East London is my temporary home, but I foresee a budding long-term relationship with it.

I had a conversation last night with a friend I met while in the Swiss alps regarding free will, determinism, and solo travel as we grabbed pints at a place in East London and joined a crowd of ultra-hipster residents on some colorful, claustrophobic benches.

I’ve been taking long-term solo trips since the day I turned 18 and took off with a one-way ticket to Seattle. America, Canada, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, Mexico, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines…. I’ve learned that these places are simply empty landscapes. What makes a place, a trip, or a meal special is the company. Every place I’ve traveled has left a string of shared experience and each person I’ve met has left an imprint; I synthesize what relevant thing was learned and return “home” bringing with me a new way of living and seeing the world.

This is what differentiates the traveler and the tourist. Travelling is a way. The word itself implies a deeper way of moving, of absorbing. Travel allows for the world to push and pull you at its will; a tourist will plan, a traveler will allow. The beauty of this lies in what is allowed and the resulting lessons learned. Cultural osmosis at its peak happens through conversation, usually over shared food or drink. When I travel, I seek out these occasions everywhere I go.

The past few weeks in London has fed my entrepreneurial fire. As I sit in coffee shops and bars sipping endless espressos, pints, and gin & tonics next to people a decade older and further into the research and development of their lives, the clarity and immensely terrifying reality of the next decade of my life becomes more and more real.

I want to take my accumulated 9 months of solo backpacking around the world and inform new entrepreneurial motivations.

The push and pull, the planing and the allowing, the free will and determinism.

Keep allowing.

fish&chip.