Today I went to immigration to get a one-month visa extension.

Not because I love paperwork.

Not because I’ve made a careful plan.

Because I don’t know where I’m going next.

People like to imagine nomadism as motion—airports, train windows, stamps filling up passports. But the truth is that a lot of this life is waiting rooms. Plastic chairs. Fluorescent lights. A number printed on a slip of paper that tells me when it’s my turn to explain myself.

A one-month extension is a pause button.

A delay tactic.

A small bureaucratic way of saying: I’m not done yet, but I don’t know what comes after.

I’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the pattern. When I’m certain, I don’t hesitate. I buy the ticket. I leave. When I’m not, I stall. I buy time. I let the city keep speaking to me while I listen harder.

This isn’t fear. It’s not indecision in the way people mean it. It’s attentiveness.

I’ve learned—sometimes the hard way—that leaving too early is just as reckless as staying too long. Cities don’t always announce when they’re finished with me. Sometimes they taper off. Sometimes they stop showing me anything new and start showing me myself instead.

That’s usually the sign.

Right now, I’m in between. Between chapters. Between exits. Between the version of myself that arrived and the one that hasn’t decided where to land next.

The immigration office doesn’t care about any of this, of course. They care about copies. Signatures. Fees. Dates that line up neatly in boxes.

So I paid for thirty more days.

Thirty days to walk without mapping routes.

Thirty days to notice walls, not landmarks.

Thirty days to keep photographing things that won’t make sense until much later.

People sometimes ask if this life gets tiring. It does—but not in the way they think. The exhaustion isn’t from movement. It’s from choosing. Every extension quietly closes other doors.

But I’ve also learned this: rushing clarity never works. The next place doesn’t reveal itself under pressure. It shows up when you’re paying attention to where you already are.

So this month isn’t about planning.

It’s about listening.

To the streets.

To the art that’s already peeling.

To the parts of myself that surface only when I stop asking, What’s next?

If nothing else, today confirmed one thing.

I’m not finished yet.

And for now, that’s enough.

4february2026