How to Restart Your Life Without Moving an Inch

What I'd tell my 59-year-old self before he packed the truck

May 17, 2026

I thought Puerto Rico would make me a different man.

It didn’t. I had to move a few times before I realized you can’t outrun yourself by moving.

I packed up my life in Utah and moved to San Juan when I was 59. Not for a job or for family. My 24-year marriage was over and I’d been divorced less than a year. I was in a tumultuous relationship, the house was gone, my role as a husband and business owner was gone, and I was sitting in a rental apartment that had nothing of me in it. I decided the problem was staying in the city where my marriage ended.

I connected with a guy named Candido through an online men’s group who lived in San Juan and owned a cigar bar. He was a super popular guy, and he introduced me around. There was a ready-made circle waiting for me. Other seasoned men who’d been through divorce and relaxed into their laid-back lives on the island. I could be at the bar by six with a bourbon and a cigar, and three or four guys would show up most nights. The bartender knew to make an Old Fashioned when I walked in the door.

For about a year, I thought I had it all figured out. Hanging out with a bunch of like-minded men, getting into cigar culture, heading to the beach in the morning for quiet time and some Bible reading. I even got back on two wheels after decades since I’d ridden a motorcycle. OK, it was a bright yellow Vespa, but a guy’s got to start somewhere.

Eventually the group dynamic started to fade. Life got in the way, guys got busy. The last few months in San Juan I was sitting in my apartment, drinking that bourbon alone, with no one to text. The loneliness and insecurity I’d been running from had been waiting for me the whole time.

I turned 60 in Puerto Rico with no party and no one organizing anything. Fortunately one of the men I’d met and his wife took me out for dinner when they found out I had nothing planned, and I was more grateful than I knew how to express.

As the weeks went by I felt more and more isolated despite dating a few different women. A couple of months later, I packed up Puerto Rico and moved to Nashville.

Same playbook, new city

It was a different setup, but essentially the same plan. My friend Charles had also decided to move to Nashville from Boston, so we decided to become roommates. Built-in company, lower rent.

I tried dating apps, took some salsa classes, bought a Honda Rebel 500 (don’t judge me, I ride a Ducati now), and I built another social circle – or rather, my friend built it and I tagged along. I told myself this time was different because Nashville wasn’t an island and I wasn’t dealing with being a foreigner in a country where I just couldn’t manage to pick up the flavor of Spanish they spoke there.

In the end, it wasn’t really different.

My roommate became one of my best friends. The dating produced nothing serious. Salsa was a good time but I never really got into it – it was just something social to do, and didn’t fill anything inside me, really. About four months in I sat at a restaurant alone on a weekday night, ordered a steak, and noticed I was doing the exact same thing I’d done in San Juan. The view out the window was different but I was the same guy at the table.

That was the moment of recognition.

Six hundred years earlier

Buckaroo Banzai said it in one line: “Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”

Thomas à Kempis wrote something around 1440 that I wish I’d taped to my mirror at 59:

“You cannot escape it, run where you will; for wherever you go, you take yourself with you, and you will always find yourself.”

That Dutch priest nailed it. So did David about 2,500 years earlier, asking the same question with God in the equation:

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
Psalm 139:7

There’s no geographic answer to a spiritual problem. The Caribbean won’t save you. Neither will moving to another city halfway across the country. The presence in your own head and the One above it both come with you. I didn’t realize that at 59. I figured a new zip code would do the work, but it didn’t. Two zip codes didn’t.

The work was sitting with the man I’d been avoiding. That’s the responsibility no truck rental can solve and no friend group can substitute for.

Moving to a new place has its uses. A new climate, a fresh start, a different commute, a city where nobody knows your last marriage or your ex-wife. Those are fine reasons, but they won’t fix the underlying problems.

What I’d tell him now

Here’s what I’d say to the version of me who was loading the moving truck.

You’re running from yourself and you don’t know it yet. You’re going to spend two years and a small fortune learning a lesson you could’ve learned for free in your own living room. The silence you can’t sit with in Utah is the silence you can’t sit with in San Juan or Nashville or anywhere else.

The move isn’t going to fix the marriage that ended. It isn’t going to fix the fact that you don’t know how to be alone with yourself.

Move if you want to. Puerto Rico will teach you things, and it’ll be an interesting experience and addition to your life resume. Nashville will too. But know you’re not fixing anything by moving. You’re changing the backdrop on a problem you’ll face wherever you sit down and are alone with your thoughts after the date or after hanging out with the boys.

The real change came in Nashville, at a table for one. Something finally shifted. I’d done a ton of self-work over the course of the last couple of years with help from others, and I’d spent more time reading the Word. I sat there, ate the steak, and noticed I was fine. The silence was where I’d finally meet myself and the God I’d been outrunning, who as my wife likes to remind me now, had been chasing me for quite a while.

A couple of months after that I met my wife Mai. By then I’d done enough of the work to know the difference between needing her and choosing her.

If you’re thinking about packing the truck

If you're 50 or 60 and you've started fantasizing about a new city or a new country, sit with this first. There are good reasons to move. Family. Climate. Cost of living. A real new chapter in your life. Those are different from packing the truck because you can’t stand your own company where you are right now.

You can change the apartment or the country. But the man who walks into the front door of the new place is the same one who walked out of the last one.

Stop running and face what you’ve been avoiding. That’s where the work is.

The one thing that didn't change between Utah, Puerto Rico, and Nashville was the work I was doing on my body. The Last 10 Pounds is the long version of that thread, based on 34,000 food log entries and training records that carried through four moves and eleven adult surgeries. My body kept improving while the rest of life kept rearranging itself. The book's out later this year. The waitlist gets the pre-order link first: