Never Retire: You Stay Young By Deciding To Remain In The Game And Do The Work
Learning a language, writing, yoga, moving abroad — it’s not about mastering any of it. It’s about not checking out.
A thread runs through what I write here, even when I’m not directly saying it.
People want the arrival. They don’t want the path.
They want to show up in a new country and feel fluent—or expect everybody to speak or understand English.
They want to move abroad without discomfort.
They want to be writers without writing.
They want to create without struggling (to learn a craft!).
They want to start a project and have it land before it’s lived.
They want results without the slow, boring parts—without the work.
In some cases, you can replace want with expect.
As I think about it, expect probably fits better in instances where people lash out—at so-called bureaucracy, at whatever—rather than take a moment to reset and look within.
Taking moments to reset and look within—it’s the number one thing you do when you move to a new country. And that’s when it’s going really well.