a contract ended or was terminated. I had spent money on things rather stupidly. There’s always the rainbow at some end of the job. Where suddenly everything becomes that pot of gold and we can have it all. It all comes at a price.

So people leave. I left. I did a few things in anticipation of knowing I would leave. I paid of all the debt I had. I bought a cheap car that I knew with my final job I could easily pay off. I lived in a shared house in a small room. I did not have things. Perhaps the greatest thing I gained when I divorced and left was leaving all the things behind. Cars and home. Other things. Being a failure was a thing for some time for me. Perhaps that also caused a kind of debt. A personal loss. I felt I had failed and the payment exacted was huge and it lasted over the years.

That is until I left too. The day I boarded the flight to Japan was the day after my last day at work. I had finished a multi million dollar cloud program and the next day, I was finished. I had no sense of retirement or finding a final place. Or returning. I really could not think that far ahead. It was Tokyo then. Then it was Hiroshima. Then Osaka. And then...

Vietnam again. I had to have Vietnam again. It became all I wanted it to be but it made no real claims. I never felt in debt there but I felt indebted to the country and the people. Vietnam taught me a different lesson than living before in India and Singapore. I found a different look and feel. A different me was emerging too.

So what have I come up with on why people leave. I think its simple.

  1. They change. They become something that is not compatible with life where they are. They want something else and are willing to gamble. Take a chance. Become something else. Change.
  2. Everything changes about and around them. Life never stays static. The feelings at one time about life in a place become other feelings. At the end of my time, I realized it had changed and there I must apply the first thing.

I think where we get into trouble is believing we cannot change. We are too old, we have too little money. Life is too difficult. That’s a lot of things all in simple sentences. But the truth really is we are able to do a lot more than we think. We just don’t want the stress or the feelings or the loss. On the other side of things might be a gain. A thing you never saw coming but that does.

Its not just people. Its how you see the world. What it all looks like when you cast about and realize your now should be your then. I realized that I needed less. Less than I ever had. I did not cars and homes and watches. The newest of things. What I needed was so little really. Its funny that of all places Southeast Asia just delivers that.

I guess my message is writing this is ignore change at your own peril. Richard Bach said,

argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours.

So why do that. Why think you can or can’t do a thing. Henry Ford once said,

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

So what is the message here? Well I think its exceedingly simple these days. You don’t need the status quo of a thing. You can reach beyond and do more with less. You just have to look at both the limitations and what you believe about things.

I just decided I had to go. Not to retire but do the next thing. It took me some years to see and I knew leaving Mexico in 2022 I would make a basic change. That change was not coming back to America. I saw California in three days and it became too much for me. I knew there was no more of it.

So when you read that people are leaving. Well, yeah they are. I believe they fear change, their limitations, their abilities. But they do it anyways. We all want a life where we can decide each day what is the thing today I will do. I only do the things now I wish to do. Things don’t own me. I don’t have debt. I have this life that I never thought 10 years ago I would have.

Its like my archeology mentor RWR told me. He told me once to just go, do, find, believe. It took me some distance when the advice was about graduate school decades ago.Then it was archeology and wanting that passion. It was a family then that seemed to be a thing. Then a job which I took turns loving and hating.

Then I was done. Cue the Hanoi sunset of my dreams.

hanoi sunset