A glimpse into the parts of a lifestyle that don’t make it into the photos.

I’m sitting in a room full of books in Poio, Spain, writing this. In a place I already feel safe even though I’ve been here only a few days and a few months ago didn’t even know it existed.

The past week has been… I don’t even have the word for it. Full. Alive. Grateful. My life is humming. Job stuff is working. My body feels good. I’m exactly where I want to be, doing exactly what I want to do, with exactly the people I want around me.

This is what I built for.

And that is what a lot of people see… Greece, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Italy, now Spain and they project onto it. “You have so much freedom.” “You have time.” “You can go anywhere.”

And they’re right. I can.

But today I want to write about what a lot of them don’t see.

No complaints. Just reality.

Two months ago, I was in Bangkok and I couldn’t order lunch.

Not because the restaurant was closed. Not because my delivery app didn’t work. I couldn’t order lunch because the Airbnb deadline was rolling in, and the question of “where next?” had broken something in my system… again.

Big city or rural?
Mountains or beach?
Stay in Thailand or fly to Malaysia?
Hanoi?
Maybe to a place I haven’t been (need to use the privilege, right…)?

Each option was good. Some were great. That was the problem.

I was heading out to grab food, something simple, something easy and halfway down the street, I felt it…

Too many options.
Total indecisiveness.
Too much noise in my head.

A system overload.

It wasn’t about food anymore. It was about everything. The next city. The next months. The next move in a game where every square was a valid choice and none of them felt like the obvious choice.

I turned back. Went home. Couldn’t handle picking a restaurant.

I ordered something that is “safe”. Burgers and Fries. I can’t explain but when this feeling comes up I need something that is known, neither great nor bad, neutral, aka safe.

Being in Bangkok “a food paradise” and all I can eat is a Burger.

I often get the feeling that people think freedom is the answer to everything.

Maybe it is. Maybe not. Needs to be decided for everyone individually.

But I’m here to tell you… freedom is expensive. And I’m not talking about money.

The Myth of “You Have Time”

People say “you have time” like it’s something that happened to me.

It wasn’t.

I traded for it.

The quitting of my job to work from anywhere.
The struggling years without knowing if anything will work out.
The “no” to more paid work when I wanted space for my life.
Deciding to go full nomad.
Prioritizing short term conflict for long term gain.

Every trade created optionality. And optionality created a new task… deciding what to do with it.

That “decision task” is never crossed through.

The Cost of Too Much Freedom

The Decision Fatigue of Infinite Choice

Here’s the thing about infinite choice: it creates a specific kind of paralysis.

When every option is valid my brain can’t triage. It can’t say “this one is obviously better” because none of them are obviously better. They’re all good. Some are great. And that abundance breaks the decision-making mechanism.

So I start reducing. Making the question smaller and smaller until it’s manageable enough to move forward.

Pool or no pool. Mountains or beach. Safe food or adventurous food.

Try to switch from maximizer to satisficer.

On top of this, I can’t blame anyone or anything if my decisions were bad. This adds pressure on top.

Most people’s lives are bounded by constraints. The job is in city A, so you live there. The meeting is at 9 a.m., so you show up. Those constraints make decisions for you.

I deleted a lot of them. What I found underneath was an overwhelming amount of agency.

The Friction of Frictionlessness

I removed the external structure. Self employment, no office, no fixed address and then had to rebuild it manually.

Without it, I just floated. No traction. No heat.

So I started creating friction on purpose.

Muay Thai for example.

Chiang Mai, Germany, KL. Wherever I was, I’d find a gym. Not to become a fighter, but I needed someone to push me. External discipline in a life where no one else provided it.

But it’s not just physical. Without external push, I had to relearn my entire motivational system.

The shift from extrinsic to intrinsic isn’t poetic… it’s manual labor.

I had to figure out what drives me when no one is checking, no one is evaluating, and no deadline is looming except the ones I create for myself.

The routines of life handle the small stuff. When you delete the routines, you handle all of it.

The Zoo Animal

I sometimes feel like I’m behind glass now.

Not kidding. Sometimes it can feel lonely.

People visit the exhibit. They tap, comment on the habitat, but somewhere along the way they stopped expecting me to respond like I used to. My life became something to observe rather than relate to.

Some friends have even stopped asking me questions.

I guess there are multiple reasons for this, but one big one is that my life doesn’t fit into their conversational boxes anymore.

It’s not that one box is better or worse.

It’s just… different. And that difference creates this strange gap.

Thankfully what still works is when someone wants to go deep. When they actually want to talk about what’s happening inside, what we’re feeling, what we’re questioning or enjoying about our life?

That’s when the glass disappears. That’s when I feel connected.

It’s the in-between that’s awkward. The casual hangouts where people talk about promotions or house renovations or their kid’s school situation.

I’m there, interested, engaged, but also aware that my version of “normal” doesn’t overlap with theirs anymore and they look at me differently.

I’m not judging their choices. Their life isn’t worse than mine. Mine isn’t better than theirs.

We just have different systems with different costs. I’ve become a foreigner in my own former life.

The Payoff: What I Get in Return

Whether it’s worth it for you is a question only you can answer.

But as of now right here… It’s worth it for me.

Here’s what I get in exchange for the maintenance cost:

Being able to follow The Pull.

I haven’t fully grasped it… but what I know is that it appears in all facets of life.

It’s feeling a wave of energy hitting me that I can only describe as alive.

Like meeting a new person in your life and feeling so much of it that you fly across the globe to see them. Spending time with them and feeling a feeling that is so indescribable in sync with yourself that it is scary.

That’s what The Pull feels like. It’s the absence of friction. It’s alignment. It’s the feeling of being in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time, and you didn’t have to force any of it.

The Pull doesn’t happen every day. But when it does, it is insane.

This is often only possible because I have the freedom to follow it.

Because my life is structured in a way that allows me to move toward the thing that’s calling me instead of being locked into the thing I committed to a few months ago.

Most people can’t follow The Pull. Not because they don’t feel it, but because they’ve built a life that doesn’t allow for it.

The mortgage is due.
The kids need to be picked up.
The company expects you at your desk.

I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t have kids. I don’t have an employer.

But… what I have instead is a high-maintenance operating system that requires constant input, constant recalibration, and constant willingness to sit with the discomfort of not knowing what’s next.

But when the Pull comes? I can follow it.

That’s the trade.

The Takeaway: There Is No Free Lunch

I can say for myself… Freedom isn’t a destination.

It’s not something I achieved and then coasted on.

Freedom is a high-maintenance operating system. It requires energy. It requires decision-making stamina. It requires the willingness to build your own structures when the absence of structure starts to feel like drowning.

The people who envy my lifestyle see today’s library moment.

The sunshine (even though it’s currently raining).

The flexibility.

The ability to be anywhere.

What they don’t see is the Bangkok shutdown. The agency overwhelm. The manual reconstruction of every small structure that most people take for granted.

I’m not complaining. I chose this. And I’d choose it again.

But I’m also not pretending it’s easy. Or free.

Everything has a cost. The question isn’t whether you’re paying it. You are. The question is whether it’s a cost you’re willing to pay.

I’m paying mine. In decision fatigue. In artificially constructed discipline and the occasional shutdown when the freedom gets too loud.

And right now, sitting in this library in Pontevedra, full of gratitude and joy and the hum of a life I built with my own hands?

I’ll take it.

P.S.:

A fun observation I had…

Sometimes I don’t want to make decisions. Sometimes I want to just follow.

So I found a new concept which I call a Sheep Day: I deliberately surrender all decisions. Pick a friend, a guide, a structured event and just follow. No opinions. No preferences. No complaints.

Me just happily following and doing what I am told.

Someone else picks everything and I am okay with it.

It feels wonderful.

I couldn’t do it every day. But dosed correctly? It’s an antidote when the cost of deciding everything gets too high.

Part of writing my own life is knowing when to hand the pen to someone else.