Day 25: The ‘no plan’ plan

So today the boyfriend arrived in London. We haven’t seen each other for almost 6 weeks so we had a lot of catching up to do, and a few decisions to make. We talked about the future. Travel? Settle? Which country? Where? There were lots of questions, and for now not a lot of answers.

And in a way this is a very modern phenomenon. For the last 4 almost 5 months, I have worked from my laptop on a bus in the jungles of Costa Rica, from my phone on a beach in Israel, from trains crossing Poland, cafes in France, medieval towns in Italy, and the Tube in London. I have worked for the company I used to work for in Australia, picking up exactly where I left without missing a beat. I have worked for new clients that I have only met on Skype and it has been relatively easy, not to mention fun. Sharing economy websites like Freelancer, Upwork, Fiverr make doing on demand work easy, and with tools like email, Slack, Skype and Mega it seems location doesn’t really matter so much anymore.

On the personal side of things sharing economy websites like Airbnb (and short term accommodation rental) or peer to peer car rental makes setting up a life in the short term possible, and platforms like meet up, or Tabl makes making contacts in a new city a breeze.

But I also realize that there are downsides to being a digital nomad. Getting up early or staying up late for Skype calls, ducking out of dinners at friends apartments to call New York, and the discipline that it takes when you work ostensibly alone most of the time. There is also the fact that a lot of relationships take face to face time to bloom not to mention the constant FOMO of having your friends/ work opportunities split across countries. Sometimes it feels like you are always missing out on something, or the grass always seeming to be greener on the other side of the world.

This is an interesting conundrum for my generation and something my parent’s generation couldn’t even dream about. The lifestyle of a digital nomad certainly has it’s benefits but also it’s costs.

I don’t have any answers on what the long-term ramifications of this lifestyle are, and I am not sure if at a point you get tired and bored either way? For now the plan is the ‘no plan’ plan. Embracing the Buddhist philosophy of living in the moment, and being present, not thinking too much about the past or the future and seeing where the opportunities lie. It’s treating life as an adventure much like this experiment has been, hoping for the best, planning for the worst and most of all buying the ticket and taking the ride.

I have to just put a note in here to say that I will sit down and figure out the total figure this weekend. It has been challenging keeping track across currencies and platforms, so I will update this figure by the end to reflect the total more accurately.