📩 In Today’s Email

• TL; DR - Travel expands your life, but only shared history gives it weight.

• The Deep Dive: What returning home after seven years revealed about the hidden cost of building a borderless life without roots.

• The Gear: Logitech Pebble Mouse 2 - Travel-sized, clickable, something I use.

• The Read: The War of Art - If you’ve procrastinated starting your novel, your symphony, whatever you have inside you, here is the kick in the butt you need.

• The Stream: Landman - Texas power, land, legacy, football, cheerleaders, explosions, 4×4s, drugs, booze, babes, black gold and Billy Bob. All the juice.

🤿 The Deep Dive - The Distance Between Us

I AM WRITING THIS FROM THE HOUSTON AIRPORT, where I am shoving off again. Proverbially, that is, not actually on a ship. Just a boring old plane.

I came home for the first time in a little over seven years. Long enough that the city feels familiar, minus getting lost amidst new building construction, as Houston has boomed since I left.

Yesterday, I attended the funeral of a friend’s mother. She was one of those women who was always smiling, always laughing. Always interested. Their house was the kind of household where the parents were fully alive and always doing interesting things, birding, boating, hobbies of all sorts. Always curious and warm.

During the service, one of the hymns began: Morning Has Broken.

The moment the first notes sounded on the organ, I caught the eye of another friend I grew up with. No words were needed. Didn’t we sing this all the time back in school?

The confirmation came instantly. A look. A slight nod. An eyebrow lift. Two people reaching back through the decades to a weekly assembly we called “chapel,” to the muscle memory of being young together.

That moment has stayed with me as I leave again. The weight of shared history. And what it means to build a life where that weight no longer exists.

The Math Don’t Math

Years abroad. Many countries. Thousands of conversations. Thousands of newsletter readers. Strangers who became friends, for one night or forever (as the old Skymall advertisement of double beds said, cheekily, I always thought).

And yes, as I sat in those pews, surrounded by people I’ve known since childhood, I felt an uncomfortable truth settling in.

I haven’t replicated this kind of depth anywhere else.

Not in Medellin. Not in Tokyo. Not in any city where I’ve built what I thought were meaningful connections.

This is the nomad’s paradox: You can know a place deeply and still remain a stranger to it.

This isn’t about loneliness. I am rarely alone. Some ‘mads struggle with that, but I don’t. And Medellín has polled as the second-best city on earth to make friends.

This is about a specific kind of connection. The kind that only comes from growing up together. From jumping on trampolines and skinned knees. From shared songs. From knowing someone’s mother well enough that her funeral feels like family.

You can’t manufacture that kind of history, no matter how much wine or ayahuasca everyone shares. You can only live it, slowly, over decades.

The Expat Bubble Problem

Here is what a lot of people don’t tell you about living abroad.

It’s incredibly easy to never actually live there.

You can spend years in a country while:

• Speaking English with other expats

• Consuming content from home

• Diaspora dating™️

• Working remotely for companies back home

• Living in the same foreigner-heavy neighborhoods

I’ve watched people do this for a decade. Hell, I’ve done this more than I like to admit.

The result is strange suspension. You’re physically present but culturally absent. You’ve moved your body but not your life. You’re living around a place rather than in it.

The first requirement for real connection abroad is language. Not “get-by” language. Not “uno más cerveza por favor” language. Real fluency.

The kind that lets you argue. Joke. Disagree. Share vulnerability. Understand nuance.

Because without shared language, you can’t have the conversations that deepen friendship. You can’t fight productively. You can’t misunderstand and then repair. You’re limited to surface exchanges that feels like connection but isn’t.

When language opens, the world becomes more legible. You realize people are more similar than you thought. Personalities are shaped by culture also, yes, but universally and recognizably human beneath.

Language also reveals logic that doesn’t translate. What one culture calls rude is often just direct. What another calls lazy is often just different timekeeping.

Some cultures are more influenced by chronos time. Clock, schedules, optimization. Alarms and meetings.

Others by kairos time. Event-based time. One moment flowing into the next. Not great for making early morning meetings, but often better for being human with O.I. (organic intelligence™️).

The USA is a chronos society. We live by the schedule. We optimize hours and are bothered by inefficiency. Many of the cultures we love to visit foster kairos time. Plans are fluid. “Ten minutes” might mean “eventually.”

Time bends around human connection rather than the other way around.

Western productivity culture often reads this as laziness. It isn’t. Just as Americans are not the stereotypes we are labeled, like “rude” or “cold.”

These are lingual and cultural paradigms. Value systems, not moral failures.

Chronos time built the modern world. Kairos keeps us human inside it. You can’t calendar conversations that change your life. You can’t time-block spontaneous joy. You can’t optimize core memories.

The terms come from the ancient Greeks, who, in their democracy creating wisdom, were both.

The work is balance. Being both a fish out of water and not losing your own structure at the same time. Adaptation without self-erasure.

It’s not only possible; it’s the goal.

What Actually Matters at the End

Every happiness study reaches the same conclusion. Every end-of-life interview circles the same truth:

As long as the basics and a decent well-being of life are achieved (food, shelter, ability to pay bills, etc), connection is the most important thing to life.

Not great success or great money or even great achievement.

When the mortal coil is fully shuffled, people don’t regret that promotion they didn’t get. They regret the relationships they didn’t prioritize. The neighbors they never talked to. The moments they missed because they were too busy optimizing.

At A Texas Nomad, I talk a lot about abundance. It’s trending. Financial abundance, creative abundance, time abundance.

I’ve been missing the most important kind. Emotional abundance. Friend abundance. Love abundance.  

Living abroad makes this harder. You’re away from your foundation. You’re building new relationships without shared history. You are starting from zero, again and again.

But that’s not an excuse. It’s the challenge.

This year, per my friend’s request, I am honoring his mother by talking to the neighbor we’ve never talked to. By staying involved and going beyond the script.

You could too.

Morning has broken, time to be here for it.

⌚ The Gear - Logitech Pebble Mouse

I didn’t buy this mouse because it was exciting. I bought it because I was tired of bulky ones taking up space and making noise in quiet places.

The Pebble Mouse 2 is thin, light, and disappears into whatever bag I’m carrying. It works on café tables, airport desks, and random Airbnbs without complaint. The clicks are quiet. The scroll wheel is soft. No one turns around when you’re working.

There’s no gamer energy here. No glowing lights. No attempt to feel important. It just connects, does what it’s supposed to do, and stays out of the way.

When you are living out of luggage, that matters. Good gear shouldn’t demand attention. It should quietly let you keep going.

This mouse quietly earns its place in my bag.

That’s good design

📣 Newsletter News

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🌎 VisaWatch™️ 

🌍 More than 50 countries now offer digital nomad or remote-worker visas, with ongoing global expansion and evolving rules for income thresholds and benefits in 2026.

🇧🇬 Bulgaria launches its first official digital nomad visa, opening long-term remote-work permits for non-EU workers and outlining qualification and application details.

🇵🇹 Portugal’s nationality law updates could extend the residency period required for citizenship after a digital nomad visa, potentially doubling the wait time under the new proposal.

🇬🇷 Greece continues promoting its digital nomad visa for 2026, offering remote workers residency for up to 12 months with extensions and benefits, including potential tax advantages.

🇪🇸 Spain’s digital nomad visa requirements are set to rise, with higher income thresholds tied to minimum wage levels for qualifying applicants in 2026.

Check your target country’s official immigration page for exact income thresholds and application windows. They move quickly.

🤓 The Read - The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. 

This is the book you read when it’s time to start the thing you keep circling.

Pressfield isn’t talking about tactics. He’s talking about resistance. Capital R. The invisible, ever-present force whose sole job is to keep you from doing the work you were put here to do. Not to slow you down. To stop you entirely.

As Pressfield writes, “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. The hard part is sitting down to write.” That friction, that avoidance, that sudden interest in literally anything else… that’s resistance at work.

And resistance plays for keeps. Pressfield goes further than most are comfortable with, suggesting that when we don’t answer the call of our inner genius, it doesn’t just stall our careers. It corrodes us. He connects ignored creative impulses to addiction, anxiety, neurosis. As a consequence of not following your passion.

That’s a little higher proof than we usually get in these “follow your passion” drinks; it’s an “or else” situation. Follow it or die miserable.

“Are you a writer who doesn’t write? A painter who doesn’t paint? An entrepreneur who never starts?” If so, you already know resistance intimately.

Pressfield does get spiritual. He steps into the nether realm of muses, daemons, and calling. That might turn some people off. I’d argue it shouldn’t. If you’re serious about creative work, you’re already operating in that territory whether you name it or not.

This book isn’t about inspiration. It’s about permission. And discipline. And finally beginning.

Who this is for: anyone standing at the edge of their great work, feeling the pull (and the fear) of starting. Or else…

🦜 Rio’s Corner

🍿 The Stream - Landman (Paramount +)

I hesitate to say which, if any, of these characters remind me of people I know. There are a few. Too close. And it would be too easy to guess were I to mention them.

What I will say is this: the show arrives with genuine surprise and straight-up audacity. A fuel rig loaded with drugs crashes into a black private jet parked on the highway? Check. Talk about opening with a bang as big as Texas. A gas attack vaporizing workers you just shared a taco with? Check.

From Taylor Sheridan (Yellowstone), it’s operatic. It’s ruthless. It understands spectacle.

The cast is excellent. I spoke to friends in this industry who work in the “patch” also, and they say the show is pretty realistic, even if it’s been “Hollywooded” up. Of course it has. It’s television. Attention requires a little embellishment. Bigger and better, like Texas.

Danger, money, absurdity, narcos. Sounds a little familiar.

Landman knows how to turn up the volume, and Billy Bob has found his vehicle, which he isn’t letting anyone borrow, just like his daughter or his 4×4 pickup truck.

🛤️ Outtro

Reinvention begins not with where you land, but with what you make.

Every place is a blank page. What you write there? That’s your legacy.

If this newsletter sparked something, pass it on to a friend, a fellow explorer, or anyone rewriting their life.

This community grows through real connection. One story, one share at a time.

If you enjoyed this, share it.

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See you next week. Don’t Escape. Design.