Time-Out from America: A Journal About Getting a Golden Visa and Testing Out an Alternative Life in a New Country

For decades, Randall Wixen built a life many would envy, a successful career in music publishing, a home in the Santa Monica Mountains, and adventures that carried him across the globe.

But as retirement neared, Los Angeles no longer felt like home. The city he loved had become crowded, expensive, exhausting, and increasingly unfamiliar.

Seeking a slower pace, better quality of life, and a fresh start, Randall and his wife Sharon began exploring their options. Portugal, France, and Greece all beckoned. Instead, a little-known opportunity in Latvia led them somewhere they had never seriously considered, and unexpectedly fell in love with.

Part memoir, part travel journal, Time Out from America chronicles their five-month journey in Riga through candid, real-time diary entries. From wrestling with Latvian bureaucracy and stumbling through a new language to apartment hunting, health challenges, and cultural surprises, Randall shares the highs, lows, frustrations, and joys of building a new life abroad.

Warm, witty, and deeply relatable, this is more than an expat story. It's a thoughtful reflection on reinvention, belonging, and the courage to embrace change when the familiar no longer fits.

For anyone who has ever dreamed of starting over, or wondered what lies beyond America's borders, Time Out from America offers an inspiring and unexpectedly moving answer.

Randall D. Wixen was born in Los Angeles in 1959 in a building that is now the Church of Scientology headquarters. A few weeks after his birth, his father was inducted into the U.S. Army and the family moved to a NATO base in La Rochelle, France. Upon returning to the United States a few years later, he attended public schools in Los Angeles, eventually receiving a BA in economics from UCLA (where he served as music editor for the Daily Bruin) while retaining an almost atavistic attraction to a European lifestyle.He founded Wixen Music Publishing, Inc. in Los Angeles and Wixen Music UK Ltd. in London. After nearly fifty years of defending and protecting songwriters, he aimed to work less and play more. Over the course of forty-two years of marriage, he and his wife Sharon have explored fifty countries. They have two adult sons and are currently splitting their time between Riga, Latvia (which is an ideal base for further European and Asian exploration), and a home in California's Santa Monica Mountains between Malibu and Calabasas.