The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

CHAPTER 8
The Importance of Saying No
In 2009, I gathered up all my possessions, sold them or put
them into storage, left my apartment, and set off for Latin
America. By this time my little dating advice blog was
getting some traffic and I was actually making a modest
amount of money selling PDFs and courses online. I planned
on spending much of the next few years living abroad,
experiencing new cultures, and taking advantage of the
lower cost of living in a number of developing countries in
Asia and Latin America to build my business further. It was
the digital nomad dream and as a twenty-five-year-old
adventure-seeker, it was exactly what I wanted out of life.
But as sexy and heroic as my plan sounded, not all of the
values driving me to this nomadic lifestyle were healthy
ones. Sure, I had some admirable values going on—a thirst
to see the world, a curiosity for people and culture, some
old-fashioned adventure-seeking. But there also existed a
faint outline of shame underlying everything else. At the
time I was hardly aware of it, but if I was completely honest
with myself, I knew there was a screwed-up value lurking
there, somewhere beneath the surface. I couldn’t see it, but
in quiet moments when I was completely honest with
myself, I could feel it.
Along with the entitlement of my early twenties, the “real
traumatic shit” of my teenage years had left me with a nice
bundle of commitment issues. I had spent the past few
years overcompensating for the inadequacy and social