The sadness of always leaving

Dancing salsa on the beach in Mexico, and the post-nomad dilemma

Dancing on the beach, La Ventana, Baja California

“For a post-nomad,” someone recently told me, “you actually travel quite a bit.”

Which is true.

I travel more than most, though less than those who you think of as full-on digital nomads, skipping from city to city every few weeks or months. The problem with this type of travel, as I’ve written, is the disconnection, both from people and places.

My travel now faces the opposite problem. I am connected to communities that I love, but I continuously leave those communities.

Last year, I spent September and October at my homestead in Rumney, New Hampshire. I reconnected with friends and climbing partners and loved every day on the cliffs, watching the leaves change, dipping in the swimming hole, pressing crabapples from the tree, enjoying long pasta dinners. But when I left, I was filled with a deep sadness, even if I was excited to get back to Spain and devote attention to the renovation.

The past two weeks I’ve been kitesurfing with a close friend in La Ventana, in Baja Mexico. It’s my third season here, so it’s not just my friend I’m spending time with, but a whole community of kitesurfers, salsa dancers, and general vagabonds that I see each year, and each year the circle grows. Many of them live here, having come once for a kitesurfing lesson and been lured by La Ventana’s edge-of-the-world, cerveza and sand, disconnected from it all, chill-as-can-be vibe.

But I’m leaving soon, and again, I am filled with a deep sadness.

Last night my friend and I danced salsa on a makeshift dancefloor on the edge of the beach under a full moon. Salseros from around the world hugging and kissing on the cheeks, sharing a beer, dancing close to bachata, twirling around to salsa, each one of us basking in the gratitude of a beautiful February night of music and friendship and (for some) simmering romance.

I don’t want to leave this community that I love. And that’s the problem—you either have to stay, or leave them behind.

Indeed, I feel I’ve discovered many of the ideal places to be in the world, at least if you’re me. Rock climbing in the northeast in the Fall, kitesurfing in Baja in the winter, and Barcelona at any time of year.

I miss everyone in all the places. I want to be everywhere. Time is short. Life is short. Another season passes you by, and all you can do is savor the moments of love and joy and passion.

These are good problems to have of course.

Occasionally, I still come across digital nomads who want to settle their lives but don’t know how to choose where.

You go toward community.

There’s adventure and novelty in new places—over Christmas, I traveled to Gibraltar and Morrocco—but the skill is to recognize a community you jibe with when you find it, and give it its due.

I still don’t have this completely down. Indeed, I didn’t recognize just how much I would miss Barcelona until I left. I gave up my apartment there last year—which in retrospect I regret. I’m looking for another one now, hopefully, to buy this time. The renovation in the countryside goes on, and the climbing cliffs at Siurana always beckon, but Barcelona captured a piece of my heart. Me enamoré.

A place attracts a certain kind of person. Sometimes you sense it when you step off the boat. Other times, it takes months. And when everyone who values the same things finds themselves in a place together, doing things that bring them joy and peace and fulfillment, well, that is a precious thing for everyone.

La Ventana is certainly one of those places.

But you have to open your heart and make available the time and space. I’ve been guilty in the past of adhering too rigidly to prior plans, to life goals, to projects once started and committed to.

My head is always planning; then my heart gets ignored. And then, even when I do recognize the value of what I’ve found, I have trouble prioritizing. But I suppose this is the great puzzle of how to spend one’s limited time on earth.

My different values are now conflicting with each other—time outdoors, continuous learning, creative endeavor, time spent with friends and family, simplicity in living—where one place gets me one or two of those, I miss another. In one location time spent with friends, another family. In one, creative endeavor, in another continuous learning.

Right now the main thing is my friends and family: they are spread over the world, and all of them have less freedom than I do. So I feel I should go to them.

So I side-trip to San Diego to see my brother. Another excursion planned to New Mexico to see my sister, dad, step-mom, cousins. The timing of La Ventana itself was motivated by my friend’s limited work flexibility, and his wife and two kids at home.

But I can’t be everywhere. And every time I leave a place or a person—a community I love, I get sad. What could come of these relationships if I stayed? But then what would I miss of the others if I never go? Yes, I travel more than most, though less than some. I’m still struggling to find the balance.