Things that were perfect about "The Perfect Year"

In 2026, my wife Angel and I decided to act on an idea we’d tossed around for quite some time: attempting to live the perfect year. (Click that link if you want the full intro to the project.) The goal was to see what it felt like to actualize the crazy escape plans you voice in those frustrating moments when work’s been stressing you out. To live the fanciful dreams you concoct when you’ve had a few drinks and are imagining a better life.

Negotiating what that looks like in real life is complicated. For us, in the end, it came down to chasing an eternal summer, traveling (to a few places we’d never been, and a few places with nostalgic memories), spending meaningful time with friends and family, and working on passion projects to see what develops.  

The year’s not over yet, but we’ve finished all of the core movements. We’ve traveled for 9 months. We’ve ticked off a few bucket list experiences. We’ve poured time into our projects. We’ve navigated unexpected changes. We made it back home, limping but triumphant. 

Plenty of things about the year weren’t perfect. The Iran war severely disrupted our plans, and led to unexpected side trips and an entirely blown budget. Life stressors happen even when you’re trying to avoid them. Dreams and realities never quite line up. 

But I thought I’d share a few midstream reflections about the things that were perfect. This isn’t a final report. We’re still in the midst of it–and in any case the goal was to create something that will take years to metabolize. But here are some of the things that worked. 

Things that were perfect about “the perfect year” (in the order that they happened) 

The perfect visit with old friends: Bali

What you’re looking for in time with friends, I think, is the right people, in the right place, and the right pace of activity. We caught up with a lot of people this year–in Egypt, Spain, Athens, Ohio, Boston, Maine, Germany. No offense to the rest of you. You’re great too, but we came closest to achieving perfection on our first stop after leaving home–in Ubud, Bali, where we spent a week with our friends Amer and Veronica, who popped over from Australia.

One thing that made it work was that we kept our goals simple. We decided to rent rooms in the same hotel, hang around Ubud, eat good food, and catch up. Nothing much more ambitious than that. Because that was the case, I think, secondary goals didn’t complicate the experience. We wandered a bit. We visited monkey temples and rice terraces. Mostly we went for swims, ate, drank, and talked. 

And Amer and Veronica are the sort of people that you wish everyone could be. Amer’s Jordanian, with that big, generous Middle Eastern energy. Veronica’s from Kansas and is accordingly warm, open and unpretentious in the way of all the best Midwesterners. They build online businesses and have been bouncing around the world without a real home base for years, but they still manage to come off as grounded and down to earth. They’re smart, funny and relaxed. They’re some of the easiest people I know just to be around. 

I hear Bali can be bonkers with drunken international tourists, but Ubud was the right pace. There’s plenty of tourist infrastructure, but it’s more about yoga and digital nomads vs. partying. The vibe is relaxed. Town was walkable and calm. Food and drinks were affordable and delicious. We found a cafe/hotel with an infinity pool you could use if you bought drinks. The weather was balmy so we never felt like doing much besides relaxing. We found a bar that had good live music every night. There were monkeys everywhere. It was perfect. 

Perfect Quick Taste: Istanbul

At this stage in my life, my favorite way to travel is slow. My ideal trip is to book an apartment and hang out in the same place for a month, with side jaunts when Angel and I feel like it. Either that or a long, slow walk or bike trip. It’s more meaningful when you have a chance to absorb into a place.  

However, a short, quick immersion is also a classic travel experience–the sort of trip that makes you feel like you need to go back. That’s how the leg of our trip after Bali felt–three days in Istanbul. 

Istanbul immediately strikes you as a great world city. It was my first immersion experience in a Muslim culture, but it’s an international crossroads, and has been for thousands of years, so it also feels easy and comfortable as an outsider. We wandered old neighborhoods. Visited remarkably giant mosques. Drank pomegranate juice. Ate a ton of kebab and hummus and kofte and Turkish delight. By the time we were over our jet lag, it was time to fly away, wishing we had a few more weeks.

Perfect Type 2 Fun: Egypt

When you ask someone about their trip to Egypt, it’s very common to get the response: “I’m glad I went, but I never want to go back.” We planned nearly a month there. I hoped I wouldn’t come out feeling the same way. Unfortunately, to be totally honest, I did. 

I won’t dwell on the negatives. But the thing I’ll say is that independent travel in Egypt is Type 2 Fun. It’s the sort of experience that you don’t enjoy while it’s happening, but eventually you look back on it fondly. It’s bushwhacking through chaotic overgrowth in order to get to a spectacular view. Except in Egypt the chaos is the mass of humanity, and the views are ridiculously impressive archeological sites and museums. In summary, it was sandstorms, terrible air quality, dangerous traffic, seedy men hitting on your wife, poverty alongside massive wealth, military dictatorships, and millions of people just doing the best they can. People are remarkably warm, but a lot of them are also trying to scam you. There are camels in the city but also BMWs. The food is underrated. You can get by on a budget but you can also accidentally end up spending hundreds of dollars if you wander into the wrong situation. It’s the Nile and Pyramids and the most impressive ruins in the world and Nubia and cobras and crocodiles and lovely hosts and total assholes. It’s by far the craziest place I’ve ever been that is also a popular center for mass tourism. 

It’s a place that requires a lot of emotional energy. For a certain sort of person, I’m sure it’s an invigorating experience. For me, when we were flying out, I was seriously questioning our decision to make travel such an extensive part of this perfect year. I’m glad we went. I just never need to go back.

Perfect “something old”: Camino Mozarabe and Holy Week in Caceres

Opposite to this experience was our time in Spain. When we landed in Madrid from Cairo, I wanted to kiss the ground. (You shouldn’t do that. Who knows what’s ground in to that airport carpet.) 

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what’s so great about Spain, because it’s the whole package. It’s people hanging out in stone buildings drinking coffee at wooden bars that have been there for 400 years. It’s eating every bit of the pig. It’s festivals every few weeks where it’s hard to sort out the religion from the party. Every night, everywhere people dar un paseo, and wander around on their evening walks. Beer, wine, and espresso are all affordable so people still gather every day at their local to catch up with friends and complain about politics and make jokes.

For Angel and me, Caminos de Santiago have punctuated several really meaningful moments in our adult life. It seems unlikely that we would’ve been doing anything like this “perfect year” if we hadn’t gone on our first Camino in 2013 and fallen in love with big, epic human powered journeys. I’m not sure Angel would’ve quit her job as an NP, and I’m not sure we would’ve hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, or made a thousand other decisions. In 2023 we walked our second Camino with my mom for her 70th birthday, and it was the first time we really discussed this perfect year idea. Caminos make you feel like this sort of thing is possible. 

This trip–the Camino Mozarabe–facilitated a major plot twist in our trip. We were meant to spend a week walking across Andalucia, before flying back to New Zealand for a few months break before the next leg of our trip in the US. Then, the war in Iran broke out the day we left, and we were just a week into our intended monthlong walk from Almeria to Merida when our flights home got cancelled. I don’t think there was ever any real doubt–instead of trying to navigate the rebooking nightmare, we just decided to keep going. We hadn’t planned to go to Santiago on this trip, but it seemed like destiny. We extended what we’d planned as a one month trip in Spain into nearly three. 

The Mozarabe in the South was really different from any other Camino we’ve done. For one, it was much less busy. We only saw I think 12 other pilgrims across the whole route until we got to Merida and joined with a more popular Camino called the Via de la Plata. The Mozarabe also traverses more mountainous terrain, and Andalusia has an even sleepier cultural vibe than northern Spain. I listened to Don Quixote on audiobook, we passed through areas where Cervantes hung out, and we finished that first month of Camino during Holy Week–the biggest holiday of the year. In Caceres, in the center of the country, we spent the weekend with thousands of Spanish families eating churros, watching processions at all hours of the day and night, and slowly watching Easter arrive. 

From there we took a train north to Salamanca and started the walk to Santiago on the Camino Sanabres–mostly a green, sparsely populated wander through small farming towns in Galicia. It’s liminal space there, lots of crumbling stone houses and ancient churches that are kept up but never seem to open. When we made it to Santiago, for the third time, it felt like arriving back home, it’s become so familiar. We mostly skipped festivities and caught a bus to Muxia on the coast, where we did what you’re supposed to: went to a church by the sea and completed a ritual nine circuits crawling through a kidney-shaped stone that’s meant to heal you, or something. 

I could’ve just stayed there–disappeared into Spain–but I guess you can’t really do that.

Perfect writing retreat: Albania

After Spain, we had an unexpected five weeks that we needed to kill before we went back to the US for the second leg of the trip as it had originally been planned. Americans can hang out in Albania visa-free for up to a year, and we’d heard it’s nice. We decided to spend the time in Shkoder–on the edge of Lake Shkodra, and the Accursed mountains, and not far from the Adriatic Sea. 

We rented a newly renovated apartment in an old concrete communist block, wrote and worked in the mornings, and spent the afternoons wandering, visiting cafes, and riding rickety rental bikes to the lake for a swim. I finally built momentum on the new book project I’m working on. It was ideal.

I didn’t have many expectations but I fell in love with the Balkans. It’s a hardscrabble region that’s been through a lot, but it’s also beautiful, friendly and incredibly unusual. It’s like European Appalachia. 

We spent our 24th anniversary at a cheap resort with a spectacular view of a mountain lake, with views that triggered visions of Norwegian fjords. We finished our time there hiking the Peaks of the Balkans trek looping through corners of Albania, Montenegro, and Kosovo–one of the most memorable multiday hikes of our life.

I’m getting all starry-eyed just thinking about it.

Perfect family visit: NYC  

Picking a favorite experience with family and stating it publicly is obviously fraught with danger. We were in the US for more than a month. We went to a wedding in Ohio and a 65th birthday party in PA and spent a week with our moms in Boston. All of those experiences were good, and important in the way that family visits become as you start to get older. You don’t want to make anyone feel bad by picking a favorite. 

But ah, what they hey. 

We had two short jaunts in New York City, which for me were distinctive. Both of the trips were accidents really–it just happened that flying through New York was the most logical option between the US and Europe, and then later between Europe and New Zealand. So we spent a few days and caught up with my brother, who lives in Manhattan. As is so often the case, the unplanned stuff is what ends up being memorable.

My brother and I get along, but we don’t talk that much. We live on opposite sides of the world. Our lives are different. We’re emotionally stunted Midwestern males. So it was meaningful to see him on his home turf, to get a glimpse of what his life is like. Before this trip I’d only been to NYC once for a quick visit. This time we wandered in the East Village and visited an area where we’re pretty sure our Dutch ancestors had a little plot of land back when New York was still New Amsterdam. We went to the old CBGBs. On the return trip we just walked around looking at things. We checked out the Public Library where Ghostbusters was filmed, happened on a Palestine protest, went to the park where the Hare Krishna movement kicked off. Ate Mexican and Chinese dumplings and visited one of his locals. 

There was no pressure on the visits. New York is a big, complicated place. I’m not convinced that it’s my speed, but life there seems dense and rich, with links everywhere to culture and history. It was the first time I’d really seen how my brother had become a creature of that, after having all grown up in a small town in Ohio. 

As an adult, with your family, I think what you want is to see what life is for them–and you hope it’s good and meaningful. We all have our struggles, but with my brother it seemed from this trip that he’s managed to build the life of his choice, which is of course a major measure of success. 

Perfect Bucket List Event: Edinburgh Fringe

We flew from NYC to the UK and spent two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It wasn’t that Fringe had been on our bucket list. We went opportunistically because we had friends performing and the timing lined up. I’d heard of it and thought it sounded like fun, but never saw it as a thing I had to do in life. 

Now though, I think going to Edinburgh Fringe is a thing everyone should do before they die, if they have the means. It was the most fun we had through the entire perfect year, and honestly probably the most fun I’ve ever had at an event. 

What it is, is a month of endless weird entertainment. Fringe takes over the entire beautiful old city, and there are shows from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep. It’s like theater kid Las Vegas but less gaudy. I learned I like clowning, and modern Shakespeare, and being uncomfortable in a crowd. We went to a show where a person spent an hour pretending to be a cat. There was a faux religious service that felt almost Pentecostal, but with way more glitter. People from around the world were there, doing strange things, in really earnest ways. 

Two weeks of constant entertainment is a lot, but if I could, every year I’d go to Fringe and then walk a Camino, and life would be perfect.

Perfect episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?”

After Fringe, we had a month to fill before we flew back to New Zealand. One idea that was always at the back of our mind was to spend time in Germany and Poland. Angel’s ancestors are virtually all from there. We’d never been. It seemed like what we should do. 

We were looking at Poland because I’d assumed it would be much more affordable than Germany (and it probably would’ve been), but one day I was browsing Airbnb and found a really great deal on a little apartment in a historic district in Oppenheim, south of Frankfurt, on the Rhine. So, we booked in and made Germany our base. 

We had ambitious plans to visit multiple places where Angel had family history, but at this point in the trip ambitious travel plans weren’t particularly realistic. We relaxed into it and mostly hung around Oppenheim, walked local paths, and visited the towns within easy train distance (Mainz, Worms, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden). 

But still, Germany felt like home. The area of Ohio where we grew up is both culturally and geographically very similar to that particular area of Germany. It’s a few rolling green hills, a lot of rivers, and generally unspectacular scenery. But it’s also sausages and potato salad and friendly, unpretentious people. Germany has more castles and history, but otherwise it is what Ohio would feel like if Ohio had a sensible, functioning government.

And we did visit the area where Angel had the clearest sense of family connection–a small town called Eslohe, which has a church where she knows one of her great (+++) grandmothers was christened. The landscape there looks a lot like Kentucky, where she was born. We found her family name in the graveyard. We stared a little too long at locals, trying to assess if their facial features were similar to Angel’s (they were). We booked in at a guesthouse that’s been there for 8 generations, meaning it would’ve been around when her family left to immigrate to the US. 

I have family history just a few hours south of Oppenheim as well, and when we were in Germany, I felt this weird sense of both familiarity and distance. It was like we’d entered a parallel universe–or an alternative path that our lives could’ve taken had things been only very slightly different for a few of our ancestors in the distant past. It was nice–like nostalgia for something that never happened. 

One of our last nights in Germany, we went to a local Oktoberfest event and danced to 99 Luftballoons. It somehow felt like the right way to exit the weird portal we entered when we’d flown to Bali nine months earlier.

Perfect place to return to: Nelson, New Zealand

We flew back to New Zealand by way of the US, and took the longest flight of our life from NYC to Auckland. It was 17 hours and one long red eye - we left in the evening and flew with the moon so it was night the entire trip. Good, really because it meant we could both sleep for hours in our weird metal bubble full of strangers. The verdict is, a 17 hour flight isn’t as bad as you’d think it’d be.

When we landed in Nelson it felt so good to be home. After nine months at sea, it’s a relief to tie up your boat and step onto shore. On the bus ride home from the airport, it struck me that there was nowhere we’d been this year that was nicer than Nelson (even if Albania and Spain had their moments). Which is to say, there probably isn’t anywhere nicer than Nelson.

Since we’ve been back home, in our little basement studio, I haven’t wanted to leave. I’ve never been happier to go to work and get up to mundane tasks. I’ve been able to dig back into writing with a clearer head, undistracted by the decisions that have to be made about where we’ll be sleeping tomorrow or next month. Just walking around town, it’s been so pleasant. I bike home late at night sometimes after work, and everything’s so quiet. The moon shines off of the bay, and even in town, you can hear the owls hooting in the hills. 

It’s a classic OE (“overseas experience”) story here to venture out into the wide world, seeking adventure, but then to come back feeling like there’s nowhere better than home. It makes me feel like a real Kiwi.

Some data-driven summary results

I’ll be processing this year for a long time, inshallah, but before we left we discussed a few specific criteria for our perfect year, so here’s a quick review of where we hit the mark (and where we didn’t.) 

1. It should involve travel for about half of the year, and being at home the other half.

   
   

I realized years ago that anything over six months of travel for me starts to feel like grind, and kills my enthusiasm. We had planned our year out for two separate three month trips. Those plans got messed up by the Iran War and a forced recalibration that meant we actually traveled for nine months straight.

Boohoo, I know, but my earlier impressions were reinforced. I had a mostly great time between January and June, but I was ready to come home in July, after we went to Angel’s brother’s wedding and caught up with family. The last few months of the trip felt like a bit of a grind. (Although I will say that we wouldn’t have made it to Fringe if we’d gone home in July, and that was, to me, my favorite experience of the whole trip.)

2. It should involve a roughly equal mix of work and freedom. 

   
   

This is going to sound funny, but I actually wish we’d had a bit more downtime to get work done. Some of my favorite times on the trip were in Albania and Germany where I could write and Angel could work on her project for part of the day, and we could explorer locally in the afternoons. It felt more like living in a new, interesting place rather than wandering around looking at things. 

On the Camino, we tried to have it both ways, getting work done while also walking long distances. We did get some good things accomplished, and hashed through some needed work on the business, but sometimes it got to be a lot. 

Having said that, now that I’m home I do feel re-energized for writing in a way that I haven’t in a long time, and have a strong idea of where I’m going with the next book, which might not have happened had we not spent so much time wandering around experiencing things.

3. It should include walking a Camino and spending a lot of time outside. 

   
   

Yeah man. Caminos have their ups and downs, but our third one just reinforced one more time that this is my absolute favorite way to travel. You walk slow, through interesting history, with great views. You see tiny towns off the beaten path, and big remarkable cities. You meet interesting people from around the world. You don’t spend much money. It’s perfect. By the end of our first month, I was really happy that we got to carry on. By the end of our second month, when we made it to Santiago, I was ready to be done, but not burnt out. I wish life could always feel like it does on the Camino.

Our time in the mountains in Albania was a big additional bonus. The experience on the Peaks of the Balkans was Camino-esqe but a bit more rugged, and without quite as much civilization. But it was ridiculously beautiful. The Accursed Mountains are up with the most beautiful places we’ve been. So varied, and the Balkans, to me, are so endearing. 

And we also got a nice taste of the Northeastern United States which we hadn’t expected. The Maine coast and Vermont and the Whites. The area is solidly pleasant. To me it felt like the PNW but without the high mountains. I see why Noah Kahan likes it.

4. It should involve going to a new place or two, and returning to some place we love.

I feel like we got the balance right on this one.

Even though Egypt was a lot of pain and suffering, I’m glad we got there (and bonus that we got to hang out with some of our favorite people while we were there). Albania was a total surprise. I loved it and I wouldn’t be upset if you told me I had to stay there for a year. Spain carved out an even bigger place in my heart. I thought Bali might be a bit much but Ubud was actually pretty cool. Istanbul really piqued my interest. Ohio’s home. We visited Walden Pond so I got to experience my Accidental Transcendentalist roots. I ticked off most of the states I’ve never visited on our trip through the Northeastern US. I fell more deeply in love with Edinburgh, seeing it at it’s most dynamic. And Germany–now I feel like I know where Angel and I and Ohio came from in a more nuanced way.

5. It should give her the space to work on her business, and me the space to write.

   
   

Yeah– see number two above. I don’t feel like we took the year off. I do feel like we got a fair amount done. 

6. It shouldn’t break that bank. 

   
   

Oof. Well, the first six months, we were doing great. In terms of pure travel expenses, we spent about $26,000 USD between January and June. That felt okay, really, given what we did–went to Bali, Istanbul, Egypt, walked across Spain, spent a week in Athens, spent a month in Albania). Less than $4500 month for two people. That’s actually less than we generally spend living in New Zealand. We made a bit of money through the business, and while it didn’t feel like we were getting ahead, it also didn’t feel like we were digging ourselves a hole.

Then the US and Fringe and Germany hit. Between July and September, we spent another $20,000 USD. A lot of times it felt like we were hemorrhaging money. Even camping and crashing with friends and family, it was really difficult to travel in the US on a budget, especially in the Northeast. There just aren’t accommodation options that cost less than $150/night anymore, and you kind of have to rent a car. Tariffs and wars are expensive. 

With Fringe, we decided that we were just going to experience it. We did the right thing because we tent camped just outside of town, and that saved us literally thousands of dollars (Fringe accommodation is notoriously insane). We ate a lot of grocery meals. (M&S is our new boyfriend.) We got half-price deals and bought a membership that came with 2 for 1 tickets. But we went to see shows, so we paid for it. 

Germany really wasn’t that bad–I was surprised how affordable it was, especially in the less-touristy but still nice region where we stayed along the Rhine. But by that point the damage was done. Bank, broken. 

It’s good to be old and financial secure enough though to absorb it. It’s the advantage of doing this at 46 vs. 23. We’ll be fine.

7. It should give us significant time with friends and family. 

   
   

Yeah. Again, I think the balance was okay here. If you add up all of the time spent with family and old friends, it was a bit more than 8 weeks of our trip. That’s more time than I’ve spent purely hanging out with family and old friends in a decade. I didn’t feel particularly lonely on this trip, and even though there were people I wish we had more time with, it still felt like a lot of meaningful catching up. 

Bonus that we met a good number of new friends along the way too.

8. It should be spent entirely in summery climates.

   
   

Yep. Nailed it. We left feeling a bit sad in January because we were skipping most of New Zealand summer, but it’s November, and I haven’t been cold since this time last year when we were in Wellington. We successfully skipped winter and threaded the needle by spending the Northern Hemisphere winter months in hot climates (Egypt and Southern Spain), enjoyed North American and European Summer, and flew back to New Zealand just as Spring’s firmly set in. I swam outside (mostly comfortably) in January, February, April, May, June, July, and August.  

I’ll take that every year.