Life in Transit, Startup Edition
You know what’s super glamorous? Being stuck in an airport at midnight with a half-dead phone, a suitcase that’s seen better days, and a mental list of deadlines longer than your last grocery receipt. Welcome to the “jet-set life” no one puts on Instagram.
Everyone loves to fantasize about the whole “I’m always traveling” vibe- until you’re actually living out of a suitcase, hopping from sunny Portugal to freezing Vienna mid- December, and then praying for a ride home that doesn’t show up until 1 a.m. Direct flights? Those are for the lucky. The rest of us are out here playing travel roulette, counting the hours until we can collapse into our own beds and pretend we don’t have another Monday waiting to pounce.
And here’s the kicker: I spent years working for startups juggling this chaos. Which means there was never just one fire to put out when you land- try twenty. All blazing at once, like some demented bonfire festival. Spoiler: you don’t get to pick which one to tackle first. They’re all urgent, they’re all impossible, and they’re all waiting in your inbox before you’ve even found your luggage.
And yes, I swear. Because sometimes there’s no better word than a solid “fuck” to describe landing at midnight, realizing you’ve got a Sunday briefing, and oh- next week you’re off to the Netherlands for a completely different circus. (Before anyone clutches their pearls: swearing is actually linked to higher IQ- science says so. Well, kinda… You’re welcome.)
Lost in Translation, Literally
Then there’s the joy of flying north out of sunny Spain into some corner of Northern or Eastern Europe where suddenly English evaporates into thin air. You try to ask for coffee and they stare at you like you’ve just requested the nuclear codes. At that point, all you really want is one thing: Where’s caffeine, please? Or food. Literally anything edible.
Same vibe with groceries. You walk into a store and the letters on the packaging might as well be ancient hieroglyphs. So what do you do? You pull out ChatGPT to decode your cereal box (and to all the “ChatGPT isn’t for that!” screamers: f*** you, very politely). If AI can’t save me from buying wrong stuff while on a tight budget, what’s the point of living in 2025?
The Unglamorous Truth
So let’s be real: if you think this life is all hotel glamour and fancy airport lounges, you’re missing the part where you’re basically a sleep-deprived firefighter in half-decent shoes. It’s messy, it’s chaotic, and it sure as hell isn’t the Pinterest-board fantasy.
But here’s the point- we’re not here to sell glossy fantasies. We’re here to tell it like it is. To laugh through the breakdowns. To drop F-bombs (because, again, we’re geniuses). To make you feel a little less alone while you juggle your own circus.
Because yeah, rock bottom has WiFi. And sarcasm. And hopefully coffee- if you can find it.
