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How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

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Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#31

Post by gexla »

I'm somewhat doing this, I made it as far as the Philippines and then I sort of planted myself. When sticking to one place, it's pretty much the same as being planted anywhere else. Obviously the author of the article moved around a lot more.

My advice for S.E. Asia is don't get a hostel for AirBnB room. Get an actual apartment or even a house. Where I'm at you can get either month to month for $100 to $200 per month easy.

My work takes a lot of my time, so I don't travel much. There is no way I could move around a lot. But with a good gig it's easy to take some time off and travel to another place for a couple of weeks. Flights are cheap to anywhere in the region and there are a lot of interesting places nearby.

So, use your house or apartment as your home base and then take lots of vacations.

Even just living abroad can get old though. After a number of years you wonder why you are doing it. What's the point? You begin to find out what really matters in life, which to me is family, my craft and... food! I haven't had real Mexican food for far too long. I would kill for a Subway sandwich. Even worse is that the Philippines isn't known for its food.

But then, there are good reasons to stay as well. I think there is a lot of opportunity in S.E. Asia. I feel like I'm not missing out on opportunity in the U.S. because most of my work is there anyways and I already know the culture.

ETA: I don't see how you could go out 5 nights a week. Even with just a few drinks and going to sleep later than usual, I feel it the next day. It's not even hangover, I would feel the same the next day just from screwing up my sleep schedule. If I did that 5 nights a week I would get nothing done. I generally get up crazy early to be available towards end of day for the U.S. though (12 hour difference from New York.)

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#34

Post by alexp »

Thank you all for commenting. I'm positively blown away. Especially considering the fact that it's just my first note on the blog. And sorry about the commas and possible grammar mistakes. English isn't my native tongue. I must have skipped those classes on punctuation.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#35

Post by wslh »

Vivtek wrote: post #14
kristiandupont wrote: post #5

Having been semi-location independent for 4 years now, I have come to a similar conclusion. The theory of decision fatigue -- that you get exhausted by making a certain number of decisions -- seems to be true to me. And the thing is that when you are in a new place, there is a large number of decisions to make about petty things like where is the nearest supermarket, where can I work out, how do I get proper internet…

Oh man, yeah, decision fatigue. I've been a freelancer (web work and later technical translation) since 1996 and we've moved, kids and dog and all, from Indiana to Puerto Rico to Budapest, at will - and the one thing that makes it difficult is that you're always asking, "Should we be staying here or going somewhere else now?" It never stops. The kids are having allergy problems? Let's move to the Caribbean! The Carib…

It seems like there is no perfect place. New Zealand or Australia? they are in a difficult time zone.

One alternative is having two fixed locations and moving on winter.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#37

Post by personlurking »

_delirium wrote: post #30
personlurking wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even staying in one place for 2-3 months means having to continuously find those stores, amenities, etc. Sure, it's more stable to stay a few months but having to constantly settle in new places is tiring...I can't imagine having to do it every week or two!

I wouldn't do it every week or two, but every few months is doable if you travel slowly, since you can reuse a lot of your knowledge in other cities. Once I got reasonably comfortable with Copenhagen, for example, getting comfortable with Malmö or Helsingør was a quick incremental adjustment, since many things are similar.

True, though I find the smaller the cities are, or rather the more they're similar in smaller size and population, the smoother the transition. As far as Brazil, I've lived in more neighborhoods and more cities than most Brazilians and the toughest experience was adjusting to São Paulo's 12 million people and spread out geography.

Cities of large sizes and big populations also create other problems such as with locomotion, quality of public transport, number of modes of transport needed to get to various points, etc. In essense, it came to preferring to live in a crappy, cramped yet centralized place vs a larger, more comfortable 'far away' place (from the city center). In São Paulo, often the time I would spend in transit would be double the time I would actually spend with a friend (versus smaller coastal cities where I could reach my friends in 10-15 minutes tops).

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#38

Post by podviaznikov »

_delirium wrote: post #28
mercer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, one doesn't need to actively travel constantly to be traveling. When I was dealing with a difficult project, I just stayed at one particular hostel for two months, and settled into a routine. It was an odd one, of course, but it still became a routine, and I could finish the project.

The successful travel/work people I know do it in that style, moving between cities on a monthly or bimonthly basis, not daily. They'll typically spend 1-3 months in a city, renting a place on AirBnB or a local rental site, then move to another city. That removes a lot of the problems discussed in this blog post, like not knowing if you'll have internet access tomorrow, and not being able to guarantee you can spend 8…

I'm doing this in similar way. Find place on AirBnB for month or two(much cheaper than weekly rentals), check that place has good internet, located in nice neighborhood etc. Than find some gym, favorite cafe etc and live life like regular local for that period.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#39

Post by alexp »

digitalboss wrote: post #13
personlurking wrote: post #8

Being and having been a digital nomad for the past several years, it can become tiring having to switch up location and work setting so often. While living in Rio de Janeiro, I often wondered how people who are from there work in office buildings in the wealthy neighborhoods (which are a stone's throw from the beach), deal with knowing that fun and sun is literally 5 minutes away at any given moment, that people are…

Using Jekyll with Pages https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with-pages

Author here. Exactly as digitalboss commented plus a custom crafted html/css on top of twitter bootstrap. It's not perfect, but it does the job.

Best, Alex.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#40

Post by podviaznikov »

johncampbelljr wrote: post #15

I hope to try the digital nomad route in a few years but I have a different take on it. I'm not looking to sustain a working vacation--I'm interesting in experiencing day-to-day lifestyle in different cultures/suroundings. I'm thinking of staying around in terms of months or years, not weeks. Also, I probably will only try it if I have my own enterprise I can run on the road. I'm currently working as a freelancer but…

what is airbnb for digiral nomads? Can you describe in more details what you need?
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