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Hey Freaking Nomads,

Last week someone asked me what the secret to long-term travel is.

I think they wanted a hack. Like a budgeting trick or a packing system.

But I gave them the boring answer: you have to be willing to do nothing.

When I first started out, I treated every place like it might be my last visit ever. Every weekend was a mission. See the thing, eat the thing, hike the thing, photograph the thing. I was exhausted by Wednesday and I couldn't figure out why a life I'd fought so hard for felt so heavy.

Turns out you can't sightsee for two years straight. Nobody can. That pace is built for a two-week holiday, not a life.

The people I know who've been doing this for five, eight, ten years all have one thing in common. They have incredibly boring weeks.

They go to the same café. They have a gym they like. They'll spend a whole Sunday doing laundry and watching something dumb. And they don't feel guilty about it.

That used to feel like failure to me. Like if I wasn't constantly doing the destination, I was wasting it.

Now I think it's the entire reason it works.

Because long-term travel isn't a long holiday. It's just your normal life, relocated. And normal life has dull Tuesdays in it. Always has. The dull Tuesdays are what make the good days sustainable!

So the real secret is simply giving yourself permission to be ordinary somewhere extraordinary. To not earn the place you're in. To just live there for a bit, badly and unphotogenically, and then move on when it's time.

The travel that lasts is the travel that lets you breathe.

Until next week,

Irene

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🧑‍💻 The Nomad Resource of the Week

If the secret to long-term traveling is embracing the boring weeks and their routine, for me a lot of that routine comes down to good coffee I can make myself.

Let's be real, café coffee adds up wayyy fast when you're somewhere for a month. And there's something about making your own cup that makes a new place feel a little less new.

I've been using the AeroPress Go for the last four months and it's been super cool:

Genuinely small and light, packs down into its own mug, no loose parts to lose
Makes proper coffee in about a minute, espresso-style or smooth and filtered
Basically unbreakable plastic, survives being thrown in a bag repeatedly
No electricity needed, just hot water, so it works anywhere
Cheap to run, no pods, no machine, paper filters cost almost nothing

I truly recommend it if you also run on caffeine. It's just one of those small things that makes the ordinary days on the road feel a bit more like home.

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