chapter 7: you'll always find your way back home
the importance of a home base, and a summary of my nomadic past 6 years
⏰ 8-10 minute read
For the past 7 weeks, I’ve been in a different place each weekend: Big Bear, San Diego, San Francisco, New Orleans, Death Valley, Mexico City, and Key West.
This week, I’m finally writing this newsletter from my home base, Los Angeles, in the comfort of my own bed – under my favorite handmade cozy blanket, with my fragrance diffuser spreading my favorite mango coconut aroma, soothing eye masks on my face, and rainbow gradient lights from this fun little northern lights machine dancing across my ceiling.
My travel backpack is for once tucked away into my closet rather than being sprawled out on my bedroom floor waiting to be packed up for the next adventure.
I finally was able to go grocery shopping and hit up my favorite farmers markets without fear that the food would spoil when I’d leave for my next trip.
In the words of Miley Cyrus (whose new album is out today and whose timeless Hannah Montana classic inspired this email’s subject line) I can buy myself flowers, without the sad thought of them going to waste while I’m not home to appreciate them.
I can get back into my weekly routine of going to my favorite Brazilian Samba, Afro-Caribbean beats, and Latin Pop dance classes after work, doing aerial yoga on the weekends, and enjoying the simple pleasure of skateboarding down the Santa Monica beach boardwalk under the warm sunshine.
This is the ultimate luxury, in the life of a frequent traveler.
what is home? a summary of my nomadic past 6 years
The concept of ‘home’ is special, for someone like me. I moved to LA just about one year ago after 6 years of frequent moving and living in different places around the world. I am so excited to celebrate my moving anniversary next month because this marks the first time I’ve been based in the same city for 12 months at a time in my entire adult life.
I lived in the same house in my hometown of Oakland, New Jersey from when I was born until when I was 18 and moving out to attend college in New York City, which had always been a dream of mine after growing up in the shadow of the city.
I spent those blissful first 9 months of my freshman year of college in Manhattan, and then retreated back to my suburban hometown in the summer to not pay New York City rent and instead save up money for my next big adventure: moving abroad for the first time to study in Florence, Italy for a semester.
After that first semester abroad where I bounced around Europe to a different country every weekend, I came home to my family in NJ in December 2017 for a quick pitstop before flying back across the pond to spend five weeks in Tel Aviv as part of a coding and entrepreneurship fellowship called TAVtech.
The following spring 2018, I was back again in New York during the school year and living at home again in the summer while commuting in NYC for an internship to save up money to go abroad again for my upcoming junior fall semester, this time based in Singapore with all of Southeast Asia just a short, cheap flight away.
After five months of fully taking advantage of the fact that my one super-stacked day of 9am-9pm classes and pass-fail status as an exchange student at the National University of Singapore afforded me carefree 6-day weekends, I had seen pretty much every country in Southeast Asia and headed over to backpack Australia for two weeks before heading home to celebrate the holidays with my family in NJ.
I kicked off my junior spring in January 2019 with a class that took me to Abu Dhabi for two weeks, but then settled back into NYC for the foreseeable future. Just when my junior spring semester heading into the summer internship season and then my senior fall looked like it might be the first time I’d stay in NYC for a full calendar year – I miraculously got an internship at Facebook and was getting paid to relocate and live for free in the Bay Area for three months that summer.
After my final semester at NYU in fall of 2019, I said goodbye to New York City as I graduated one semester early and set off on an epic 7-month post-grad trip that I had meticulously planned out to visit all 7 continents in the span of January through July 2020…
But we all know what happened in March 2020.
Although I’m thankful I got to spend the first three months of 2020 stepping foot on the seventh continent, Antarctica, surrounded by penguins; trekking Patagonia and being awed by the Iguazu waterfalls in southern Brazil; and camping for six weeks straight as part of an East African safari, my carefully-laid travel plans came to an abrupt end when all countries started closing their borders due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After snagging an emergency flight home from Zimbabwe to New Jersey (there’s a chapter in my book about this insane experience almost getting stuck in Africa at the start of the pandemic, if you’re interested to read more!), I spent mid-March through September 2020 holed up in my hometown bedroom reading a book a day until I reached a breaking point. I decided to recruit some friends to rent an Airbnb in Maine for a month to get out of our hometowns and enjoy living on the outskirts of Acadia National Park while working remotely.
Returning to New Jersey for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays after that month of adventure in Maine was a drag, so I quickly made more plans with some nomadic friends to live in San Diego for the first two months of 2021. Then, I lived in San Francisco once again for three months. Then, I lived in Los Angeles for my first time ever for the month of June as part of a coliving mansion for entrepreneurial people called Launch House (rip).
That July, I quit my first full time job at Instagram – which had once seemed like an absolute dream job to me – and decided I wanted to try out the life of full time travel, with the freedom of not being tied to a lease, while working on a travel startup idea and finishing the writing, editing, and marketing for my book which was being published that fall.
I ping-ponged across the US in a different city every week, crashing on friends’ couches across the country while experiencing hidden gem bucket list new places like the San Juan islands teeming with orcas. I then spent the month of September bouncing around Europe and revisiting places like Florence, my former home.
By the time I got home from Europe in October 2021, I was a shell of the person I once was, completely burnt out from over-ambitiously traveling every week or month without any stable home in between.
I remember this feeling vividly – I was unable to muster any zest for life and exploring anywhere new. I was truly in what I now call a “pit of despair” for months on end because I was so deeply craving a home and a sense of consistent community after so many frenetic months of nonstop travel and constantly uprooting myself.
I love being adaptable as a traveler, but we as humans can only handle so much change without any stability to counterbalance it before it starts to wear us down mentally.
I published my book, You Are Where You Go, in November 2021 with the support of over $10,000 in presales and should have been feeling on top of the world. But while temporarily living in my hometown that fall and winter, all I could think about was the suffocating indecision I had around where I wanted to settle down for a while to build the stability and community I was so severely lacking.
The idea of rooting myself in New York City, a place that I loved and where I would be surrounded by my best friends and family, dangled in front of me easy to grasp… but somehow I identified that deep down I had outgrown that city and the people who lived there who loved me so dearly.
I needed a new adventure and a city that felt right for me as the outdoor-oriented, entrepreneurial, and outgoing person I was at the age of 23 – who was not the same as the bright-eyed 18-year-old suburbanite whose move to Manhattan was a dream come true.
Los Angeles might not have been my first choice of my own volition, but two key external factors made me move here – my boyfriend at the time wanted to work in film and LA was the obvious answer, and a recruiter had cold-DM’d me on LinkedIn offering me a job at a music-tech startup and relocation package to move to the epicenter of the entertainment industry, an industry I had always dreamed about working in.
Today, I’m neither dating that boy nor working for that music-tech company, but I still live in Los Angeles and thank the universe every day for the way things happened to work out.
I have never loved a home with the same degree of passion I have for living in Santa Monica, and I have never found elsewhere a community like the one I currently have in Los Angeles, where I’m surrounded by like-minded adventurous and passionate people who want more for themselves in life than the status quo and typical career path.
As much as I love the novelty of a new place and the excitement of trying new foods, meeting new people, admiring different architecture and natural wonders, and experiencing life in a different corner of the world – there’s no better feeling than coming back to the familiar and realizing how grateful you are for the home and community you have there.
xoxo your *always-on-the-move but loves-to-also-be-home* Type A travel bestie,
Caitlyn
🚨 If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to your friends! I am doing this all completely free and out of the kindness of my heart because I want to share my knowledge to help as many people as possible travel more economically, more sustainably, and more intentionally…
so forward this email, share the link, post it on your IG story… share it far and wide, please, if you find this valuable :)
📝 travel hack of the week
I am all about trying to earn points on credit cards because free points equals free money equals free travel. But, the biggest monthly expense in most of our lives is rent – and most residences don’t allow you to pay rent via a credit card without charging an extra fee that negates any credit card points earned.
Enter, Bilt. You can earn points for paying rent with this card, without any fee! Your Bilt points are transferrable to travel and airline partners, meaning that just by paying rent – an obligatory expense – you can be earning free travel. This is not sponsored (I’m not on that level yet, lol) but I truly just love that this card exists and want to share the wealth of knowledge.
Sign up to start earning free travel money with your monthly rent payment!
🌎 where in the world is caitlyn?
As mentioned above, I’m currently basking in the joy of being home in Los Angeles this weekend. I’m catching up with friends I’ve missed during my hectic past few weeks and feeling reenergized.
Tomorrow, I’m heading to the nearby city of Irvine, California for the first time to speak at a women’s conference in honor of International Women’s Day this past Wednesday. I can’t wait to share more about that with you next week!
I also just got back this week from my trip to Key West and Dry Tortugas National Park – which I had been on my way to when I published last week’s newsletter (I literally pressed ‘send’ at the last possible second before I lost signal on my wifi hotspot in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico).
Next week I’m heading to my old home, San Francisco, for a whole week, and I’m already compiling my list of old friends to catch up with and favorite bakeries to consume croissants from. SF friends, if you’re reading this – hit me up to hang next week!
👯♀️ group trip opportunities
🎿 🏂 🏔 mammoth lakes, california - march 24-26
We’ve only got 2 spots left!
Join me for a quick weekend roadtrip to a cozy Airbnb right at the base of Mammoth Mountain, a picturesque central California ski town on Friday March 24 through Sunday March 26!
Even if you’re not into winter sports, but are yearning for cozy cabin vibes this season – feel free to join the group and make some new friends :) Reply to this email for details if you’re interested!
🤿.🦈 🌊 los cabos, mexico - june 1-5
More spots are now available! 🥳
We made room for a few more people to join this trip due to the overwhelming demand – if you’ve been thinking about getting scuba certified, or if you are a certified diver and want the underwater adventure of a lifetime… look no further!
I’ve partnered with Your Friends Are Boring, a trip-planning platform centered around travel-centric sports like surfing and scuba diving, to serve as their first guest host for this dive trip.
Check out the full trip outline I put together to get all the details and sign up by April 1!
🪣 bucket list inspo
Dry Tortugas is one of the most remote national parks in the United States, as it’s only accessible by ferry or seaplane or private boat. This place hadn’t even been on my radar at all until my best friend, who is on a mission to visit all 62 national parks in the US, brought it up.
One crazy fact I learned about Dry Tortugas is that it is the southeasternmost entry point to US soil, less than 100 miles from Cuba. Every day, about 30-40 Cuban migrants (and up to 400 on a single day in the busiest times) reach the shores of Fort Jefferson, a tiny landmass in the center of the waters protected as a national park, to claim asylum as refugees. These Cuban migrants come by way of makeshift boats that look like they could barely survive a few hours in the water, let alone the 100-mile journey, which gives perspective to just how desperately these individuals are seeking a better life in the US.
Despite its status as a refugee hotspot, I found Fort Jefferson and its surrounding waters to be a stunningly blue, picturesque spot that I’ll remember for a long time – I’d recommend a visit if you’re ever in Key West, but remember to book a few months in advance as the ferry only carries about a hundred people and sells out quickly.
💭 food for thought
Do you feel like the home you’re currently in is the home you’re meant to be in?
Have you ever thought about moving to a new place?
If so, what’s holding you back?
You deserve to live in a place that feels as ‘home’ as possible, however you define that for yourself.
📱let’s connect
If you’ve got feedback on the format of this newsletter, or suggestions for travel topics you want to hear more about, don’t be shy! Reply to this email or DM me:
Instagram: @caitlynlubas / @you.are.where.you.go
Twitter: @caitlynlubas
TikTok: @you.are.where.you.go
LinkedIn: Caitlyn Lubas (feel free to reach out if you want to talk about working remotely, transitioning careers, etc!)
That’s all for now…
Remember, you are where you go – never stop exploring the world and yourself! 🌎 🌍 🌏
If you enjoy my writing in this newsletter, you’d love my book called You Are Where You Go: A Traveler’s Coming of Age Journey Through 70 Countries and 7 Continents During College. Feel free to pick up a copy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or reply if you’re interested in me sending you a signed hardcover or paperback copy :)