I’m homeless. Soon, you will be too.
3 observations from 4 years without a home.
I remember the exact day I became homeless.
I found myself at a small restaurant in L.A. catching up with a few college friends. One of them turns to me and asks, "So where you livin’ nowadays?"
They knew I traveled frequently but didn't know where I landed after I had left my home in Las Vegas a few months earlier.
"Well, it's kinda funny..." I started, knowing they wouldn’t understand what I was about to say. I grinned, leaned in, and lowered my voice as if to share a secret:
"Nowhere… and Everywhere."
They all chuckled, only half surprised. They were used to my esoteric ideas and unconventional lifestyle experiments.
"What does that even mean?" one of them asked.
So began an explanation about a concept I myself had not fully wrapped my head around: the line between living and traveling was dissolving.
After a few moments, one of them concludes:
"Sooo… you're homeless?"
In that moment, I realized he was right: I was homeless. I had no mailbox. I didn’t answer to a landlord. I had no physical base that one would technically call “home.”
But despite my situation being characterized by homelessness, I didn’t feel homeless.
That was my moment of epiphany.
I was homeless, yet, at the same time homeful.
What does “home” even mean?
I never had to think about this until I’d actually lived without one…
Is it about the physical structure and the contents inside? Is it about the neighborhood and the zip codes around it?
None of these seemed to fit the bill.
After nearly four years of being homeless, I’ve noticed three major patterns that challenge the traditional definition of home:
Home is Emotional
It’s not about the physical space so much as it is about the emotions you feel when you’re in it.
One feels “at home” because one's relationship with a specific environment is characterized by feelings of comfort and familiarity. You feel like you belong.
“Welcome” was something I heard hundreds of times while in Egypt. I didn’t have to buy something from street vendors for them to greet me with a warm smile, whether that was in the center of Cairo or on the edge of the Red Sea. They were proud of their home and excited to see others visiting.
Compare this to my sunset excursion to a medieval castle in Albania where I had to cut through random neighborhoods and traverse the local streets without the aid of Google Maps. I asked a woman sitting on her veranda if I was headed in the right direction. She scoffed. Then pointed to a private property sign before shooing me away.
Or when I bought an investment property in Florida. The neighbors greeted me not with smiles and warm cookies but instead with complaints and stories about other Airbnb investors who’d “wreaked havoc” on their neighborhood. It was clear they didn’t want me there.
Home feels welcoming—it’s an emotional safety net where you feel free to be yourself.
Home is Stewardship
It’s not about legal ownership, it’s about psychological ownership. When you believe something isn’t “yours,” you treat it differently than that which you believe is yours.
But home has nothing to do with the title or the name on the mortgage. It has everything to do with one’s sense of personal responsibility.
One evening, I had stopped by a friend’s home in Austin and started doing his dishes mid-conversation. He lost it.
“Dude, what are you doing? Stop that!”
His bewilderment caught me off guard. It was clear the dishes had been sitting for a few days. They needed to get done. So I started loading the dishwasher without thinking twice about it.
After living with and among others—from communes to hostels, couchsurfing to co-living hotels, and even in a fraternity house—I had developed a sense of stewardship that extended my personal responsibility beyond that which I could call “mine.”
The dishes weren’t mine to do. The kitchen wasn’t mine to care for. Yet I was naturally pulled to act in his space the same way I’d act in mine.
Do you care for a public bathroom the same way you care for the one in your house?
Most public restrooms are a disgrace because nobody owns them. That’s not the case in Japan. When I spoke with the locals about this, they said it’s because they care about cleanliness. Clean spaces are important to them whether it’s inside their own home, in public restrooms, or on the city streets.
Stewardship is the capacity to care. And you don’t need to own a thing to take personal responsibility for it.
The next time someone invites you to “make yourself at home,” notice how difficult it is for you to actually be in their home the same way you are in yours.
Home is Borderless
As I jumped from city to city and country to country, living “nowhere" became increasingly synonymous with living “anywhere.” And when home can be anywhere, it can no longer be defined geographically by a postal address or some imaginary lines on a map.
“Home is where the heart is,” I’d joke when people pressed me for answers. “When home is borderless, you can find it anywhere. It’s liberating!”
I found home in a small Indian town when I met with a group of digital nomads for a month. We shared accommodation, meals, laughs, deep conversations, dances, and more. When the month finished, our lease at the property ended but my sense of home didn’t.
The more places I found home, the more homeful I became. But this homefulness came with a few changes.
I exchanged utility bills for hotel resort fees. A car payment for 1-way flights. Gas bills for Ubers; grocery bills for restaurant checks.
I traded stability and predictability for growth and adventure. Surrender replaced expectation and acceptance replaced disappointment.
My definition of home had evolved.
More than a year after that dinner in LA, one of the guys texted me Brian Chesky's tweet announcing that he was living on Airbnb:
I literally LOL’d, realizing that a billionaire was now opting for homefulness the same I’d done years prior.
A New Definition
If home is a borderless emotional experience, it’s no longer about where one lives but instead about how one lives.
When we change the meaning of home, we also change the way we live and work with each other. And although the infrastructure—physical, technological, social—doesn’t fully exist yet to support this new meaning, the world is slowly catching up.
Technology like cryptocurrency, blockchain, and the sharing economy will enable new ways to measure and exchange value.
Movements like The Network State, Seasteading, and Free Private Cities question the idea of territory and trespass on the boundaries of established state legacies.
Communities like Outsite, Remote Year, and Hacker’s Paradise are assembling new social circles while companies like SafetyWing are building new tools to support them.
Developments like Net City, The Line, and The Venus Project are painting pictures of how all this might manifest physically in a new kind of urban environment.
But where is all of this heading? And are we prepared for what’s next?
Fast forward to January 2023. I’m at a wedding re-connecting with those same friends from L.A.
One of the guys mentioned that his new job let him work remotely. He sold his stuff, gave up his lease and started taking full advantage of his newfound freedom.
He and his girlfriend had been traveling Europe, skiing the Swiss Alps, cruising the Mediterranean, tasting wine in Italy, and hiking in the South of France.
Curious about his new lifestyle, I asked, “So where you livin’ nowadays?”
He paused for a moment before fumbling over his words with some awkward response, a struggle that was all too familiar to me.
When he failed to give me a straight answer, I couldn’t help but ask:
“So you’re… homeless?”
P.S. - We’re starting to see the same thing happen with work…
So many incredible insights and so much great storytelling in here. As a traveler, this really hit home with me and is one I'll continue to return to.
Love how this turned out. Awesome work Michael :)
I really enjoyed this read and deeply resonated with it (having lived in 8 countries on 4 continents and visited 50+ more). I even had "Where is hoeme and what makes it so? Do we even _need_ a home?" on my 12 Favorite Problems list for a while! Such a good topic/question.
"the line between living and traveling was dissolving" - beautifully articulated.
Thanks for writing and sharing this!