A long-term inner debate
The idea of being a digital nomad always came to my mind. “Damn” — I kept thinking — “Now that I’m finally working remotely, I should travel more”. I always dreamt of this. This “anywhere office” type of life always made me excited. But my brain was always thinking about something I couldn’t define, something that always made me change my mind and just stay still at home. Something was always telling me not to go. It is funny how it is, the first time I was able to do something I always wanted, my unconscious kept trying to find reasons not to do it. I tried to convince myself to give it a try many times, but these kinds of thoughts kept coming: “the internet connection can be slow”, “the desk & chair can be bad”, “I’m not gonna have time to get to know the city” and many more.
Don’t trust your unconscious
I struggled for a long time till I finally discovered why I kept having these negative thoughts about working as a digital nomad, but here comes a spoiler: sometimes (even most of the time) your subconsciousness isn’t right about things.
Never forget that your unconscious is smarter than you, faster than you, and more powerful than you. It may even control you. you will never know all of its secrets.
— Cordelia Fine in A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives
It may sound weird at first, but now I see how it was making me frustrated. It wasn’t “me” who kept thinking this was a bad idea, it was my unconscious, and I want to do this, no matter what my unconscious mind thinks. So I got an invitation to go to a beach for a week with a friend of mine, who was going to work there as a photographer, and it was just the perfect timing. I accepted the invite and we left.
Travelling: Reimagined
The first thing I noticed when I arrived at my destiny was that I needed to reimagine my traveling concepts destiny was that I needed to reimagine my concepts of traveling. As a digital nomad, you don’t have 18 hours completely free for you to do what you want, you still need to work, (in my case, at least 6h a day, this can be better if you have a truly flexible work schedule) so you need better time management. This used to be a huge con against traveling while working, but now I see that I was making a mistake. When you’re a digital nomad, you’re NOT a tourist. You need to think of yourself as a local living in that place. Locals don’t have their entire day free either; locals don’t eat out every day either; locals don’t go to the city’s most visited spots every day; and so on. Why would you run like crazy to know every spot of the city in 3 days, if, as a digital nomad, you literally can stay there how much time you want? On vacations, we tend to feel guilty when not enjoying everything we can, but when you travel while you work, you don’t need to have this feeling, you can take how much time you need.
Conclusions
I encourage everyone who is thinking about being a digital nomad to give it a try, at least for a week, to a place near where you live, where you feel comfortable, this can be a great opportunity to get to know yourself better. My final conclusions, which are just about this experience, are:
- Don’t take it as tourism, take it as you moved.
- Travel slowly: don’t rush to get to know everything, you can stay as long as you want.
- Some places can be way better than others: I went to a very small city with a nice beach, but besides the beach, there weren’t many things to do.
- Live like you already do; keep your routine.
My next steps are doing it all by myself, to another (and way bigger) city. Hope this could help you with something :)