Consistency isn’t polished: it’s portable

🇰🇪 notes from Nairobi

What I’ve learned from 30+ years of living life consistently is this:

Travel reshuffles routines. It interrupts the surface ones; the scaffolding underneath remains.

At home in Austin my mornings are autopilot: roll out of bed, scamper to the Nespresso, open laptop.

Here in Nairobi? There’s a French press on the counter. Great except I need coffee before I can figure out how to make the coffee #SadFace

Yesterday I was on WhatsApp between meetings with a friend in Austin. She messaged, You’ve got this!

Hours later, my day ending, hers just beginning, I sent the same words back. Different continents, same rhythm.

At night in Kenya I maintain my toddler-style wind-down: brush teeth, wash face, stretch, meditate, bed. Back in Austin, I rehearsed it night after night until it became automatic. That’s why I can carry it here so easily. The steps remind my body it’s time to settle even when my brain insists it’s in another time zone.

This is the very point of routine: it’s rehearsal. Practiced in steady times, it’s what makes consistency portable when life goes off script.

And, if there’s any consistency in life, it’s the fact it will go off script.

Routines aren’t the only things that travel. Community does too, even if it shows up in new ways.

Different faces, same scaffolding.

Community is one of the most consistent things we have: it adapts, but it doesn’t disappear.

Here’s the challenge I keep coming back to no matter where I am:

If it only works at home, it isn’t consistency—> it’s choreography.

And if it can’t survive a new place 🇰🇪 or a new stress it was never consistency to begin with.

That’s the work.