“No, I don’t want to go to another stupid fucking house party,” I thought as my ex—9 years younger than me—bounced around our room, prepping to play beer pong with his college friends. Ugh.
I wondered what would happen if I screamed this, then fled the country. After all, I was low-key depressed, isolated by the language barrier despite weekly German lessons, barely scraping together my $300 rent share in our 5-person flat with a pitbull named Gloria, and drowning in lockdown loneliness, restricted to walking around our neighborhood’s lake, which I’d already completed approximately 94 times.
I just wanted my dream life. Travel the world, run a thriving business, meet interesting people in every zip code. Was that so much to ask?
Months passed. The relationship ended. One of the last things my ex said was, “I just feel like we’re holding each other back.” Couldn’t agree more, babe.
I booked a train to Hamburg hours later with a broken heart yet wide-eyed with a lifetime of possibilities lying ahead. I could live in NYC! And become a high-ponytailed bitch in oversized black sunglasses answering my cell with “Don’t fuck with me right now.” Or jet to Norway and marry someone named Anders who worked in the arts, where we’d attend snobby dinner parties debating natural wine’s tannin structure or Bauhaus theory. Maybe a Queen of the Jungle life in Costa Rica, letting rain drum on tin roofs and frogs croak me to sleep.
I ended up taking a five-week Eurotrip with my baby sister instead. Ibiza’s bass thumped through our glitter-dusted bodies till sunrise. We paraglided off Swiss cliffs, floated in turquoise Mediterranean water, and baked on rocks like lizards.
I knew this had to be my life full-time. I moved home to stabilize my online business and save. Four months planned, vision board filled, income set. It was go time. Up first? Cape Town.
I learned about South Africa’s rugby obsession, ate biltong that snapped between my teeth, and sat atop Lion’s Head Mountain taking in the Mother City’s insane nature. I carved into ostrich and antelope steaks and said “howzit” as if I’d lived there for ages.
Then came Valencia, where I’d studied abroad. I fired up the dating apps: matched with a bald French dude with sexy green eyes who ghosted me post-hookup. A rich New Zealand investment banker whose whiskey breath I could smell from feet away. A forgettable Brit. It was exhilarating getting back in the scene.
Lisbon hit different. “Holy shit, I need to move here,” I thought. The cobblestone streets wrecked my ankles but made me feel like I was walking with purpose. Rooftop sunsets turned everything pink, the bacalao actually tasted good, and the pastel de natas were so creamy I ate three before noon, cinnamon dusting my fingers.
The trip ended in Split, Croatia. Quiet Mediterranean mornings at markets where tomatoes smelled like summer and figs leaked honey. Rocky beaches where I floated in water so clear I could count my toes, salt drying white on my skin. Boats creaked against the docks, their ropes heavy with sea salt.
When it ended, the trial for my dream life subscription expired. But I was ready for the annual pass.
An insatiable hunger crawled under my skin, demanding more. Over three years, I shook my ass in Medellín clubs blaring reggaeton, rewired by circadian rhythm with 10 p.m. dinners in Buenos Aires, and ate ceviche that burned my tongue with lime and ají amarillo in Lima. Mexico City’s street tacos and culture made me fall so hard I spent an entire summer there.
I wasn’t done yet. Transylvania for Halloween at Dracula’s Castle. Winter in Bucharest. Christmas in Copenhagen. New Year’s in Madrid.
The dopamine hit of landing somewhere new, decoding subway maps, ordering “café con leche de avena, por favor,” and finding bookshops that smelled like dust became an addiction.
I was living in a movie. I felt like Emily in Paris eating at Michelin-star restaurants, dissecting foam and microgreens like it was totally normal to pay €80 to still be hungry.
My weekly schedule looked like it was made up by a first grader who wrote what they think adults do: hot yoga with the girls on Mondays, skydiving Wednesdays, wine tour Saturdays, concert Sundays.
This went on for weeks. Months. Years.
Then the bottom dropped out. My dream life wasn’t dreamy anymore.
After a summer in Oslo’s floating saunas, eating reindeer and tart cloudberries in Finland, then another Lisbon cameo, emotional whiplash hit. Hard.
I didn’t know why I was traveling anymore. I wasn’t meeting anyone because I wasn’t trying. I kept telling people I was “building a creative community” while skipping every event because I was too tired to pretend I wanted to network over orange wine. I definitely wasn’t learning languages — the farthest I got was asking for chocolate ice cream in German.
Truthfully? I was fucking exhausted. I used to feel like some cyber hacker at a Berlin internet cafe, fingers flying across keyboards hunting flights. Opening dating apps in new cities felt like unwrapping a present. Seeing a castle for the first time used to be an out of body experience.
Now? None of it sparked joy.
After several tarot readings in Lisbon, a witch called my bluff: “I think you’ve built your entire identity around traveling. Now that you don’t want to as much, it feels like a downgrade.”
Oof. She was right. If I wasn’t traveling like a 21-year-old American on their first post-grad Eurotrip, who was I? If half my dinner party stories came from that time I accidentally got into Berghain or got proposed to by a stranger in Dubrovnik, what would I even talk about? How would I keep the group chat entertained without juggling a Lars, a Manuel, and a João simultaneously?
I no longer wanted to be a globe-trotter.
Here’s what no one tells you about “living your dream life”: it shape-shifts — and it feels like betrayal.
I’m still in the thick of it, learning who I am when I’m not constantly in motion. These days, I’m micro-dosing stability, staying in one place long enough to know the barista’s name, buy a houseplant, and finish the projects I’ve been putting off.
Turns out, stability isn’t slowing me down like I thought. It’s creating space—the kind I used to lose to boarding calls, train noise, and frantic 3 a.m. time zone calculations for client meetings. Now I can actually work on the dream projects I’d shelved: writing a memoir about this chapter, creating a conversation card deck for when you meet someone new, staying somewhere long enough that a language settles in my bones, instead of being haunted by the Duolingo owl and streak shame.
There’s this question travelers always ask each other: Are you running away from something, or toward something?
For years, I was running from the traditional American Dream — the beige carpet, the office job, the whole “settling down” package. I still don’t want that. But I was so afraid of slipping into it that I never stayed anywhere long enough to see what stability could actually look like for me.
I thought living somewhere for a year would turn me into someone boring.
Now I’m running toward stability — the kind that gives my creativity room to breathe, instead of scattering it across time zones and airport gates.
And maybe most importantly, I’m running toward all the shit I’ve been avoiding.
The demons I caged deep in my psyche, thinking they’d fall asleep if I just kept moving. The emotions I buried under boarding passes. The exiled parts of myself. The quiet that roared in my ears the second I took off my noise-canceling headphones.
Turns out, you can’t outrun yourself. Annoying, but true.
I used to think my dream life meant doing and seeing everything possible before I die — checking off every city, every experience, every version of myself I could try on.
Now I realize: my dream life was never supposed to be frozen in time.
It bends and shifts. It takes whatever form it needs to, and sometimes that form is staying put.
Maybe “living your dream life” needs a rebrand. What if it’s actually about living your most unknown life — the one where you don’t have all the answers, where you’re not performing for the group chat, where you’re just... figuring it out as you go.
God, that sounds fucking freeing.
Terrifying, but mostly freeing.
Chelsea is currently in Lima, Peru. You can connect with her on Instagram and Threads @chelseariffe, listen to her podcasts In My Non-Expert Opinion and The Art of the Ask, or find her work at www.chelseariffe.com.
Wow. This hit me in so many ways “learning who I am when I’m not constantly in motion” hit me HARD!! I’m still chasing the motion (for now) with some stability in between - absolutely loved this piece thank you for sharing
I loved this article. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Very well written!!