So, I'm having coffee with Viktor Frankl this morning. Not literally, you understand - he died in 1997 - but in the way that really matters: sitting with his ideas, letting them breathe alongside my own thoughts, seeing what emerges. The coffee's probably stronger than what he would have had in Vienna, but the conversation feels right, necessary even.
Rewind to last night and I'm reading Man's Search for Meaning, again, and something finally clicked. Pennies dropped. Early in the book, Frankl talks about finding meaning through the desire to undertake something - to create a work, to complete a project, to bring something into being. When I read that passage again last night, something settled in me. A recognition, if you like, that I had found "my why". Or rather, I realised I'd known what it was all along, and had been living it without quite having the language to name it.
Sometimes we need someone else's words to make sense of our own lives, right?
Me and Viktor; Viktor and I.
Here's a thing, people sometimes ask me (or wonder, I suspect ) who I really am. What I'm doing. Why I live the way I do. All that jazz. Fair questions, I suppose, when you're someone who spends months at a time in different cities, who walks endlessly with his camera, who builds creative projects that hardly anyone sees, who seems perfectly content alone. I think, maybe, I'm an object of curiosity to some. The guy without the usual apparatus of social life, family gatherings, the weekend plans with friends. The sequential resident who can't seem to settle down in the way people expect settling to look.
But here's what I'd want people to know: I'm not lost. I'm not lonely. I'm not running from anything. I'm running toward something. Or more accurately, I'm walking toward it. Every single day.
I mean, I religiously maintain this blog. I take photographs. I create "niche" projects like the Warsaw Winter Theatre Company, an entire creative endeavour that exists primarily for me, a way of engaging with places I love through an imagined theatrical lens. I walk for hours, breaking down cities, understanding them on my own terms, experiencing them in a realm far removed from tourism.
Anyone who has read any of my work will know that much of what I create is steeped in postmodern theory and philosophy - the ideas that fascinate me, that I literally live and breathe.
I know some people might find that strange, this tendency to frame everything through theoretical lenses, to see cities as texts to be read, experiences as constructions to be examined. But these aren't just abstract concepts for me. They're the generative frameworks that have helped me discover my why. They're how I make sense of the world, how I create the practices that give my life meaning. And here's the thing that my breakfast companion earlier helped me articulate: it doesn't matter that no one else sees most of this work. It doesn't matter if my creative projects don't have an audience, or if people wonder why I'm so absorbed in theory. The meaning isn't in the recognition - it's in the act itself.
I genuinely used to wonder if I was going mad, spending so much time on things that exist largely unseen. Then I read Frankl's words and thought: you know what? These activities give me meaning. They deliver purpose. And for me, that is a pure and infinitely valuable thing. I'm not creating for applause. I'm creating because the act of creation - of bringing something into existence, of engaging deeply with the world - gives my life direction and substance. And that's enough. That's everything.
Last year my dog passed away, closely followed by my father. It was time to sell up and "start afresh". But what did that mean for me? Well, I lived in Coventry for three months. Then Warsaw for three. Now I'm in Belgrade for another three months before returning to Warsaw - my happy place, the city that feels most like home even though I don't live there in any conventional sense.
And this pattern might look restless from the outside, but it's not. It's deeply intentional. Each city becomes a project in itself - something to understand, to map, to experience in my own peculiar way. I'm not a tourist. I'm a temporary resident who breaks down the architecture of place, who finds the rhythm beneath the surface.
Warsaw in particular holds something special for me. It's where I feel most myself, most aligned with this way of being. When I'm there, everything clicks. The walking makes sense there in a way it doesn't elsewhere. The creative projects emerge more naturally. Even the quality of light seems designed for noticing things, for paying attention to what usually goes unnoticed.
There's something else running through all of this, something like a thread I'm only now learning to name: faith. My relationship with God has been growing quietly over the past few years, unbeknownst to most people around me, with a few very notable exceptions. It's not something I've announced or performed. Why would I? But in creating this sequential life, in allowing myself space and solitude and time for reflection, I've created space for my faith to breathe and prosper. At last.
I feel the word of God more now - guiding me, protecting me - than ever before. Not because I've become "more religious" in any formal sense, but because I've become more open. The walking, the creating, the solitude - these aren't just lifestyle choices. They're spiritual practices, even if I didn't always recognise them as such.
When you strip away the usual noise and apparatus of conventional life, when you allow yourself to be quiet and present and alone, something else can emerge. Someone else can speak. And you're finally still enough to listen.
I'd be lying if I said I never feel the weight of other people's confusion about my life. Sometimes I sense the unspoken questions: Is he okay? Why doesn't he settle down? He never replies! Doesn't he get lonely? There's a kind of pressure in being misunderstood, even when the misunderstanding is gentle, even when it comes from care. So let me be clear: I am basking in my unique position as a sequential resident and I'm thriving in the luxury of abundant creativity. This isn't a phase I'm going through or a problem I need to solve. This is me, living according to what gives my life meaning.
Yes, I'm comfortable alone. Deeply comfortable. Solitude isn't something I endure - it's something I seek. It's where I do my best thinking, my best work, my most honest living. Yes, my creative projects might seem eccentric or pointless to others. But they're not for others. They're for me. They're how I engage with existence. Yes, I move between cities rather than putting down roots. But I'm not rootless. My roots are in the practice itself - in the walking, the creating, the attending to what calls me forward.
Frankl, you know, spent years in concentration camps, witnessed unimaginable suffering, and emerged with a simple but profound insight: we can find meaning even in the most brutal circumstances. We find it through our work, through love, and through the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. I'm not comparing my comfortable nomadic existence to his experiences - that would be obscene. But I am applying his universal insight to my own life: meaning isn't something we stumble upon or receive from external sources. It's something we create through how we choose to live. Through what we attend to. Through what we decide matters.
My "why" isn't mysterious or complicated at all. It's right there in the daily practice: the walking, the photography, the creative projects, the way I break down and understand cities, the space I've created for faith and reflection. This is what drives me. This is what shapes me. This is, I think, who the real David is. Not always the person others might expect me to be. Not someone apologising for living differently. Just someone who found his why and decided to follow it, regardless of who's watching.
And honestly? It feels good. It feels right. It feels like coming home, even when - especially when - I'm far from any place I've ever called home. Maybe that's the paradox of it: you can only really find home once you stop looking for it in conventional places. Once you grasp that home is a practice, not a location. A way of being present to whatever city you're walking through, whatever project you're creating, whatever quiet morning you find yourself having coffee with a dead Viennese psychiatrist who somehow understood something essential about the human need for purpose.
The coffee's getting cold now. Viktor would understand. Some conversations are worth lingering over, even as the world moves on around you. Some insights need time to settle, need to be turned over in your mind like a stone you found on one of those long walks, examining it from different angles until you understand what made you pick it up in the first place.
I think that's what this whole conversation has been about: understanding what I've been doing all along, giving it a name, recognising that the way I've chosen to live isn't strange or incomplete but simply mine. My way of creating meaning in a world that often mistakes busyness for purpose, connection for depth, settling for arriving.
I'm not arriving anywhere. I'm already here, in the walking itself, in the creating, in the attention I pay to cities that teach me how to see them properly. That's enough. That's everything. That's my why.
And I suppose if that makes me an object of passing curiosity, so be it. Better to be curious than certain. Better to keep walking than to arrive too soon.
