"I Don't Do Bucket Lists": An Interview with Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen
On a life in perfect balance, locations as soulmates, and making it work as slomads.
Today we have two (!) very exciting guests: Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen, a longtime couple who travel the world working as writers and digital nomads. They sold their home in Seattle in 2016, and move to a new country every few months.
Brent and Michael write about their travel adventures in their Substack, aptly named Brent and Michael Are Going Places. What I love about their newsletter is that they cover everything from their own personal, thoughtful observations of a new city to helpful travel hacks, and they’re also transparent about how much they spend along the way. I got the chance to talk to Brent and Michel about finding their rhythm in a new city, how to travel slowly, and some exciting upcoming travel plans. Enjoy!
How would you describe each other in three words?
BRENT: Michael is confident, silly, and fearless. This means that he’s the perfect travel companion. He’s willing to make a complete fool of himself rather than avoid doing something interesting. He never does make a complete fool of himself, because confidence is always sexy. But he’s willing to! And that’s what it’s all about.
MICHAEL: My three words for Brent are curious, driven, and intrepid because he’s always striving to better understand the world. Once he sets out to do something, he’s determined to do it.
What made you first start your Substack?
MICHAEL: Brent heard about this new newsletter platform and suggested we start it. I thought he was crazy and said I had no interest. Thank goodness I changed my mind.
BRENT: I’ve never been much into social media, because I don’t think most of it suits my strengths. I’m not 24 years old with perfect abs; I don’t like soundbites and “snackables.” That said, I do like cat videos.
Anyway, I read about Substack, and I couldn’t believe it. A social media platform for people who like substance? A place for writers and people who want civil discourse and long-form? Of course, I also thought, “This will never work. People won’t actually pay for this.” Which just goes to show I don’t know everything.
Have you always loved to travel?
MICHAEL: Absolutely. From a very young age, I read books about far-off lands, both real and imaginary. Then when I was in high school, I was lucky enough to finish my senior year in Sydney, Australia. Once I’d lived overseas, there was no way travel wouldn’t be a huge part of my life.
BRENT: I think I liked the idea of travel. But I was a bookish writer-dork obsessed with making it big as a screenwriter and novelist. I met Michael in my mid-20s, and it took him to knock me out of my head and get me to take a chance on travel.
The irony is, it wasn’t until I started to travel that I had anything to write about.
Where are you now as you’re writing this? What’s it like there?
MICHAEL: After spending a month in Istanbul, we’re now down along Turkey’s southern coast in a town called Fethiye. It’s very much a tourist town, yet it’s not too overdeveloped and is lovely. We’re very happy to have six weeks here.
BRENT: Yeah, we just had breakfast in a little cafe along the boardwalk by the water: lentil soup and menemen (a Turkish egg scramble made with vegetables and some mild spices). The weather is perfect: flip-flops and shorts, and a T-shirt. Which, incidentally, you can’t often wear in Istanbul. Turkey is a Muslim country, but Fethiye is a chill, laid-back beach town. Five stars, no notes.
What is the longest you’ve lived in one place?
BRENT: I grew up in a city just south of Seattle, and then lived in Seattle for many years, which is where I met Michael. We lived in Los Angeles for a year and a half, while I pursued screenwriting, but we both hated it with the passion of a thousand suns.
MICHAEL: During the past seven years of full-time travel, our longest stop was in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for almost nine months, but that was because of Covid. Normally, I don’t like to stay anywhere longer than three months.
BRENT: The truth is, after seven years of travel, I start to get restless if we stay anywhere for more than two or three months.
What drives this desire to live nomadically? To find someplace where you’d like to eventually settle down, or the excitement of always being somewhere new? Maybe something else entirely?
MICHAEL: In theory, we’re looking for a place where we might eventually want to settle down, but seven years into it, I’m still very much loving the excitement of being someplace new every couple of months. Honestly, the idea of being in one place longer than about three months stresses me out.
BRENT: Yeah, I am so not one of those “simple living” types, or at least I didn’t think I was. But I now absolutely love the simplicity of this lifestyle. You buy something new, you have to get rid of something old. Talk about your life being in perfect balance! If it isn’t, you break your back.
But weirdly, the fewer things I have, the richer my life seems. I truly didn’t expect this!
I also think fewer physical things make it much easier to focus on the things I now think are more important: interesting experiences and connections I’ve made with friends worldwide.
Do you believe that a location can feel like a destiny, or a soulmate? Have you ever been to a place and thought, “I was meant to be here?”
MICHAEL: When I first arrived in Cronulla, Australia, as an exchange student, it absolutely felt like my soulmate. I went back several times in my twenties because I felt so drawn to it.
But now that I’m older I think my attachment to it has more to do with how it opened my eyes to the rest of the world. It also represented a sense of freedom and the possibility of living abroad during those years before we became nomadic.
BRENT: I hope this doesn’t sound too insufferable, but it’s less about “places” to me than the connections I’ve made with different people in our various destinations. Now when I think of my favorite places, it’s always the place itself and the great people I interacted with while living there.
What do you think is your best travel tip or piece of advice?
MICHAEL: Being nomadic isn’t nearly as intimidating or scary as it might sound.
BRENT: Focus on the positive and go with the flow. Things will always go wrong, but so what? In a year, it’ll make a great story to tell your friends.
If you’re looking for reasons to be miserable in life, you’ll always find lots of them. And then you’ll be miserable. How is that a good thing? I don’t always follow my own advice. But I do try.
You write a lot about being “slomads.” What quintessential elements make up being a slomad? Do you find that helps with burnout?
BRENT: I think it just means that there’s no rush to do anything. For me, it also means giving myself permission to not see everything in an area. I don’t do bucket lists. If I feel it, I feel it, and if I don’t, I’m fine with a glass of wine and a good book out on the patio.
One of the great things about being a nomad is that I frequently tell myself: “Well, fine, I never got around to going to that museum or this boat trip. But I’ll be back here again sometime, and I’ll do it then.”
MICHAEL: For me, being a slomad is about being in a place long enough to get to know at least certain aspects of it fairly well. I get that even after three months, I won’t have that deep of an understanding of a place. But by getting up each morning and exploring different parts of wherever we’re living, I start to develop a sense of the rhythm of the place.
What do you do when you feel homesick or burnt out from traveling?
MICHAEL: I’ve never felt homesick in seven years of travel. I’m not sure why exactly. Maybe because I’m very much a forward-looking guy and don’t get caught up in thinking about the past. I often joke that I’m a dog by nature, which means I’m always living in the moment.
BRENT: Weirdly, I’ve never felt homesick either, and I really expected to. But then again, Michael is my “home,” and he’s always with me, so why would I be homesick?
We’ve also tried very hard to stay in touch with our friends back in Seattle. We go back for a month every year. Honestly, sometimes it feels like we spent more “quality time” with them now than back before we left!
What makes you feel the most grounded when moving around so much?
BRENT: Having a partner, for sure. And having those solid friendships all over the world. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve never felt more grounded in my entire life.
But I think that’s also a question of my being in my fifties. The older you get, I think the more you realize how important your friends are. Increasingly, I couldn’t care less about my career.
MICHAEL: Being with Brent, which almost goes without saying. Wherever he’s at automatically feels like home. But weirdly, we both feel at home in a new place – grounded, if you will – within only a few days of arriving. I honestly never expected that.
What is the biggest lesson you've learned this month?
MICHAEL: That I can enjoy a place where there isn’t all that much to do. I tend to be a pretty active person and I love to get up early and walk around wherever we’re living to see the sights. Some might say I can even be a little obsessive about it. While Fethiye is very lovely, there isn’t enough here to fill up an entire month. And that’s okay. I’m loving being chill, which is a surprising thing to learn.
BRENT: That I will always and forever be fascinated by cats! Muslims love cats, and Turks especially. You can’t go a single block in Istanbul, where we were last month, and here in Fethiye, without running into at least three cats.
Do you have a favorite place you’ve been, or definitely would return to?
BRENT: I like cultures that are both sophisticated and chill: where they put a high value on equality between the sexes and everyone else; where they’re not too full of themselves and don’t take anything too seriously; and where they believe that, ultimately, the whole point of life is to be happy. Good food and good conversation.
The two best examples are Mexico and Thailand, but Italy is a close third.
MICHAEL: I call this the “Who is your favorite child?” question and I always refuse to answer it! I will admit to having a few favorite places – Grimentz, Switzerland; Bangkok, Thailand; the entire country of Italy – but I can almost always find at least one thing I truly love about each place we live.
Where are you off to next?
MICHAEL: It’s gonna be a busy summer! From here, we’re spending two weeks doing our first Virgin Voyage cruise, then a month in Oslo, Norway. That will be our first time in Norway, but even better, we get to spend time with a very dear friend. After that, it’s, ummm… Brent, help me out here—
BRENT: It is kind of a blur, isn’t it? After that, we’re heading to the U.K. where we’ve living on the southern coast for a bit, then traveling up to Liverpool. And then we’ve booked another month and a half of cruises around Ireland, Scotland, and then over to mainland Europe.
What have been some Tiny Joys lately?
BRENT: Oh! I love this question.
I’m a firm believer that every place we visit has one local delicacy that can only really be found in that place, at least in its perfect form. You know: guacamole in Mexico, gelato in Italy, tom yum soup in Thailand. In Turkey, it’s a tie between the Turkish Delight and the fresh-squeezed orange juice.
MICHAEL: We’re living two minutes away from a fantastic weekly market and my Tiny Joy is walking around the market and watching how people here live their lives. They seem much more relaxed than they do in American grocery stores or even European hypermarkets where everyone is in a hurry to get their stuff and go. Here merchants will chat with you and locals are socializing with each other. Then there’s the fact of being surrounded by so much fresh locally grown produce. Right now the strawberries smell amazing. It’s all so lovely.