Discovery is the drug of expat life — thrilling, addictive, and best enjoyed when shared with others on the same journey.
Loneliness begins when, after the high of discovery fades, the expat finds themselves the only outsider, without fully understanding the quiet shift happening around them.
That’s when one stops feeling like an expat and starts becoming an immigrant.
Hi Emanuela! I like that. Discovery is a much warmer, richer word for the feeling. Maybe the turn we're looking for is not away from discovery, exactly, but towards a richer & quieter discovery about how a community works, and discovering your own place within it. The immigrant sets out with this type of discovery in mind. Thanks for reading, and for sharing your thoughts!
Fine, insightful stuff, Dan. At my age now I'll never be an expat (but perhaps a wanna-be). I'm still living in the same country I was born in. But that country and I have slowly gone off in different directions, to different places, leaving me feeling like not an expat but maybe a no-pat. Not attached to any country and unsure how to feel about that.
No-pat, I like that! I tried to write this one all about my own head, and my kids, and our little human-sized lives, and not the politics. I am still weighing how much Everything Happening Back Home plays into these feelings! It's big, and it's a factor, but it's so hard to measure from the outside. A lot to think about. I miss you guys!
Saudade? Had to look that up. Great word. Immigrant, ex-pat, dual citizen, its all a blur and soon me and my family will be all three. We have feet in both countries - but the tether to USA is frayed, man. If not for relatives I'm not sure we would even visit. And Dan - this is a fantastic bit of prose IMO.
Thanks man! Glad you dug it. Saudade is the greatest travel/life word, I think, even to the point of being a cliche I can't get past...The blur is real, ain't it? Gotta stop and clear my glasses every now and then, and then step back out into the rain. Go get 'em, dual citizens!
Great piece Dan - I love it when you talk about the immigrant experience! I sit here in my little corner of NZ, and say "Yes!, Spot on!
I've never heard of saudade before, but looking at the definition, it puts me in mind of the Welsh word, hiraeth. I've linked below: Pamela Petro discusses hiraeth alongside cynefin - both words that are described as 'untranslateable', but I guess when you feel it, you know.
Hi Andrea! Ooooh hiraeth is good stuff, I'd never heard of it. Thanks for this! (All I know of Wales I learned from Susan Cooper.) I like how the writer takes it as a kind of permission to understand her split life. Yes, please. My cynefin I guess is still in Far West Texas, where I managed to pull a few great years then wandered off because the world is big? NZ often feels to me like a big takeaway coffee of hiraeth and maybe that's why I love it so. Always a relief not to be feeling it alone. Chuffed indeed you to hear you liked this one!
Hey Miramartian! Two dollars, not bad. Spring is coming, gotta keep the faith! In a few months we’ll even have some decent zucchini, which I will not call courgettes
Your self-aware piece today illustrates how there's no real escape from quotidian human limitations anywhere! Not in Austin, nor Berkeley, nor Seattle, not even in the beautiful countryside around Christchurch!
Hello my fellow Dan! Too true. Definitely not in Austin, I was born there & have family there & have haunted the place unsuccessfully for years. ChCh feels like Dallas to me, though with scenery from another world altogether! My other Kiwi dream is Lyttelton
I just read this again, for reasons slightly mysterious to me. And all I can say is, it is SO DAMN GOOD. You are a gifted writer, my friend. Thank you for dragging us along with you.
Thanks man!! It means a lot, coming from you! I kinda think I started the whole Substack thing just to get to this post. Wouldn't have got there without the expat conversation here, and without reading your own work and realizing a) I wasn't insane and b) that there was joy in this vision of life...or rathere, not just joy (that was always there, in the expat drug) but a settling, an acceptance of self & wisodm I don't think I've ever permitted myself in all the wandering. Thank you, sir. Godspeed up there, my friend!
Yes! El Paso for a gringo is already expat. The Southwest in general...kinda. In Phoenix you had to pay attention to see it, and not buy into the dream. So I wasn't living it there, I just *wanted* to. And so here I am.
Where I get stumped is sorting the difference/overlap between loving this outsider system of life in general and loving the actual not-your-culture around you. Worth mapping out? Or just head down and go eat tacos, i mean fish n chips
Listening to this as I'm making carrots, and they really are bigger, and better. So are all the other veggies. And the meat.... Omg the meat is so much better.
Yes! Butcher stuff, at least. Though I must say meat in the US is way cheaper…
And I’m delighted you listened to this one! Especially while cooking, which is when I do all my important listening :) The voiceovers are fun, I aim to do more!
Again, YES. Esp to acknowledging that there is something about being an expat that other expats will get, but which it seems (perhaps incorrectly?) that no one else will. And YES to the transition from the starry-eyed newness of it all to the weariness of buying vegetables at high prices, b/c after all you need to eat -- but it's not particularly awe-inducing. By the way, I did read On Earth... I found it to be a really tough read, harrowing, and also quite moving. Often poetic. I find wisdom in the line you quoted. Even with dual citizenship, the sense of "not being from here" remains and likely will always remain, b/c after all, I'm NOT from here. I guess I'm sensitive to that b/c in my small rural hometown in WI, I wasn't "from there" b/c my parents grew up in Nebraska, not Wisconsin. (I can't even imagine what it's like for the immigrants from Mexico and other countries and who live there now. Well, who live there now but were just fired from their cheese packaging job b/c they couldn't prove citizenship. But that's another story.) I don't have children, but I acknowledge that adds an entirely different layer, b/c their experience is so different from yours. What if as you age, you want to "go home" and they think home is New Zealand? I ponder every day whether this is where I want to grow old. (And when is "old" anyway?) I loved seeing my friends/family again in July in the US. I'm also aware that a visit is a far cry from living there. Thx as always for articulating so beautifully the transitions, joys, challenges, and struggles.
Hi Jean! Thanks for your note, and sorry to just come back to it now! That home thing, as we've talked about--it's such a stumper, no? Whatever my kids think (and they really do think of NZ as home, now, more than they did even just a year or two ago) I will have to make the call myself. Either 1) decide that NZ is home, and stay, or 2) decide it's home-enough, if not some mythic actual 'home' and stay, or 3) decide the US still is and always home, and return. It all turns on how you define the word. The longer I sit with it, the less HOME makes any sense at all. Maybe that's the release, the escape. But it's shouldn't BE an escape, should it? I was raised in Phoenix, city of transplants, and my entire family has long since left and made homes elsewhere. The chosen home, the incomplete home--the small town your fmaily moved to but was never local in--this is as good a home, and as temporary a home, as any, right? Right? I don't know. I have always appreciated your insights on these questions. Hope all is well up in AKL!
Hi Dan! I stumbled across your piece. I’ve also had this thought while traveling that I wish all humans could experience this wanderlust. But as you say, there’s many needs, human rights even, that should be met first. Thanks for this reflective read!
Hi Sarah! Glad to have you here! The privilege of travel is such a head-clutching question. Movement is the most human thing! Moving in certain ways, for certain people with certain powers...this gets complicated quick, no? Safe travels out there!
The carrots are better, Dan.
Way better! But I had to downplay the carrot quality gap for rhetorical effect
Discovery is the drug of expat life — thrilling, addictive, and best enjoyed when shared with others on the same journey.
Loneliness begins when, after the high of discovery fades, the expat finds themselves the only outsider, without fully understanding the quiet shift happening around them.
That’s when one stops feeling like an expat and starts becoming an immigrant.
Hi Emanuela! I like that. Discovery is a much warmer, richer word for the feeling. Maybe the turn we're looking for is not away from discovery, exactly, but towards a richer & quieter discovery about how a community works, and discovering your own place within it. The immigrant sets out with this type of discovery in mind. Thanks for reading, and for sharing your thoughts!
Fine, insightful stuff, Dan. At my age now I'll never be an expat (but perhaps a wanna-be). I'm still living in the same country I was born in. But that country and I have slowly gone off in different directions, to different places, leaving me feeling like not an expat but maybe a no-pat. Not attached to any country and unsure how to feel about that.
No-pat, I like that! I tried to write this one all about my own head, and my kids, and our little human-sized lives, and not the politics. I am still weighing how much Everything Happening Back Home plays into these feelings! It's big, and it's a factor, but it's so hard to measure from the outside. A lot to think about. I miss you guys!
Saudade? Had to look that up. Great word. Immigrant, ex-pat, dual citizen, its all a blur and soon me and my family will be all three. We have feet in both countries - but the tether to USA is frayed, man. If not for relatives I'm not sure we would even visit. And Dan - this is a fantastic bit of prose IMO.
Thanks man! Glad you dug it. Saudade is the greatest travel/life word, I think, even to the point of being a cliche I can't get past...The blur is real, ain't it? Gotta stop and clear my glasses every now and then, and then step back out into the rain. Go get 'em, dual citizens!
Great piece Dan - I love it when you talk about the immigrant experience! I sit here in my little corner of NZ, and say "Yes!, Spot on!
I've never heard of saudade before, but looking at the definition, it puts me in mind of the Welsh word, hiraeth. I've linked below: Pamela Petro discusses hiraeth alongside cynefin - both words that are described as 'untranslateable', but I guess when you feel it, you know.
https://www.wales.com/about/history-and-heritage/welsh-traditions-myths-and-legends/hiraeth
Hi Andrea! Ooooh hiraeth is good stuff, I'd never heard of it. Thanks for this! (All I know of Wales I learned from Susan Cooper.) I like how the writer takes it as a kind of permission to understand her split life. Yes, please. My cynefin I guess is still in Far West Texas, where I managed to pull a few great years then wandered off because the world is big? NZ often feels to me like a big takeaway coffee of hiraeth and maybe that's why I love it so. Always a relief not to be feeling it alone. Chuffed indeed you to hear you liked this one!
I lolled at that
Too broke to buy my kids a cucumber
Herpes
They're expensive, right??? And then yesterday afternoon New World had 'em back down to $4. Still too much. The struggle continues
Two dollars @ Pakkies in Kilbirnie, but a one day only price and they weren’t huge. More greetings from Miramar!
Hey Miramartian! Two dollars, not bad. Spring is coming, gotta keep the faith! In a few months we’ll even have some decent zucchini, which I will not call courgettes
Time to start an illegal fake cucumber trade. Painted courgettes. They won’t know the difference. We’ll be RICH!!!
How do we make the little bumps??
Your self-aware piece today illustrates how there's no real escape from quotidian human limitations anywhere! Not in Austin, nor Berkeley, nor Seattle, not even in the beautiful countryside around Christchurch!
Hello my fellow Dan! Too true. Definitely not in Austin, I was born there & have family there & have haunted the place unsuccessfully for years. ChCh feels like Dallas to me, though with scenery from another world altogether! My other Kiwi dream is Lyttelton
Day-um Dan!
This is sweet.
A lyric poem to wanderlust, and a desire for simple comfort - food, safe housing, a future for your children.
I’ll re-read it and probably drop another note later, but wanted to thank you for this start to my day.
Hi tracie!! Aw, thanks so much! You get it. Comfort, survival, home. What a lovely mess. Have a beautiful Friday out there!
This one is a beauty, Dan.
Joe!!! Thanks, man! How the hell are ya? Love from NZ!!!
I just read this again, for reasons slightly mysterious to me. And all I can say is, it is SO DAMN GOOD. You are a gifted writer, my friend. Thank you for dragging us along with you.
Thanks man!! It means a lot, coming from you! I kinda think I started the whole Substack thing just to get to this post. Wouldn't have got there without the expat conversation here, and without reading your own work and realizing a) I wasn't insane and b) that there was joy in this vision of life...or rathere, not just joy (that was always there, in the expat drug) but a settling, an acceptance of self & wisodm I don't think I've ever permitted myself in all the wandering. Thank you, sir. Godspeed up there, my friend!
Thank you for helping to build this community, my friend! It is incredibly enriching.
FELT this one even more. Did I say that? I've always actually thought ex-pat feels kinda normal to me because I was raised on a border.
Yes! El Paso for a gringo is already expat. The Southwest in general...kinda. In Phoenix you had to pay attention to see it, and not buy into the dream. So I wasn't living it there, I just *wanted* to. And so here I am.
Where I get stumped is sorting the difference/overlap between loving this outsider system of life in general and loving the actual not-your-culture around you. Worth mapping out? Or just head down and go eat tacos, i mean fish n chips
Listening to this as I'm making carrots, and they really are bigger, and better. So are all the other veggies. And the meat.... Omg the meat is so much better.
Yes! Butcher stuff, at least. Though I must say meat in the US is way cheaper…
And I’m delighted you listened to this one! Especially while cooking, which is when I do all my important listening :) The voiceovers are fun, I aim to do more!
I like voiceovers, it means I can multitask, and yes that is often during cooking 😁
Again, YES. Esp to acknowledging that there is something about being an expat that other expats will get, but which it seems (perhaps incorrectly?) that no one else will. And YES to the transition from the starry-eyed newness of it all to the weariness of buying vegetables at high prices, b/c after all you need to eat -- but it's not particularly awe-inducing. By the way, I did read On Earth... I found it to be a really tough read, harrowing, and also quite moving. Often poetic. I find wisdom in the line you quoted. Even with dual citizenship, the sense of "not being from here" remains and likely will always remain, b/c after all, I'm NOT from here. I guess I'm sensitive to that b/c in my small rural hometown in WI, I wasn't "from there" b/c my parents grew up in Nebraska, not Wisconsin. (I can't even imagine what it's like for the immigrants from Mexico and other countries and who live there now. Well, who live there now but were just fired from their cheese packaging job b/c they couldn't prove citizenship. But that's another story.) I don't have children, but I acknowledge that adds an entirely different layer, b/c their experience is so different from yours. What if as you age, you want to "go home" and they think home is New Zealand? I ponder every day whether this is where I want to grow old. (And when is "old" anyway?) I loved seeing my friends/family again in July in the US. I'm also aware that a visit is a far cry from living there. Thx as always for articulating so beautifully the transitions, joys, challenges, and struggles.
Hi Jean! Thanks for your note, and sorry to just come back to it now! That home thing, as we've talked about--it's such a stumper, no? Whatever my kids think (and they really do think of NZ as home, now, more than they did even just a year or two ago) I will have to make the call myself. Either 1) decide that NZ is home, and stay, or 2) decide it's home-enough, if not some mythic actual 'home' and stay, or 3) decide the US still is and always home, and return. It all turns on how you define the word. The longer I sit with it, the less HOME makes any sense at all. Maybe that's the release, the escape. But it's shouldn't BE an escape, should it? I was raised in Phoenix, city of transplants, and my entire family has long since left and made homes elsewhere. The chosen home, the incomplete home--the small town your fmaily moved to but was never local in--this is as good a home, and as temporary a home, as any, right? Right? I don't know. I have always appreciated your insights on these questions. Hope all is well up in AKL!
I enjoyed your letter, the humor, writing and insight. Will be back!.
Thanks, Nan! Glad to have you with us!
Cucumbers in August? Nah mate!
A dad can dream. Come on, spring!
Hi Dan! I stumbled across your piece. I’ve also had this thought while traveling that I wish all humans could experience this wanderlust. But as you say, there’s many needs, human rights even, that should be met first. Thanks for this reflective read!
Hi Sarah! Glad to have you here! The privilege of travel is such a head-clutching question. Movement is the most human thing! Moving in certain ways, for certain people with certain powers...this gets complicated quick, no? Safe travels out there!