A Look Back: Our Digital Nomad Life

So we’ve come to the completion of our first full year of travel… crazy! Before I talk about our travels, I’d like to discuss how we got where we are. The decisions that were made, the research that we did, and how we can do this. This is a look back at the start of our digital nomad life.

I want to start by saying, that I hear many people say they’re jealous or wish they could do what we are doing. I never really know how to respond to those statements. My first response is that we understand how lucky we are, and we’re both extremely grateful for the opportunities we’ve had. Our intentions are not to make anyone envious or jealous but to inspire.

We’d like to inspire those who’d like to travel to just do it! If you’re not interested, able, or willing to take the leap into the same kind of long-term travel that we have, all I can say is just get out there and explore something new. Get out of your comfort zone, and discover a new place you’ve been interested in but too nervous to explore.

Travel, for me, is more about exploring new cultures, learning about new people, discovering new foods, and just expanding my own horizons. Comfort can breed small-mindedness and fear. This can lead to discrimination and bigotry. The world is a much friendlier, warmer, and more welcoming place than we’re often shown on the news.

The Start of Big Travel Plans

Sean and I have both really enjoyed traveling. It’s difficult in America, where you might only get a week or two off in the whole year. Where does that get you? Rushing through a place, trying to see all the typical tourist sights, not really getting a feel for the culture, and then returning to work complaining that you need a vacation from your vacation. We wanted more.

Exhausted from the labor of packing his orders, Sean had already been researching ways to reduce his labor and work towards automating his business. This converged with several recommendations that he read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris (considered the digital nomad’s Bible). This book would be the kick-off of our 2 years of planning.

After listening to The Four Hour Work Week audiobook, a fire was lit under Sean. Right at the start of the pandemic, we traveled to Utah in place of a canceled Emerald City Comic Con. On that drive, Sean listened to the audiobook again, with me. After discussing the idea of long-term travel before this road trip, we also discovered Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. Listening to these books on our drive to and from Utah sparked our continued interest and research.

The Struggle with Transitioning

From there we almost feverishly searched and devoured travel podcasts and watched YouTube videos. A totally unexplored world opened up to us. How are all these people doing this? How can we make this happen?

To be honest, I struggled the most with this and still do at times. As someone who went to school for therapy and was still working towards my therapy license, I struggled with figuring out what skills I had that could be transferable to remote work. Many people I talked to suggested online therapy. But with being unlicensed and having state restrictions, this just wasn’t feasible for me.

At this point, I was also starting to feel burned out and doubting whether I wanted to continue making therapy my career. As a highly anxious person, feeling responsible for other people’s mental health is extremely exhausting. So this talk of long-term travel kicked me to start confronting that fact and searching for what else I could or would enjoy (mental health has pretty much been my whole life). Sean seemed to struggle less with this as he figured out how to automate Display Geek and become fully remote.

The point of this is to say, that you don’t need to know exactly what you want to do, just try something. I started teaching English online and joined UpWork as a freelancer to find areas I could make some money. It’s how I got into creating content on mental health topics. Of course, it’s still a struggle, but something is better than nothing.

Not everyone will have the same opportunities. But there’s always a way. There are so many people who find ways to live this life that if it’s something you want, you can find a way too.

Our Travel Inspirations

Here we wanted to shout out where we found our inspiration and the resources that helped us make this leap.

Podcasts

Zero to Travel – Jason Moore

JUMP with Traveling Jackie

About Abroad – Chase Warrington

Badass Digital Nomads – Kristin Wilson

YouTube Channels

Traveling with Kristin – started with watching her interviewing other digital nomads and talking about living abroad

Alexander Ayling/Vagabrothers – watched a show they had on Netflix

Danegar and Stacey – really our first intro to travel vlogging

Jean Voronkova

Traveling Jackie

2Passports 1Dream

Paddy Doyle

Expats Everywhere – for Portugal-specific content

Honeymoon Always – also for Portugal-specific content

Lexie Limitless

WITY Travels

Digital Nomad Ventures – Thailand/digital nomad-specific content

Be Bold and Venture – though they are no longer posting currently but loved their humor

These people (and many more!) inspired us that long-term travel and being a digital nomad was possible! If you want to follow our journey, check out our blog here!