3 months. Head full and a truth I can't shake: Freedom is only fun if you know what you're coming back to.
The Test
I didn't leave to escape. I left to test. To see if the pull towards something else was real or just restlessness wearing a fancy mask. To find out if the voice in my head saying "there's got to be more than this" was wisdom or just Wednesday afternoon boredom dressed up in ambition's clothes.
Turns out, both can be true. And that's exactly what I needed to learn.
The first week felt like vindication. Look at me, untethered. No meetings at 9 AM. No commute. No small talk by the coffee machine about weekend plans I didn't make because I was too tired to make them. Just me, a backpack, and the kind of freedom that looks better in Instagram stories than it feels in real time.
The second week, the romance started to fray. Freedom, I discovered, is a lot like silence. Beautiful in theory, deafening in practice. When you can go anywhere, choice paralysis sets in. When you can do anything, you often end up doing nothing particularly meaningful. The road taught me what I thought it would: how to navigate uncertainty, how to trust my instincts, how to find my footing when the ground keeps changing.
But then it taught me what I didn't expect.
The Discovery
I thought I wanted to roam. Turns out, I want to build.
There's a difference between running towards something and running from something, even when the destination looks the same from the outside. I thought I was running towards freedom, towards possibility, towards some version of myself I'd never had the courage to become. What I was actually doing was testing whether the life I'd built was a cage or a foundation.
The answer came in fragments. In a conversation with a stranger in a café in Crete who was building something I wished I was part of. In the moment I realised I was checking LinkedIn more than I was checking sunset times. In the growing ache I felt when I saw friends posting about projects they were launching, problems they were solving, teams they were building.
Distance has a way of sharpening focus. When you remove yourself from the daily machinery of your life, you get to see which parts you actually miss and which parts were just comfortable noise. I missed the weight of consequence. I missed the satisfaction of building something that would outlast the day. I missed the particular kind of tired you get when you've pushed something forward that matters to more people than just you.
I didn't miss the commute or the office politics or the performative busy-work that fills the gaps between real work. But I missed the real work itself. The collaboration. The problem-solving. The moment when an idea stops being theoretical and becomes something you can point to and say, "We made that."
The Realisation
What I discovered, somewhere between month two and month three, is that I don't actually want unlimited options. I want the right constraints. I don't want endless horizons. I want a horizon I'm actively building towards.
The revelation hit me in Sitia, of all places. I was sitting in a café, watching people walk past with purpose, to work, to meetings, to lives that had shape and momentum and I realised I wasn't envious of their routines. I was envious of their direction. Their sense of building towards something bigger than today's adventure.
That's when I knew I wasn't meant to be a digital nomad or a perpetual traveller or any of the other labels that make rootlessness sound like an achievement. I was meant to test those things so I could choose something else with confidence.
The Choice
London. The work. The people who push back when you need it and pull you forward when you're ready.
Coming back isn't about admitting defeat. It's about admitting what you actually want. And what I want is to sink my teeth into something substantial. To work with people who care as much as I do about getting it right. To build something that requires more than one person's brain and more than three months' commitment.
I want the kind of work that keeps you up at night because you can't stop thinking about the solution, not because you're stressed about deadlines. I want colleagues who challenge your thinking and collaborators who make your ideas better than they were when they were just yours. I want the satisfaction that comes from seeing a project through from conception to completion to impact.
The three months away gave me permission to want these things without shame. To admit that maybe the problem wasn't my old life, maybe it was just the wrong version of the life I actually wanted.
What's Next
So here's what's next: A new role. A new place. A new rhythm, but not a new me. Just a sharper one.
I'm not coming back to settle for the first opportunity that presents itself or to slide back into patterns that didn't serve me before I left. I'm coming back with criteria. With clarity about what I'm building towards and what I'm not willing to build my life around.
The job I'm taking isn't just a job, it's a bet on the kind of work that makes getting up early feel like a privilege rather than a punishment. The flat I'm renting isn't just shelter. it's a base of operations for the kind of life that has both roots and reach. The pace I'm setting isn't just sustainable, it's intentional.
I've learnt the difference between being busy and being engaged. Between having options and making choices. Between freedom as an escape and freedom as a foundation for building something worthwhile.
The Bigger Picture
The drift taught me about possibility. But possibility without direction is just expensive procrastination. What I want now is the particular kind of constraint that comes from committing to something worth committing to. The weight of responsibility that comes from signing up for work that matters. The deep satisfaction that comes from being part of something larger than yourself.
I tested my assumptions about what I wanted, and most of them were wrong. I thought I wanted escape. I wanted engagement. I thought I wanted flexibility. I wanted focus. I thought I wanted to wander. I wanted to build.
I tested the limits. Now I'm rebuilding the core.
This isn't a retreat. It's not a compromise. It's not me giving up on some dream of radical freedom because reality got too expensive or too lonely. It's me choosing the life I actually want over the life I thought I was supposed to want.
The person coming back to London isn't the same person who left. I've got sharper instincts about what's worth my time and what isn't. Better boundaries around what I'll accept and what I won't. Clearer vision about what I'm building towards and why it matters.
If London's been calling you too, if you've been wondering whether the grass is actually greener or just different, pick up. There's work to do. The kind of work that doesn't feel like work because it feels like building something that matters with people who matter to you.
The drift was good for what it was: a test, a reset, a reminder that you get to choose your constraints. But choosing no constraints isn't actually freedom. It's just a different kind of prison, one with better views but no foundation.
We've got work to do.