Leaving for a few weeks? No problem at all. Leaving America indefinitely? Easy enough!
Aren't you exhausted yet, my dear Americans? Aren't you tired of waking up to your phone’s alarm clock, only to be sucked into an infinite scroll of digital doom — while your attention fuels someone else’s fortune? But there’s an escape! All you have to do is walk out the door!
What if the most patriotic thing you could do as an American is step outside the geographic confines of the United States — for a few weeks, or even indefinitely — and give yourself a dramatic change in perspective?
By Mike Reid | September 2025
Ok look. I get it.
It’s not easy to say goodbye to the United States — even for just a few weeks abroad.
And leaving for an adventure abroad without a set return date?
That's even harder, right?
Ok. But actually, it's a whole lot easier than you think.
Here is (almost) everything you need to know to wrap things up in the USA and depart for Pai as quickly as possible — if right now or at any point in the future you decide that's the right thing to do:
Apartment: There are many ways to get out of your apartment before your lease is over, but I swear to god, in a lot of blue states (and definitely in DC) you can just walk up to your landlord and hand them the keys to your emptied apartment and say these magic words: "I surrender possession!" They are required to accept your surrender and try to re-rent the unit. And a landlord cannot charge both you and the new tenant for rent simultaneously.
Car: You definitely don't want that as a burden, so just drive it to CarMax and sell it on the spot and it’ll be so easy and you could just do it this afternoon and Uber home! Or yes, you can probably sell it on Facebook Marketplace, but it'll be much easier to do it at CarMax and time is of the essence, right?
Facebook: You might consider deactivating your account for a bit and also deleting the app off your phone?
Facebook Marketplace: Ok, so you'll have to briefly get back on Facebook if you want to sell your stuff. Plants sell extremely well, because plants don’t depreciate in value, in fact they appreciate if you care for them well — but if you haven’t sold your couch in 48 hours you’ve priced it too high because Americans like buying used plants, but they don't like buying a used couch. If you need to get rid of unsold items extremely quickly, just list them for free and engage with people who can pick up immediately. (I got back on Facebook just for the Marketplace but didn’t realize that if you don’t check the box “don’t show listing to my friends” when listing an item your Facebook friends are going to see your listings in their news feeds, which was actually nice to hear from a few people I hadn’t heard from in a while. ChatGPT, by the way, can identify a plant just based on a photo and then write a listing accordingly.)
Instagram: Why not take a break from Instagram by deactivating your account and deleting the app off your phone?
Job: Ok, at any moment as an employee (unless you’re like an ER doctor or something) you’re allowed to alert your boss that you quit, effective immediately, and just stop working. Will your boss be happy about this? Probably not. Do they have to pay you through the day you quit. Yes.
LinkedIn: Look, I don't want to upset LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman — but I think at this point he's pretty much over LinkedIn and way more into AI anyway — so I'd encourage you to hibernate your account and delete the app from your phone.
Mortgage: Jesus Christ, you own a home?? Wow. Ok, what you should probably do is find someone who’s not going to trash the place and rent it to them at below market value for six months and then consider selling.
Passport: You definitely want to get a passport ASAP if you don’t have one already....otherwise you can't leave the country. Don’t know how to get a passport? Ask ChatGPT! (And expedite it.)
Pets: Ok, do people like your animal? Is your dog or cat or snake or whatever loved by other humans and people are always saying, “I’d love to spend more time with [your animal]”? Ok, well just start taking your animal over to those people’s houses for sleep overs where you leave and the animal doesn’t and then don’t pick up the animal and you've just given your pet away (temporarily)!