Never Retire: When You Don’t Need a Vacation From Your Life

Because the point of vacation shouldn't be escape—it should be curiosity.

Walking around San Francisco this week, more than one time I have thought to myself or said to my wife: I miss Valencia.

The weather has been fantastic. The city is super clean and as beautiful as ever. We have no real agenda as we wait for this weekend’s main event—my daughter’s college graduation. We’re just walking around in a city I’ve always loved.

However, almost the entire time we’ve been in San Francisco, I’ve been longing to return to Spain. Which—conventionally speaking—is weird. We’re on vacation. And when you’re on vacation, the story goes: you don’t want it to end.

I don't want to return to real life—that’s the common refrain.

Travel as an escape. There seems to be something inherently wrong with that. Wrong if you need to escape your life for a little while. Just as wrong if you need to escape a physical environment that isn't conducive to a high quality of life.

When we lived in Los Angeles, we couldn’t wait to travel. It wasn’t that we needed to escape our lives. It was that we knew we needed to live them in a place better aligned with how we want to move through a day.

For us, it got to the point where we felt a little depressed to return to LA, particularly from Spain and especially after the last trip we took before making the permanent move.

In Valencia, every day already has what this “vacation” is trying so hard to manufacture—ease, rhythm, vibrancy, affordability. The stuff people chase on a trip? I’ve got it on a random Tuesday.

I'm all for travel. There's something cool about seeing and experiencing new places. And going back to places that immediately earned a special place in your heart. (That's Rome for me. We already have tentative plans to go back in September and February). But there's something uncool about needing to go back because you think the place where you live sucks.

When searching for the place where you'll Never Retire, it’s essential to have a solid idea of what you want. Of what will sustain you now and for the duration. I hope the process I have gone through ahead of our move to Spain and the process we’re going through now helps inform your experience.

We keep saying it out loud in San Francisco—when we get home. Not back to Valencia.

Home.

That’s how we know: it’s official. Spain isn’t a sabbatical or a long trip.

It’s life.

Not because it’s perfect, but because it aligns with how we want to live every day. We found the place where the seemingly mundane things—coffee, errands, crossing the plaza—don’t feel like tasks. They feel like rituals. Little markers of a life you don’t want to get away from.

That’s the thing about Never Retire. It’s not about never working or never taking a break. It’s about building a life you don’t need to escape. Where the day-to-day doesn’t grind you down, but pulls you forward. Where travel isn’t an escape from your life—it’s just a curiosity you get to indulge in because your life is already good.

I used to look forward to vacation because it gave me space to imagine a different way of living. Now I look forward to going home because that different way of living is mine.

And that, I think, is the goal.

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It’s important to me to illustrate exactly how I feel at every stage of this process.

I did this in anticipation of the move. I did this as we we’re in the final stages of making the move. I did this when we arrived in Spain as we settled in. And I’m doing it now—pretty much fully settled in—and experiencing that weird feeling of returning to the place that used to be home.

I can only relay how I feel. How all of this makes me feel.

I am not going to censor my thoughts for fear of being repetitive or romanticizing our life in Spain and how I feel about it. Because some things bear repeating and some things really do live up to the hype—and then some.

It’s something I feel self-conscious about—telling the story about how much we love Spain too frequently. But that’s the story I have to tell today. While it will develop like everything throughout this journey has, I am sure it will remain a theme because—as I have also said—we knew what we wanted and what to expect and now we’re getting it. So the way we feel living in Spain and being away from it comes as no surprise.

Whether you're thinking about moving abroad, in the middle of making it happen, building your own version of Never Retire, or already living exactly how you want—I hope this story helps. Or at least entertains you.

Church Street Station / San Francisco / Mid-Afternoon