[We didn’t plan to leave the country right at the start of the second Trump administration—this has been in the works for years—but it happened precisely that way. My BAAW recently quoted Dan Berrigan to me: “Know where you stand, and stand there.” Pretty sure I know where I stand, but I’m not, at present, standing there physically. Big shouts to everyone who is. My brother-in-law and his colleagues are planning to lock the doors when ICE comes to deport the migrants with whom they work; they’ll stall and start sneaking people out the back. My sister-in-law is fighting to keep her refugee clinics open. I stand in awe of them both. Thank you for all the ways you stand there too.]
A few weeks ago, I noted that we are living in Mexico for the spring, and said I would give you the sketch of how I think it’s possible for working people and artists to cobble together a DIY sabbatical on a budget.
But before I start yakking on for what could be an endless series, a caveat:
There’s something hell of nauseating about the vibe of people from the U.S. gloating nonstop over how incredibly cheap things are in Mexico (or pick your other not-U.S. country).
I was talking to someone here about, of all things, genealogy, and whether every Mexican family has that one auntie who’s always telling everyone about the family’s history, and my guy was like, “Uh, no, that’s not a thing here. People who are hustling every day for their daily bread don’t have time for that.” That’s real, fam.
Money and privilege and poverty and culture vulture-ism and gentrification and all that are a source of cognitive dissonance for me here. It’s like: We’re a couple of scrappy little public-school teacher/artists who had to scrimp and save and hustle to pull this off—and our little scrappy savings and extremely modest budget mean that we’re, uh, kinda loaded here? It’s a both/and life.1
I’m not going to cry about it. Or turn around and go home. But it’s something to be mindful of. Something to be clear about. Something to navigate with humility and respect.
Anyway. DIY sabbatical, yes?
It seems self-evident to me that people are in need of rest, reflection, time to be together with their loved ones, time to take on a new project, new sights, new rhythms of days, just… something else.
If you are not among their number, and everything in your life is just exactly the way you want it to be, and you couldn’t imagine shaking things up and seeing things afresh, then, by all means, you do you.
But for the rest of us, I don’t think it’s namby-pamby to want a respite from, e.g., a surfeit of gun stores and pawn shops and big-box stores selling military-grade firearms, or working 60- and 70-hour weeks, or regular infusions of the particular sadness of the United States of America.2 3
(If that’s not your life, then God bless. But there’s a fair amount of it in mine, in addition to—let me be clear—warm community, beloved family, wonderful work, deep friendships, so much beauty. Not tryna whine at you, okay?)
And our respite has already been filled with so many unforeseen riches.
For example, daily stops at the frutería to get, say, a big bag of onions, chiles, cucumbers, avocados, tangerines, cilantro, and half a cabbage—for, it’s true, the equivalent of a few dollars.
For example, “adventure walks” with young children.
For example, “quiet time” with young children.
For example, “the bread lady” with young children.
For example, we inherited a dog.
For example, time to study the Mexican Revolution.
For example, time to study Spanish.
For example, time to run with my big kids every single day. (Minus our rest day.)
For example, we were in a parade. (I’m 100% serious.)
For example, waking up in the small hours to write, the only restriction on time being that at some point said young children will be up and ready for their homeschool lessons, at which point I get to just be their teacher for the morning before I take them to receso4 with the little school on the plaza about a hundred meters away.
For example, taking out the trash at night and seeing this:
If that doesn’t seem like a worthwhile use of money and time, then jeez louise fam, I don’t know why you’re reading this.
If it does seem worthwhile but impossible, let me try to make the case that if we can pull this off, everyone can pull this off.
A long time back, after I raised the possibility of our family trying to get out of the country for a time, the homie Janine—who has been here twice before for long stretches—was trying to convince me that we could do it, that we had no idea how much we would love it, what a terrific experience we would have, and she pointed out that the cost of living is incredibly affordable here, and that it makes possible things that would otherwise be impossible.
(I don’t know what prices are like in resort/tourist joints like Cancún and whatnot—we didn’t go that route, obviously.)
She went as far as to say that we should sell our house and Just Go. There was this urgency to what she was saying that stuck with me: it was like she could see something about life that I couldn’t quite see.
I would tie myself up in knots thinking about how we would never be able to make it happen, that plane tickets and rent alone would be too much, much less daily living expenses without any income. It just seemed totally impossible. Reminder that we are a family of six. This isn’t like waltzing off for a long weekend with your lover, fam!
But the more my BAAW and I talked, and the more I raised the specter of the idea with my boss, and the more real we made it, the more that urgency carried me through.
The first step was having some money to build on. We have some savings (see notes on how we actually built savings that here), but eating into long-term savings was not a great foundation for planning major travel.
So some years ago, before we had a real plan or any real confidence we could pull this off, my BAAW wisely suggested we sock away five thousand dollars toward this and not touch it. Eventually, I bought $5,000 worth of BIL 0.00%↑ , and tried to ignore it. That was a start, and that start eventually led us all the way here.
So my advice to you is…
Just get started.
You don’t have to have a plan. You don’t have to have confidence you can pull it off. You don’t have to know where you’re going or what you’ll do there. If you have gotten a glimpse of wanting Something Else, even for just a little while, you can just start.
A few hundred dollars is a totally viable start!
A thousand bucks is a long way there!
Remember that if you can find a part of the world that is legitimately just on a different economy from whatever expensive-ass place you live, you’ll have to continually recalibrate your sense of what is achievable and affordable—i.e., it’s a lot more achievable and affordable than you think.
You’ve got this!
Here for you!
Or, in another vein and per this entire newsletter: global corporate capitalism seems to be on balance just exploitative, extractive, predatory wickedness—and I derive an unreasonable amount of pleasure from finding interesting and durable retirement investments that are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
I say this as one who is inescapably American….
As my BAAW reminds me, every place in the world has its particular sadnesses—we just see our own more clearly. She also notes that Walmart is the largest employer in Mexico (checks out), so I could probably find plenty of exquisitely sad Walmart parking lots here too.
PSA: Starting for me maybe with Eduardo C. Corral’s gorgeous, gorgeous Slow Lightning (seven-seven out of five stars, total masterpiece), I have loved seeing all the conversation around eschewing italics for words that are not in English, and I commend it to you.