I got obsessed with being homeless

So, someone in SF asked me where I live. I said: I live a little bit of everywhere. He asked again, but where's your home? I said "I'm just moving around right now, where is home??"

I really liked saying it, it was like an obsession. I had the money to rent an apartment in Stockholm the whole time and I didn't, and the real reason wasn't money or logistics. It was that I had gotten attached to being the person who didn't have one: being nomadic.

Ok I guess nomadic is a better name than homeless, but I think they're somewhat interchangeable when you're nomadic for long enough that nowhere feels like home anymore.

A week ago, at 19, I started renting my first apartment ever.

I grew up on a small island with my parents and three siblings. At 17 I started at Lovable and slept the two first weeks in a hostel in Stockholm because it was the best value thing I could find. Room with 18 beds. I loved it. I've always liked living with a lot of people around and things happening.

After that it was back and forth between Åland and Sweden, then hotels, then Lovable became full time, then Airbnbs I rented for longer and longer periods. Then a trip to China, my first time outside Europe, and I remember thinking why would anyone live in Europe when this exists. Then more trips, visiting and working from other countries. But Stockholm stayed my center, because of work and because of the friends I have there.

And of course I always had my family home, but I was there so little. I couldn't say I lived there, as I couldn't with any other place.

At some point it stopped being how I lived and instead became something I was. People asked where I lived and I got to pause, and I liked this hesitation. The more cities I saw the more global I felt. I didn't want to be Swedish or Finnish, I wanted to be from Earth.

I wanted to be everywhere, I wanted to learn everything, I wanted to know everyone. I didn't want to be restricted by locking myself to a physical location, one jurisdiction.

And I pack really light. Only one backpack and one small suitcase has everything I need. As long as I had those two things I felt fine anywhere, and I started feeling at home at many places I went. What was actually true is that I didn't live anywhere, so nowhere could fail to be home.

Some people suggested that I should get a place. I didn't hear it. I told myself that last winter would be my last winter in Sweden.

It was pretty fun, but I think I ended up spending more effort on staying homeless than it would have taken to get a home. The Stockholm housing search is genuinely suuuper annoying, and every time I thought about starting it, the other thought was right there: but I'm nomadic. So I didn't start it.

The balance

I had Lovable in Stockholm. Super good cracked friends there. A room at my parents place I could go back to. The moving around worked because something else was holding still, and I didn't notice until it stopped.

I like thinking of life as a balance between structure and openness. When one side is fixed, I tend to look for freedom in the other. Lovable was the main thing in my life. It gave me the office, a schedule, and a reason to return to Stockholm when traveling, so I found openness by moving around. Being "homeless" acted like the counterweight to how structured the rest of my life was.

I quit Lovable. I spent a month couch hopping in San Francisco, meeting a lot of people, and having a super hard time concentrating. No job pulling me back to Stockholm and no reason to be in SF either. In the days before my flight back I kept thinking: why would I even take this flight? I'm exactly as homeless in Stockholm as I am in San Francisco. I got on it anyway.

Landed at Arlanda, stockholms airport, together with a friend I'd been in SF with. He got in his car and drove to his family home. I thought about doing the same, a 130 dollar flight or a 5 hour ferry to Åland. But what would I even do there? Relax? I didn't want to relax, I wanted to be around great people.

So I just stood there in the airport. Where do I eat? Should I just sit here and work? I had no office to go to, no hotel booked, and no idea where I was sleeping that night. There was no more reason to go to Stockholm than anywhere else. I could have gone anywhere, and that was the problem. I remember thinking: where the fuck am I going?

I was even thinking about working from the airport and sleeping on the benches there for fun. And I could have gone to Asia for a while. I could have gone back to SF, I could've gone anywhere and that was the problem.

That's when it stopped feeling like freedom and started feeling like a liability.

So I got an apartment

Not because I fully decided where I want to live, I still haven't decided on that. What I decided is that I need to live somewhere where I have good people around me, and that if I'd stayed in SF I would've needed to get a place in SF to be able to lockin (and it would've been hard to get on such short notice)

I picked Stockholm because it's where the cracked people I know well are. After Lovable I honestly didn't know exactly what I wanted to do next, and I spent a while figuring it out. I didn't want to get a job, not start uni, I wanted to build. But whatever I ended up building, I knew I'd want to build it with people I know and trust, and most of them are here (for now). Having a place in Europe, where I don't have to worry about visas is also a relief. In the US I wouldn't be allowed to live without a visa.

I thought the point of a home was the stuff. Cooking, your things, the place you put them. That isn't it for me. I still don't want to own anything, I won't buy lots of things, I just can't by nature atm. What the apartment did is remove the question I'd been thinking about every few weeks for a year. Like where am I sleeping next week. That question was just taking more time and attention than I understood while it was happening.

I also think feeling at home is a percentage, not a yes or no. A place with the right people in it can get you most of the way there. But if some part of your brainpower is still booking the next place or working out how to ask a friend if you can stay a few more nights, that's maybe 20 percent of the bandwidth gone, and you don't get it back while being there. Staying at someone else's place never reaches 100. And that missing percentage acts as a push factor. It quietly makes you want to leave places you otherwise like. Do it for a year and it becomes a strange feeling, being pushed out of everywhere by a small amount.

Turns out it's not that niche

Then I started talking to people about it, and a LOT of people in tech had been through some version of it. Moving between cities, couch hopping between friends and every time you're about to settle somewhere, the same thought: why would I stay here when I could be there, or there, or there.

And I think it comes from the same place for most of us. There's soo much interesting stuff on this planet and we want to see as much of it as possible. And startup life lets you. Your work literally fits on a laptop, your friends are spread across five or more cities, and there's always a reason to be somewhere else.

I imagine sailors/pirates a few hundred years ago thought something similar (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is a fictional book I was recommended that portrays anti-establishment). The sea isn't owned by anyone, so if you live on it you're not under one jurisdiction. You're from Earth, and home is wherever you sleep that night. A lot of us are under that same idea, just with Airbnbs instead of ships.

If you're in that specific loop right now, I'm not telling you to stop. I'm just saying to check how much of your bandwidth is going to where you'll sleep, and whether the freedom is still worth that. It might be, depending on your scenario.

Now

I moved in with a backpack and a suitcase. Nothing else. I haven't decorated anything. I just wanted a place to sleep in a location where I can be around great people, and none of my bandwidth goes to where I'm sleeping next week. But I also don't like coming back to a place that's dead and quiet, I never have, I like living around other people. It doesn't feel like a 100% home yet and I don't know if it will.

FYI this isn't me being done with moving around. I will 100% not live in the nordics my whole life, maybe not even this winter. I'm so down to live in SF, Singapore, China (Shenzhen, Shanghai, or Hongkong), New York, Tokyo. So many cool places with awesome people. And I'm also down to nomad around for a bit, see the world and meet everybody.

It's just that nomading without a base turned out to be kinda annoying. Every trip was also a housing search, and there was nothing to come back to. With a base, going somewhere is just going somewhere: It's the balance thing again. Without Lovable, the apartment is the fixed side now, so traveling can go back to being the free side.

It's September. I'm in Stockholm. Might be spending another winter here, might be somewhere else. We'll see.

Someone asks where I live now and I say Stockholm.

I don't hesitate, I don't really miss the hesitating as much as I thought I would. For now.