There's a certain type of person you start noticing on morning walks around here — the nomad worker. Not a lot of them, just a handful, scattered along the same stretch of soi, doing the same slow, aimless loop I am.
How do I know they're nomads? Honestly, it's not evidence-based. It's a look. Not Thai — usually white, sometimes East Asian. A certain posture, slightly hunched, like they've spent one too many hours hunched over a laptop in a co-working space that charges too much for coffee. You just know.
Why are they walking? I'm fairly sure it's the same reason I am.
For me, it goes like this: stay inside too long, and things start to curdle a bit. Bad thoughts loop. Negativity creeps in and takes over before you notice it's happened. It's not dramatic — just the slow mental fog that comes from too many hours indoors, staring at the same four walls and the same glowing screen.
And the fix, it turns out, is embarrassingly simple: step outside, get some air that isn't recycled through an air conditioner, and let the noise of the street knock the noise in your head down a notch.
So I figure the guys out there in the morning, walking with no particular destination and that same faint hunch in their shoulders — they're not out there for the exercise. They're doing damage control, same as me.