Never Retire: Valencia Was Home Before We Left

Leaving Spain, landing in San Francisco — and already looking forward to coming back.

I started writing this post in the Barcelona airport while waiting to board our flight to San Francisco.

A few thoughts have been running around my head repeatedly that I tie together for today's Never Retire newsletter story.

• You might be sick of hearing this, but the feeling of not really wanting to leave Spain recurred—repeatedly. If you're sick of hearing it (or, more so, I obsess that you might be!), you (or—actually—me) might be missing the point of this newsletter. It's to give you the blow-by-blow of how I feel throughout this process of moving abroad as part of my plan to Never Retire and remain engaged and vibrant into old age. If it's how I feel I have to relay it, even if it's repetitive or otherwise annoying. Or else you're not getting an accurate assessment of my experience.

• You CAN hold conflicting thoughts simultaneously. Like I'm excited to see my kid and experience something with her, but I'm not really all that excited to go to San Francisco—the place. You can have a good time even if you wouldn't choose to travel to a city without a specific purpose.

• It's crazy to think about our perspectives on things and how they change with time and as we experience new things and times in life.

Like my wife said to me as we crossed the street in Barcelona after coffee and breakfast at the local market.

It’s weird that we’re going on a trip and we’re really not excited like we normally are.

We agreed and followed that up with the obligatory we’re excited for the graduation and to bring our daughters back to Europe with us for a couple of weeks.

It’s also weird that I have felt the need to qualify and justify my lack of excitement over this trip. I’m not sure if that’s more about me or actually other people giving off the sense that I must somehow be a dickhead for not being excited to take a trip that just so happens to be happening because my daughter is graduating college.

Let’s break it down without the shallow appropriateness we love to use in American culture.

• We’re going to San Francisco with flowers in our hair because my daughter is graduating.

• We’re using the opportunity for my wife to spend extra time with her daughter in San Francisco before all four of us head back to Spain, then Paris and Amsterdam.

• If my daughter was not graduating, chances are they would be coming to visit us.

• If my daughter was not graduating and we decided to take a trip it would not be to San Francisco or any place else in the United States for that matter.

And that’s really weird. Because not long ago a trip to San Francisco triggered excitement. Now we’re of the opinion that—unless there’s a purpose, such as a graduation!—we will spend our euros traveling pretty much any and everywhere else.

At the same time as we feel this, there were probably people on our flight experiencing unbridled joy and anticipation over going to San Francisco for the first time. Or maybe the second, third, or fourth time. Just like we used to be.

Or maybe someone on that flight had just visited Spain and, this time, felt a little less excited about going home. That was us once — until it became clear Spain wasn’t just a possibility. It was home.

The United States of America hold special people and places in our hearts, but the thought of going back… It’s just not on the table in any present day realistic form.

The shift doesn’t come all at once. It’s slow. Subtle. It’s not that we’re suddenly “over” San Francisco. It’s just that we’re more into our life now—into Valencia, into Spain, into this new way of seeing and being.

We used to go to SF and feel like we were arriving at something. Now it feels like we’re stepping out of something that’s just starting to build real momentum.

So maybe it’s not about not wanting to go. It’s about already looking forward to coming back.

That said, we’ll have a great time in San Francisco. We always do.

Just like we did in Barcelona where—while it felt great—also didn’t feel like Valencia.

Look closely at the life in those gallery images from Barcelona. It’s a beautiful thing.

In Spain, this isn’t a dream or a campaign — it’s just how things are. A baseline.

In the U.S., this kind of public life feels like a luxury. Something to advocate and petition for, and carve out between cars and commerce. Even then, it rarely sticks.

I’ve known this. I studied it. It’s why I left.

I didn’t move to Spain chasing a dream. I moved because I was done settling for less.

Now I’m about to find out what it feels like to go back to the place I used to dream about.

I’m finishing and publishing this post on the plane. Looks like we’re landing over an hour early!

They’re continuing to build Superblocks out across Barcelona. Another thing of beauty.

And they make amazing food—especially at La Cova Fumada.