By the time you read this, I’ll be somewhere between the French Alps and Paris, watching tiny villages and rolling green hills blur past the train window. A few days later, my wife and I will settle into an apartment in Marseille, where we’ll spend the next month living and working on the southern coast of France.

Not vacationing. Not backpacking. Just… living life somewhere else for a while.

A few years ago, I probably would have approached this trip very differently. I would have tried to cram as much as humanly possible into every day, sprinting between landmarks in a race against time. That version of travel was exciting, but eventually things started to blur together. Airports became interchangeable. Cathedrals looked eerily similar. I remember studying gorgeous paintings, but not which museum they were hung in.

The original digital nomad dream was built around movement: New city. New country. New café. New picturesque location for laptop work. Repeat until emotionally or financially unstable.

But I think a lot of people are starting to realize that freedom without rhythm can become utterly exhausting. Part of what draws us back to slower travel is something we first experienced while living abroad in Prague and Berlin. Life there felt less rushed, less performative, and somehow more human.

That’s why I’ve shifted to what some people are calling the “slowmad” lifestyle. It’s not about frantic movement and ticking boxes. It’s about longer stays, healthier routines, and real immersion in the culture around you.

For us, that shift has become essential because we run a business while we travel. Britt Creative has grown into a full agency with a team and clients who depend on us, and that responsibility does not disappear just because we happen to be eating breakfast at a café in France instead of a diner in North Carolina (shout out Waffle House).

Slow travel creates balance. It gives us enough space to support the business we’ve built while still fully experiencing the places we’ve traveled so far to see.

Without that balance, one of three things usually happens:

None of those options feel much like freedom to me. 

Our days abroad are surprisingly normal, which is probably why they feel so fulfilling. We wake up around 6:00 AM, make coffee, and spend the morning handling client communication, focus work, and team direction while the East Coast is just waking up. By lunchtime, the pressure is gone and the rest of the day opens up. 

Maybe we walk to a neighborhood market for fresh ingredients. Maybe we hop on a train to a coastal town for the afternoon. Maybe we pick up a bottle of wine and eat dinner by the water as boats drift through the Vieux Port at sunset. Not every day feels cinematic. But every day is spent basking in the small differences of normal life, for better or worse. After a while, we stop feeling like we’re passing through and start noticing the small things: greetings from a shopkeeper, a recognizable walk home, the familiar sounds of “our” neighborhood outside.

At this stage of life, luxury looks different than it used to. I don’t need the flashiest hotel or the perfect tourist-district location. Give me a comfortable apartment, a decent coffee setup, a small balcony, and enough time to slide into the rhythm of the city around me.

Because that’s really the difference. Fast travel lets you see a destination. Slow travel lets you briefly become part of it.

And in a world that constantly pushes us to optimize every second, consume more content, answer more notifications, and move faster at all times, there’s something deeply refreshing about choosing a slower pace on purpose.

Not because life is short, although it is.

But because life is happening right here, right now. And it would be a shame to rush through it.