I was a digital nomad when no one else was and my family (and many neighbors from the boomer generation and even millennials) didn’t really understand that I was working. In fact, they complained that he spent many hours on the PC when he came home to visit. Though I did not ask them for money and was independentit was for many people (it still happens to me now) difficult to understand that I worked every day even though sometimes I was in Thailand, others in Morocco and others in my town.
The journey began in 2008. I was doing an internship at a company as a journalist and they suggested I stay in the office when I graduated. But I, after five years studying outside my beautiful Asturias and tired of a big city that is becoming more and more expensive despite the fact that there are also more and more crises, I rejected the proposal. First, my dream after five years of hard work, it was to spend a season in my house. Second, after being at home I wanted to travel the world, which is why I had made an effort to learn languages and had other pending. And third, continue training.
The decision to telecommute
The good thing is that in 2008 all this was already compatible, more or less: teleworking. It is true that what they could offer me in the big city was more hours and better conditions. Because going to press conferences was essential. No one made them online. and from home, at first, they could only offer me a vacancy that was available to fill the weekends (Over the years, the hours increased, but I didn’t know that at the time, because in the meantime I was also left without that collaboration from one day to the next, because being autonomous, a company does not have to report to you).
That initial proposal that I combined with a sporadic job in a bar as a waitress served me well. And even that year I also studied a distance postgraduate degree, at the UNED (although it is true that the only thing we did online was send emails).
And, although the decision (I work full time in an office, making contacts in the city vs working remotely for a few hours and on weekends, being autonomous, so the salary was low) seems absurd-and even more so in the midst of the 2008 crisis-it was the best of my life. I dreamed of living in different countries, learning languages and getting to know many cultures.
And I thought it would be difficult, that it would be a task for a couple of years at the most and then return to the real world of generating income, developing professionally and listing. But turned out to be a way of life for about 10 years (I’ve been calmer lately, although I could move if I wanted).
Finding the Internet in the world in the 2010s
Being a digital nomad when nobody else was, could be very stressful. The Internet connection in the 2010s was not always optimal nor was it everywhere, especially when you decide to live in countries that you do not know before (and from which you do not know what you are going to find). It is true that these were years of many changes (I started college in 2003 using floppy disks and with a first huge laptop that was not very portable) and those changes and improvements were of great help.
I was pleasantly surprised, in fact, that teleworking was not as difficult as it may seem in countries like Morocco, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vietnam or Cambodia 10 years ago. Although I did find myself many times in quite uncomfortable places because they had Wi-Fi, like sitting on the floor of a crowded train station because I couldn’t find anywhere with Internet nearby; in internet cafes with 50 degrees of heat (because of the climate of the country and PCs giving it their all) sitting for hours in the heat and surrounded by very young boys screaming playing video games, because suddenly you were in a town with too slow or poor WiFi … although as there are things that do not need internet, I was also able to take advantage of unconnected places, such as boat trips, to do some tasks such as long reports and that were not to be published at the time.
In 2011 I moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The big challenge there was how difficult it was at that time to make a short-term contract to have Internet or find alternative ways to have Internet at home that were not an annual contract and with a huge hassle in the contracting process. My roommates and I weren’t going to be there for a year. So we used the Internet of our landlords, who lived next door. That translated to working in the yard. There were days when it wasn’t bad, but the weather in Sarajevo is very changeable and, suddenly, in extreme snow fell in April and in May it did not stop raining so it was difficult to do the patio an office.
What is surprising in Sarajevo is that already in 2011, all coffee shops with modern aesthetics had WiFi and they let you plug in your plug for hours. Something that was not so common in other places and dragged people to be able to do this in a Starbucks.
At the end of 2011 I moved to Morocco where I spent 8 months. There, the common thing to connect to the internet was a rechargeable USB with very cheap rates and according to needs (for a day, week, several days…). Amazingly, 10 years ago, I could travel by bus from one side of the country to the other doing my work online thanks to that USB.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that working from Morocco in 2012 online was not so difficult as it might seem to me before going and that allowed me to move around the country a lot (I changed my initial plans, from being in a city, to being from one place to another for several months). In fact, one of the worst places to access the internet was a house where I lived in Essaouira for a couple of months, where the connection only reached me if I was sitting on the terrace in the attic of the building. It is true that life in Morocco in winter is warmer, but not so warm as to spend hours sitting there. And that my laptop, purchased in 2009, already had a battery that often needed a plug. So that part was pretty awkward.
The need to organize well
In 2013 I lived in Hanoi and then I traveled around Asia for several months. If it is already difficult to apply yourself day after day to carry out our obligations when we are at home, it can be even more so when you are somewhere. paradise surrounded by people who are on vacation or gap year traveling the world.
It is not so easy to be in a hostel with people who have become your friend and who go rafting on a beautiful river on a Tuesday and you say: no, I can’t and stay in front of the PC for hours. In other words, you run the risk of being surrounded by many stimuli and activities, but if you organize yourself well, you will be able, although not to do everything, at least enjoy the hours of non-work doing new things and taking advantage of the weekends to be close to nature in places that will need all your energy to enjoy them to the fullest.
Also sometimes I have worked like the one in the photo, but although it seems like a dream it is not really: you want to be resting and bathing in the pool and in reality you have to (with the probable heat that it will be there) spend hours and hours writing and fulfilling obligations or with calls and messages that can be very stressful, as in any office. Idyllic yes it is the moment in which you finish and you have the opportunity to do your leisure somewhere like this. But, no matter how many photos we are sold of people working in front of paradises as total relaxation, work is work and requires a lot of concentration.
On one occasion, I went to the island of Mabul, attached to Borneo. We did not know if there would be accommodation. Another drawback at that time was that you couldn’t find as much information on the Internet as there is now. So sometimes you arrived at the sites not being so sure of the infrastructure that could be found. In Mabul, a diving paradise, there were all the luxury hotels that were advertised on the websites and one less expensive one. When calling they said that it was full but that sometimes at the last minute there were people who could leave. It was the day before I arrived. What they did tell us is that there was a cafeteria open to everyone and with WiFi.
I had a visit from Asia from two great Asturian friends so I encouraged them to leave without knowing if we had accommodation. I was only worried about having WiFi, truth be told. To bad, we could always sleep on a beach or talk to someone local and pay them to stay on the floor of their house if it rained. My experience had led me to risk many times and never run out of accommodation. Finally, upon arrival, a local gentleman told us that he had a small hotel. It was beautiful, by the sea and very basic. What the other hotel didn’t have was decent WiFi. It was practically impossible for the Network to work. I couldn’t even post a story. Y I did not find anything else to connect to, because the hotels were closed to the general public.
I slept on the island because there were no ships back and the next day I went back to land to do my work. When I told the editor of the web where I worked, he told me that in such a circumstance I could have stayed on the island, that it was occasional, that I always did my job and that for once nothing happened. But well, I stayed more than 24 hours on land, in a horrible pension because it was the only thing there, until I returned to Mabul. Once in Mabul the typical thing had happened: my friends had spent the best night of the whole trip, met many people… andThey had changed to another gentleman’s hotel in the area, made of wood, where there was WiFi and it worked perfectly. I could have stayed there forever, but after one night we had to go back because my friends wanted to continue visiting Borneo.
“You spend many hours in front of the PC”
Something that seemed very curious and funny to me is that since my family had a hard time understanding that I was working, even though I did not ask them for money to live and less for my trips. At times like 2010 when being with the PC in front of you when you were at home was closely associated with leisure (we could even play solitaire), I spent many hours in front of the PC. Many working and others reading documents from my studies or doing work in Word.
In the seasons in which I went to my town, I stayed at my parents’ house and for them it was like seeing a girl who spent about 8 hours sitting in a chair in front of the living room table (and sometimes on the sofa to change posture), in the morning in his pajamas, until in the morning he took a shower and changed into street clothes, and in front of his PC. But no, I wasn’t playing solitaire, I was writing news (come on, many people, when the pandemic hit and they told us to have a routine, we were literally having a routine).
And more than once I heard, of that, tell my father to people, that he did not know if I worked (and that we have communication and I told him that my job was to write things on a PC, I always had doubts about: what do you think I live on, then?). Or my mother openly complaining that I spend many hours a day in front of a PC. That yes, that happened, but is that a normal job requires those hours. Now they understand perfectly. Even They have come to understand perfectly that, being able to choose where to live with total freedom, I would move to many remote countries instead of being a little closer.
But even today, when I am in my town and my neighbors and family acquaintances see me, they ask me if I have come back because I lost my job. Or if I go to “x” place for work. And I explain to them, as I have been doing for 12 years, that I work from home and that I could live wherever I wanted.