Hello internet friends 👋
TLDR: I’ve launched a YouTube channel about digital nomads and borderless living.
Here’s the first video:
For thoughts on change, creativity and my lack of newsletters, read on.
Otherwise, you know the deal—please like, comment, subscribe on YouTube to help me appease the algorithm gods.
-LRAZ ✌️
In June 2022, I burned down the life I’d built over an omakase dinner.
My partner and I were only two courses into the menu when I blurted it out. I don’t think I want to be with you anymore. Hearing those words fall out of my mouth was as much of a shock to me as it was to him. But they were true.
We’d been together for almost a decade, and we’d travelled the entire world as digital nomads. Among friends and family, we were known as that crazy adventurous writer couple who drank a bit too much, knew how to throw a damn good party, and would usually roll back into town with only a week’s notice.
When people asked me how I kept a sense of home on the road, I told them that he was my home. For many years, those words were true, too.
But in the weeks before that dinner, I’d had the painful realisation that I was ready to move on. That there might be something else out there for me. Or that maybe I’d just be happier on my own.
I hadn’t planned to read him in on this new reality unfolding in my head on that particular evening. It just happened. Once I said the words out loud, though, I knew there would be no going back—however hard we tried.
This post isn’t about that relationship or breakup (there’s an essay here and another here if that’s of interest), but that moment of change in my life is the context for how things have been between you and me since then.
Let’s be real: I’ve managed to produce only crumbs of publishable writing in the past two years. You were kind enough to opt in to being here, and after welcoming you in through my door, I’ve been disrespectfully absent.
For that, dear internet friends, I’m truly sorry.
In this period of writerly silence, I’ve spent a lot of time haunted by the notion that my creativity perished along with my past relationship. I worried the spark would never return; that I was destined to give up my identity as a maker and troublemaker, and err only on the side of trouble going forward.
But, as it turns out, I was just having a Baby Yoda moment:
My creative spark is back.
And I’ve decided to experiment with a new format for sharing what I’m learning as a digital nomad, writer, and internet person. So, four years after my friend Ali Abdaal first told me I should, today I launched a YouTube channel. I’ll publish videos there regularly between now and the end of the year.
I’ll still write here, too—the occasional essay but, for the most part, more casual posts like this one. I hope you’ll stick around for that, because it truly means the world to me that you’re here.
Thanks for all your patience, support and belief.
—LRAZ ✌️
PS: Is there some aspect of borderless living or digital nomads you’d like me to make a video about sometime soon? If so, feel free to hit reply and let me know.
Congrats on the launch, just subbed!
Congratulations, Lauren! 🥳