The A Texas Nomad Book Club begins.

We’re starting with Flashlight by Susan Choi and reading it slowly over two months. No rush. No performance. Just a book, a pencil, and enough quiet to think.

A father and daughter walk a breakwater in Japan at dusk. He's holding a flashlight. Hours later, she wakes on the beach. He's gone.

Order the book now. First discussion thread drops April 1st!

I’m not unfamiliar with addictive personalities, whether it’s my own or the folks I tend to congregate with. It seems we all like to huddle together in the same storm.

Lately, in my journey to deepen this newsletter and create a more cinematic outlet, I noticed how effortlessly I fell into the dopamine trap. I found myself refreshing my follower counts (4k on TikTok, 3k on IG!) like a lab rat looking for a pellet.

I was becoming a "Digital Zombie," spending my best "cognitive gas" on Zuckerberg’s family of builds and leaving the scraps for my own.

I realized that if I didn’t change the physics of my day, I was going to lose my grip.

Welcome to iAA: iPhone Addicts Anonymous.

The internet has been hijacked. What was once an open territory for nomads and creators has been subdivided into walled gardens by tech oligarchs.

We’ve traded freedom for a "Pay More, Get Less" subscription model. In this digital feudalism, your tools are working against you. Your word processor needs a patch before you can write; your creative "cloud" is a landlord that can evict your memories at will.

But the most radical thing about the analog world? Your typewriter doesn't need a firmware update. Your pencil doesn't need a security patch.

To break the spell of the 47-second attention span, you need tools with Friction. I’m experimenting with replacing my digital notes with a Tennessee Red pencil.

Made of aromatic Eastern Red Cedar, it smells like a wood-burning fire when it hits the electric sharpener. That scent is a sensory "reset" button.

I’ve paired it with my Leuchtturm1917 for my deep Q1 planning and a Field Notes for my "Scout" observations.

As a lefty, fountain pens are off the table. I'd just smear ink across every page. But the Tennessee Red doesn't care which hand holds it. Putting together the right “kit” means working with the tools that actually serve you, not the ones that look good in someone else’s setup.

Following the lead of Haruki Murakami, I’ve started every entry by looking outside.

You can do this by, instead of worrying about some deep journal entry about emotions and the meaning of life, just begin by recording the weather, the temperature, and the light. Starting with the external world gives you an easy entry that never fails.

I’ve also reclaimed my time with a $20 Casio watch (see today’s “The Gear” section, below). It’s the ultimate "Dumb Phone" for your wrist. It doesn't track my heart rate or notify me of a "Trending Thread." It just tells the time and records “splits” but I don’t even use that feature, whatever it is.

I’m not Carl Lewis.

The final piece of the puzzle was realizing that the local library is a glitch in the matrix. It is a free version of WeWork, but better. It is the only place left where you are a citizen, not a consumer. No paywalls, no "community managers," just the silence required for deep alchemy.

If "Grit" was the engine that got us through January, "Digital Freedom" is the steering wheel for the rest of 2026. This week, I want you to do three things:

We aren't becoming Luddite monks. We are becoming Analog Maximalists. We are saving our gas for our families, our art, and the real world.

🇱🇰 Sri Lanka officially launched a digital nomad visa (Feb 2026), including a $2,000/month income floor and 1-year stay + renewals. 

🇧🇬 Bulgaria opened applications for a new digital nomad residence permit/visa route (available since Dec 20, 2025) for non-EU remote workers. 

🇦🇪 UAE tightened its Remote Work visa: applicants now must show 6 months of bank statements (up from 3). 

🇪🇸 Spain: 2026 minimum-wage changes are pushing the digital nomad visa income threshold up (watch the new monthly floor tied to SMI).Check your target country’s official immigration page for exact income thresholds and application windows. They move quickly.

If this issue is about reclaiming your attention, this book is about reclaiming your operating system.

Vishen argues that most of us live inside what he calls “Brules” — inherited scripts about career, success, religion, relationships, even identity that we rarely question. Go to school. Get the job. Dress this way. Date this type of person. Climb the ladder.

The problem isn’t ambition. It’s unconscious ambition.

You might be ridiculed for thinking differently. Sometimes even quietly punished for it. Older generations and institutions often expect you to inherit their belief system intact. And most of them are simply repeating what was handed to them.

Conformity is efficient. Creativity is disruptive.

One line that lingers:

Simple. But when you audit your day, you realize how much still runs on settings you never consciously chose.

The deeper message here isn’t rebellion. It’s authorship. You are allowed to design your own belief system. To question the defaults. To keep what aligns and discard what doesn’t.

In the context of Digital Freedom, that matters. If you don’t design your beliefs and your inputs intentionally, someone else will.

Who this is for:

Anyone ready to stop inheriting their life and start authoring it.

The Goonies meets Apocolypse Now.

This Colombian independent film is not for the faint of heart. Five broke street kids in Medellín drift between glue highs and machete fights until one inherits rural land stolen from his family during the paramilitary years through a government restitution program.

What follows is a journey into Colombia’s interior, where coca fields, illegal gold mining, and state absence blur into something mythic and menacing. They are not chasing adventure. They are chasing paperwork. Title. Legitimacy. A stamp that says they exist.

And a white horse that could symbolize innocence, freedom, or the ghosts of Colombia’s past.

In that sense, it’s also a quiet horror story about trámite, bureaucracy that feels designed to exhaust the poor into surrender.

The film makes bold and surprising choices, slipping into dreamlike sequences where we hear the boys’ inner longings. They are children forced into adulthood, still searching for scraps of joy in a world that offers them almost nothing. Tragic and beautiful.

Recommend.

This watch does not track your heartbeat. Unless your heart beats exactly once per second.

It doesn’t buzz. It doesn’t notify. It doesn’t care what’s trending.

What it does is tell the time. That’s it. No biometric dashboards. No algorithm nudges. No quiet anxiety vibrating on your wrist.

The electro-luminescent backlight glows like something from 1997, and that’s the point. It belongs to an era when your watch didn’t spy on you.

Most importantly, it doesn’t allow the world to interrupt you.

In a season of Digital Freedom, that restraint feels radical.

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.