A few weeks ago I wrote about being Lost in Space, Time and Standards (the strange way New Zealand keeps reorienting me at street corners, in dates on a page, in the way a Tuesday morning here is somebody else's Monday afternoon). The counterpoint to that disorientation has been something I genuinely did not expect: a better balance between work and life than I ever managed in the United States. The pressures are still real. Business is accelerating, AI-enabled work has its own new tempo, and the time-zone and day-of-the-week mismatch with the US has me feeling spread thin most weeks. I wake at 3 or 4 in the morning to work the US load and then roll straight into the NZ day, and by 11am I am usually zapped.
What has been sustaining and nourishing me are my daily walks through Christchurch. The fifty-minute video below is a tour of the places and the small rituals that make up those walks. It is a love letter to my new home, an open invitation to the friends and family who keep telling me they want to visit, and a small encouragement to anyone else trying to take care of themselves in an increasingly turbulent world. Find the version of this that works for you, wherever you are. The world is loud right now. The walking helps.
Last Words
The city does most of the work. I just have to keep showing up and putting one foot in front of the other.
