Year on the Move - 2 Months In

Hello from Hvar, Croatia 👋🇭🇷. If you are getting this, it’s because you are close or have been close and it’s an excuse to stay in touch. If you have a minute, I would love to get a response with a quick update on your world or reaction to any part of the post.

We’re on day 59 of 394 days of our family year on the move! Each place is being experienced for the first time by all four of us. We’ve tackled Madrid, Cuenca, Valencia, Granada, Marbella, Menorca, Mallorca, Cavtat, Kotor, Mostar, Split, and Hvar. Next up are the islands in Greece (Milos, Santorini, Crete, Paros).

This won't be a comprehensive post about everywhere we've gone or travel recommendations. Tye is chronicling our travels daily on her Instagram (@tyefaust). Definitely follow her if you don’t already. My intention with these posts is more to share internal dialogue, learnings, appreciations, struggles, etc. Mostly for me, but also upon the request of others. These are my thoughts, not a joint post with Tye. So, while we are a unit, this is written from my perspective. This will be longer than future posts to give more context leading up to the trip.

Lou and Rowe have been in camp, and it feels good to have time to reflect. I had intended to write once a month, but finding time has been difficult. When not with the kids, I underestimated the seemingly endless time needed for upcoming and daily logistics planning.

My phone's home screen has done a complete makeover. 

The daily routine begins with no calendar review or Slack thread catchup. It feels nice.

So how did we get here?

This trip began to take shape back in October of last year. I decided to leave Fun Country after an amicable agreement with cofounders to shift resources to a substantial product and engineering pivot. Before jumping into whatever was next, I started consulting while Tye pursued her interior design business. As the months passed, we began summer planning, focusing on Spain and Portugal. However, as we talked more, considering that our kids are the ages of 7 and 4, where friends and extracurricular activities haven’t taken over, we started thinking bigger. We realized this could be the perfect opportunity to travel for an extended period, something Tye and I have had previous discussions about and mutual alignment. What started as a six-month exploratory exercise accelerated into a “WTF, when is a better time, how lucky are that we can do this, let’s just go all in on a year” mentality. 

But let me back up even more.

While it comes so naturally to Tye to live by the seat of her pants, always up for a grand adventure, a giant leap like this does not come that easy for me. There have been some key influences in getting to a place to even take on a conversation like this.

Firstly, Tye. She has always pushed the importance of travel. From Japan, to Costa Rican beaches, to last year’s summer Colorado road trip, there has never been a regret when we take on new experiences. We remember the highs and laugh at or forget the short-term discomfort or annoyances. Each trip creates more assurance of the importance of experiencing new places.

Second, there are a couple of books and frameworks that pushed forward seeds that were already percolating. The most influential was Die With Zero. It's a simple book with a central premise: most people work hard, saving all their money, with the arbitrary retirement age of 60-something to lean into experiences and exploration. The book argues for spending the money in real time to create "memory dividends," using your income while you’re healthy, kids want to be with you, before unforeseen events happen, etc. He does not endorse being wasteful, but more to understand the power of compounding so you spend while you have it vs wealth ballooning in the high compounding later years in life when you can’t use it.

The other author who had a significant impact on me was Greg McKeown, particularly with his book Essentialism. It's another straightforward book, but it makes a compelling case that we often take on too much. McKeown contends that the happiest and most effective people focus intently on what truly matters to them. He references James Clear's Four Burners Theory, which identifies four key areas of life: health, family, friends, and work. To truly excel, he suggests the most successful people focus on two or maybe three of these areas. After feeling like I have turned up the burner on work for the last 18 years, it felt good and natural to switch burners to family and self. To become at ease and to surrender that the dedicated focus on work has created a gift to me to be able to take this on.

Third, you may have seen the social posts about the % of time you spend with your kids up to certain ages. It’s something like 75% of their life is spent with them up to the age of 12 and 95% of the time by the age of 18. It makes sense and went viral because it hits hard. It hit me hard. It made me evaluate if my actions met my words regarding what I ranked to be most important.

And the last influence: for the first time, I don’t feel a pull to jump into a new venture. I don’t feel like I will lose any skills or intuition. In fact, the opposite. I have been so heads down and proud to keep up with the in-the-weeds of the craft that I am excited to rise above it and see what new creative thoughts come about and what serendipity produces. This AI wave is so radical that I am happy to sit back and watch some of the initial highway structures be built while challenging myself to live most cycles in the present vs. previous pride in trying to race into the future.

So, to sum it up, it’s not lost on me that I am in a place of ultimate privilege and luck to make this year “the work.” I’m so fortunate to have a partner who creates the conditions to lean into this. The process has gradually been influenced by some impactful frameworks and principles I believe in.

Now, onto the trip.

One of our friends who has done something similar told us it’s 60% hard and 40% good, but the good vastly outweighs the hard. So far, this feels about right, maybe even more 50/50 or 40/60.

This equation could be skewed more to the Hard if Tye and I hadn’t felt in sync throughout. Of course, sometimes we are frustrated with one another, but we are doing a great job moving together as a team. The few moments of heightened annoyance are quickly settled down and talked through. We even took another step in our relationship and sometimes share the same night guard case 😬. I can see how if the partner dynamic is off or resentment builds, the experience can go sideways. Or if you are solo parenting without that support, it can be much harder.

Another aspect that has helped is Tye making sure we prioritize health. This means giving each other space to work out and eating at home more than not. Without her leading the charge, I would not have been so disciplined. 

With this shared purpose and commitment to support each other and take care of ourselves, Tye and I are in a good place to absorb the arc of it all. 

The Good starts with the stream of “small stuff” we’re present to watch the kids take in. The routine stops at the local supermarkets, where Lou reads the grocery list, prints out the fruit/veggie labels, and navigates the cart. The city bus rides spark conversation around directions/stop counts/neighborhoods. The train rides become fun mini adventures to find our numbered platform. Each Airbnb presents a new puzzle to find the building number, operate the elevator, and figure out a new type of key/lock. The nightly gelato or morning stop at the bakery is a small sliver of autonomy by having them order and exchange money (my favorite).  These are just a few examples.

Then there are the more significant and obvious moments we’re experiencing together. Walking the San Pablo bridge in Cuenca to then stumble on an outdoor concert on a mountain cliff. Hearing the streets and balconies roar for Spain’s Euro win. Experiencing all types of sharks at the Valencia aquarium (the largest in Europe). Playing ping pong outside in the beautiful Park Retiro in Madrid. Gaining the confidence to tread water and boogie board in the waves in Marbella. Snorkeling in the crystal water in Menorca. Taking the wheel when doing a day sail trip in Mallorca. Swimming and jumping into the pristine blue Adriatic Sea on the many Croatian beaches. 

For the Hard, you can imagine all the little things. Long travel days are not fun. Brother-sister bickering is the norm. Logistics and accommodation planning feels like a constant, necessary chore. While there are many fun adventures, there is also lots of open space, allowing more room for complaining. There is a defiance to mom and dad taking on a new definition of what being a teacher means. There are depleted cycles of getting individual time so the patience meter gets low. There have been a few times when I have been lying in a new Airbnb bed, not being able to fall asleep, doing loops in my head how a known routine would be nice, and I have to chat through it, “This is what we’re after. Embrace it. It’s short-lived. It’s all good.”

But the root of our hard comes down to Rowe being at an age where the gears are turning. It is a daily Rowellercoaster with him :). His brain is developing so fast, and he can lose his marbles multiple times daily. Throw in new surroundings, lack of routine, and disrupted sleep cycles multiplied by much more time spent with him, and we’re experiencing the full force of a 4-year-old’s meltdowns. 

Tye and I try to remind ourselves, “he is a good kid having a hard time.” But man, your natural reaction is to shake it out of him. We’ve developed somewhat of a checklist. 1. Make sure he has food in his system 2. Hug him 3. Divert, Distract. 4. If 1-3 fails, sit with him till it subsides. Figuring out how we control our reactions to him (and his sister) has become our “Work.” Mainly, how we can control our tone and poise because meeting it with force is always fruitless. I am way more guilty of this than Tye.

That said, once he calms (or Lou), it's always transient. There seems to be no memory of what just happened. They go back to being their cute, fun selves, who we can't get enough of bringing us back to the abundant Good.

After one hard stretch, Tye looked at me and said, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a couple of days.” We smiled, both totally ok with that feeling because it meant we were feeling and experiencing an intensity we set out for. 

Shortly after this comment by Tye, we had made it to Kotor Beach in Montenegro after a full day of travel and a long walk through seas of people to the Airbnb. It was the early evening, and we were hanging out on the beach in the middle of this incredible bay. Lou was sitting on my lap after a fun, cold swim. Very nonchalantly, she said, "Hey Dad, it kind of looks like a painting." Tye and I both laughed in sync. It filled our tank. Good > Hard. 

Leading into the trip, Tye and I identified four themes as being the most important. It was our way of being intentional about what we wanted to get out of it. Below are some quick hits that try to map to the closest theme. Not surprisingly, the kids have taken up much of our focus and thoughts.

Theme 1: Create compassionate and resilient kids.

We have dramatically cut down the “crap” the kids watch on Netflix/Disney, being more intentional about screen time. It’s a different vibe hearing the kids sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” or “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” than hearing “stupid” and “weird” flow steadily from some random Barbie or Spiderman show that hurts your eyes to watch. BTW, didn’t fully realize how much of a boss Julie Andrews is.

This cutdown has also resulted in more space with kids, showing how much of a crutch we have with TV. This leads to more “hard” moments, but forces us to find other, more productive ways to fill that space.

I have shifted all podcast cycles from tactical business to more general life & parenting thought leaders. After listening to many interviews with Jonathan Haidt, I am 100% convinced that phones and social media should be held back as long as possible. In Valencia, I was catching up with a high school friend who lives there. He has a 16-year-old daughter and has held strong with no social media, now seeing the positives for his daughter vs the other kids (despite not being so popular with her). When chatting about it, he asserted something with such confidence, “You wouldn’t feed your kids heroin, would you?” Maybe this is too far, but it doesn’t feel that off. What’s funny is that if you asked me to put the odds on what high school friend would tell me this in 20 years, he would likely have been my last guess. I thought that it was cool that he was the random friend who somehow lives in Valencia.

The two camps we have put the kids in have been amazing! They did a Spanish Immersion camp in Valencia for three weeks, and they just wrapped a forest camp in Hvar for two weeks. You can see how much they grow by experiencing different types of kids, teachers, activities, and environments. Tye and I were talking about it -- it's the best feeling when you can send your kids away and have so much trust in the people and program.

Now that summer is over and most logistic planning is done for the next 3 months, more cycles are going into Lou and what education looks like this year. We love Khan Academy and are sticking with virtual Kumon sessions (a well-known math & reading tutor). We’re also making sure to have reading time and looking for every real-world example to get her numeracy up. But Lou is challenging in this regard. She puts up a fight each day and laments throughout. We’re figuring out how to make this more routine and structured. We also don’t want this to be an anchor or take away from everything else she is learning at the human level. This is a big topic and focus for us right now. More to come here.

Theme 2: Be our best selves with each other.

During some of these camp days, Tye and I have had special day trips. My favorite was a long, fun bike ride through Valencia, ending on the beach at Casa Carmella, a famous Paella restaurant. We drank wine at lunch, biked home, and took a siesta before picking up the kids. These times have been key in switching to wife/husband vs always in mom/dad mode.

One friend uses the 0-1-2 method with their partner. When they are at odds, they tell each other whether they are a 0 (don’t care), a 1 (have some preference), or 2 (have a strong opinion towards something). While Tye and I have not adopted this method, I try to use this as an internal guide when I find myself opining or pushing back on any 0 or 1. More work to do, but this has been helpful since almost everything falls outside a 2.

Theme 3: Lean into family adventures (the good, the bad, and the boring).

I have already highlighted some of the big adventures we have taken on. The most logged boring activity has been Uno. We are a full-on, trash-talking Uno family. It has been a process, but the kids can now hold their cards without taking 2 minutes to find that +4 Wild. Proud moment. 

Many folks we talked to before the trip emphasized the importance of slow travel, and we feel that advice. We have been happiest when we are in one place for an extended time versus feeling like we need to pack it in to then have travel days and lodging switching condensed in. 

Theme 4: Seek out personal exploration and professional curiosity.

I met up with a mutual contact in Valencia, with whom I was put in touch by an Austin friend. He is young, humble, hungry, and smart. It further crystallized how much energy I get from filling my hours with these types of folks. How I’m excited to seek out these people to work alongside in the next chapter. The “freshmen,” if you will.

I’ve played more tennis on this trip than in the past few years, enticed by the beautiful red clay.  It has re-ignited my love for the sport and filled me with gratitude for the gift my parents founded and supported.

Alright, there’s lots more I could write about, but I will wrap it up. 

Would love to hear a quick response on anything interesting to share from your side or any reactions.

-Scott