One more flight. Hopefully the last for a while.
The ticket's booked. Copenhagen to London. Final stop on a journey that's taken four months longer than planned and covered more ground than necessary.
After endless airports, constantly shifting remote work setups, and more time living out of a suitcase than in an actual home, it feels good to be closing this chapter.
The Myth of Constant Motion
Here's what no one tells you about the "work from anywhere" lifestyle: it sounds revolutionary until you're doing it.
The Instagram version looks brilliant. Laptop by the pool. Coffee with a view. Freedom to work from paradise.
The reality is lonelier, messier, and far less productive than the promotional materials suggest.
I spent four months testing this theory. Four months of working from different countries, different time zones, different cafés with varying degrees of reliable WiFi. And here's what I learned: constant motion isn't the same as progress.
You can be incredibly busy whilst achieving remarkably little. You can have unlimited flexibility whilst feeling completely stuck. You can work from anywhere whilst building towards nothing in particular.
The digital nomad lifestyle isn't inherently bad. It's just not what it claims to be. It's not freedom—it's just a different set of constraints, wrapped in better marketing.
What Flexibility Actually Costs
Flexibility sounds like an unqualified good until you have too much of it.
When you can work from anywhere, you spend an unreasonable amount of time deciding where to work from. When every day can be different, they all start to blur together. When you have no routine, you spend more energy creating structure than you do actually working.
The past four months taught me that unlimited options create their own kind of prison. Decision fatigue. Constant low-level anxiety about whether you're making the right choice. The nagging feeling that you should be somewhere else, doing something different.
I thought I wanted freedom from constraints. Turns out I wanted better constraints. The right ones. Constraints that come from committing to something worth committing to rather than constraints imposed by circumstance or inertia.
The Clarity of What You Don't Want
There's a lesson that only comes from actually trying something: discovering what you don't want is as valuable as discovering what you do want.
I don't want unlimited flexibility. I want focused direction.
I don't want to work from anywhere. I want to work somewhere that matters, with people who care about the work.
I don't want every day to be different. I want the compound effect that comes from showing up to the same place, with the same people, working on the same problems until they're actually solved.
I don't want to optimise for lifestyle. I want to optimise for impact.
The remote work experiment wasn't a failure. It was an education. A expensive, time-consuming education in what I actually value versus what I thought I was supposed to value.
The Rebellious Act of Commitment
There's a narrative that says leaving is brave and staying is settling. That keeping your options open is smart and committing is limiting yourself. That freedom means having no ties rather than choosing your ties carefully.
I'm not buying it anymore.
The truly rebellious act right now isn't quitting your job to travel the world. Everyone's doing that. The rebellious act is committing. Choosing depth over breadth. Saying no to infinite options so you can say yes to the right ones.
In a world obsessed with flexibility, commitment is the contrarian position. In a culture that celebrates constant reinvention, building something that takes years is radical. In an economy that rewards jumping ship every 18 months, staying and seeing something through is the real risk.
I'm not romanticising corporate life or pretending that office politics and commutes are inherently valuable. I'm saying that the opposite extreme—complete flexibility with no anchor—isn't the solution either.
What Stability Actually Means
Stability has a bad reputation. It sounds like settling. Like giving up on dreams. Like admitting defeat.
That's not what I'm choosing.
What I'm choosing is the stability that comes from knowing where you'll be on Tuesday morning. The stability of working with the same people long enough to build real trust. The stability of problems that take longer than a sprint cycle to solve.
I'm choosing the kind of stability that lets you go deep instead of staying shallow. That lets you build something that compounds over time rather than constantly starting from zero. That comes from commitment rather than circumstance.
Stability isn't the opposite of growth. It's the foundation for it.
The Long-Term Game
The past four months have been about constant movement. The next chapter is about building something that lasts.
That means showing up somewhere every day. Working with people who push you to do better work. Tackling problems that are actually worth solving. Building something that requires more than one person's brain and more than one quarter's commitment.
It means trading unlimited options for focused direction. Trading flexibility for depth. Trading the illusion of freedom for the real thing - the freedom that comes from building something you're proud of with people you respect.
The long-term game looks different from the short-term one. It's less Instagrammable. Less romantic. Less likely to impress people at parties.
It's also more likely to actually matter.
Closing Loops, Starting Fresh
This ticket to London represents more than just another flight. It's the closing of a loop that started four months ago when I thought I needed a quick break.
The break became an exile. The exile became an experiment. The experiment became an education.
Now it's time to apply what I've learned.
I've learned that I work better with constraints than without them. That I need colleagues, not just calendar invites. That I want to build things that take time, not just ship things quickly. That showing up matters more than keeping options open.
I've learned the difference between being busy and making progress. Between having freedom and knowing what to do with it. Between flexibility as an escape and commitment as a choice.
What's Next
One more flight. Then it's back to building.
Not back to the old routine - back to a better one. One I've chosen deliberately rather than fallen into by default. One that's designed around what I've learned rather than what I thought I was supposed to want.
A proper job with proper colleagues working on proper problems. A flat that's mine rather than temporary. A rhythm that compounds rather than resets every week.
Structure instead of chaos. Depth instead of breadth. Commitment instead of infinite optionality.
The ticket's booked. The loop's closing. The next chapter starts soon.
And for the first time in four months, I know exactly where I'm going and why it matters.
Time to build something that lasts.