I grew up in the U.S. with an international identity woven into my life from the beginning. My dad is British, and my mom is American, which makes me half British and half American, and even while growing up in the States, I was always curious about what existed beyond them. I wanted to travel, live abroad, meet people who saw the world differently, and eventually build a life that felt bigger than one place.

For most of my childhood, though, my world revolved around golf. I grew up competing, spent years measuring my life in practice hours and tournament scores, and eventually became a Division I golfer. For a long time, that was the easiest answer to the question of who I was and where I was going.

Then I got to NC State, and my world started getting bigger.

Suddenly, I was throwing myself into leadership, competitions, internships, organizations, and anything that gave me the chance to build something or bring people together. Walking away from the version of my future I had imagined through golf was terrifying, but it also gave me permission to ask a much bigger question:

What kind of life do I actually want to build?

Europe kept finding its way into the answer.

I studied abroad in Germany during my bachelor’s and spent time researching in Eindhoven, getting my first real glimpse of what living in Europe could look like. Interestingly, I didn’t come home from that first exchange thinking I had found where I belonged. If anything, it left me with more questions. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn’t finished exploring this part of the world, or the international side of myself that had been there since I was little.

So when the opportunity came to pursue my master’s in International Business at Maastricht University, I decided this time I didn’t want to simply study abroad. I wanted to build a life abroad.

That distinction changed everything.

I packed my life into suitcases, moved to Maastricht, got an apartment of my own, bought a bike, started building friendships from scratch, and began creating routines in a city that had previously just been a dot on a map. I came here expecting to study international business. Instead, I’ve found myself learning just as much outside the classroom, about Dutch culture, about slowing down, about community, and about how different life can feel when you stop trying to optimize every second of it.

And because I knew this chapter of my life would never happen for the first time again, I started documenting it.

At first, it was simply a way to remember. I talked about packing up my life, crying over overweight luggage at the airport, figuring out Dutch grocery stores, learning to bike everywhere, questioning coffee cups, noticing tiny pieces of infrastructure, making friends, and trying to understand what it actually means to create a home somewhere new.

Those tiny observations became 279 Nights, my ongoing story of building a life in Maastricht.

And then something happened that I never planned for: people started listening.

What began as me talking to my phone became millions of views, 16,550+ people following along, conversations with people across countries, and even a feature in the Dutch news about the life I was documenting.

So, to everyone who has been here, whether you’ve watched one video or all of them, thank you for letting me share this chapter with you. And if this is the first you’re hearing about any of it, "Hi I’m Jayden, Im 22, and I moved to the Netherlands to get my masters degree", and apparently we have a lot to catch up on ❤️