4 ms·

I’ve learned that the passage of time is extremely relative. My college years were extremely full of new experiences and they feel like ages. Once I started wor

I’ve learned that the passage of time is extremely relative. My college years were extremely full of new experiences and they feel like ages. Once I started working, my life was very rote and consisted mainly of driving from home to work and back again. I worked a lot of hours and vacations and weekend trips were infrequent. Time flew by. Then I ditched settled life and started traveling year round with a couple of bases i spend more time in between traveling. I’ve learned that the change in environment keeps putting the mind back into a more neuroplastic state where we are more open to the experiences around us, can change our habits more easily and just generally turn off autopilot for awhile. I’ve been doing this for about 9 years. It’s been like a century. I feel like a very different person then when I started. I have some friends who still live in the same city at the same job that I left originally and it absolutely blows my mind that they stood still while it feels like I went to Mars and back.

bongodongobob 3y ago
Yeah I can't believe more people don't just travel for a decade.
- rcbdev 3y ago
  It's not as unreasonable as you think - even in lower income / high tax burden countries like Austria an avg. net salary is enough to keep on travelling to all kinds of places. I know people who work for the state government who keep appearing in India, Thailand, Brazil etc. when we're in meetings - usually they're billed as external consultants to avoid tax liability issues. The true crux is that most people don't actually want the digital nomad lifestyle, humans naturally seek out some form of stability.
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    Exactly this. But I disagree that settled is natural. Humans evolved in nomadic tribes that followed the herds. Stability is a social technology that was developed alongside agriculture. Stability feels unnatural to me and I get the itch after too many months in one place. My two bases are near family and I have developed friendships with other traveling people. I’ll meet up this weekend in Miami with a Swede that I met in Portugal and last saw in New York.
    - smokel 3y ago
      I think this argument is a bit of a stretch. Nomadic tribes did not travel by plane, and they certainly did not have friends in strange places.
      - dougmwne 3y ago
        Fair enough! The tribe has changed for sure and so have the antelope.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- dougmwne 3y ago
  Certainly many people on this website could if it were their priority. Some money is required, but not very much. I’m sure I make less money than many here because I take jobs that prioritize remote work and flexibility. So what’s really the blocker for many is a choice of priorities. I won’t have children. I don’t have a strong need to play homemaker or gardener. My lifestyle is pretty similar to a lot of retirees who have second homes and travel between them. I talk to quite a few in one of my home bases and we have a lot of the same travel plans as well as it’s common for them to try to spend a month or two a year traveling to new places.
  - dingnuts 3y ago
    working and travelling on occasion -- "on an average net salary" implies not actually quitting your job -- is not what the GP described. The GP described quitting their job and going traveling for an entire decade, which is an incredible luxury over an enormous timespan that only the luckiest will ever be able to enjoy. The fact that the GP then chooses to treat this gift as though it makes him better than his colleagues who had to stay and work for that decade is.. frankly just gross. "They stood still" no bud, they had a life experience that 99% of the world population has no choice but to experience. Maybe instead of being pretentious about your experiences, try gratefulness? I say this as a "privileged" tech worker, with "only" a six figure salary. I could quit my job and go traveling, maybe for a year, and then be broke and set far back on my retirement goals, and my hopes of ever retiring. And I could only do that if I was tremendously selfish, like you: choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the elders in my family to face poverty instead of proper end of life care, etc. If you have the ability to not work and travel for a DECADE of your life, I suggest you have an immense gratitude towards everyone else keeping society running while you luxuriate, instead of pretending as though the fact that you've had this opportunity somehow makes you superior to those who had to work
    - xp84 3y ago
      You’ve already been called out but I feel like confessing that I thought the “no kids” decision was selfish until I had kids. For various reasons I won’t bore people with, I now go out of my way to tell young people that they should feel absolutely no obligation to do have kids. Yes, as animals it’s our collective responsibility to bring up the next generation of our species, but that doesn’t mean every individual should, and it’s awful to feel forced into doing so if you aren’t comfortable with the very real risks. And the risks are worse than I ever thought. And I don’t even have it the worst.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wing-_-nuts 3y ago
  I had a whole rant queued up until I realized you were being sarcastic. /me with my 15 days of vacation a year
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
1234letshaveatw 3y ago
I'm sure from their perspective you are the one that stood still lol
- dougmwne 3y ago
  They are probably thinking that life starts to pass by fast and wondering where the last 10 years went. I had some friends living interesting lives when I was settled. Sailing the globe, doing seasonal work in the arctic and backcountry skiing mountains with no name. Doing field work in the African bush. I kept thinking about them and wondering how I could be them, like the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it.
  - librish 3y ago
    I think the intellectually honest counterpoint is more about relationships. As someone who has been a digital nomad, it's hard to form deeper relationships when people are always leaving. It's also hard to have hobbies that rely on the same group of people meeting in person over a long period of time.
    - dougmwne 3y ago
      I don’t think there’s any one size fits all way to digital nomad. I go back to the same places year after year. My friends and family are in those places. They are not in New York and San Francisco, I have no family there. My partner and I enjoy our hobbies with groups of people when we are there. It’s not that different than being a snowbird. The main difference is that in addition to home base time, we also spend 4 months a year traveling, sometimes on our own, sometimes with our people.
- scotty79 3y ago
  I think they just wonder when the uneasiness that throws him constantly around the world subsides and he'll settle down comfortably in his own skin and mind and start living instead of constantly trying to escape from life into the world.
tetha 3y ago
For me, it's been throwing myself into a complex hobby - music. like, as much as I like where I work, and as much as work throws new and weird challenges at me, but .. it's just computer maintenance. Entire years are kinda the same rote of work-shopping-sleep-work. I don't even have many memories of these years, honestly. Now that I've left my comfort zone with my instruments, do stuff with the instruments, go to a lot more concerts... life is kinda revolving around concerts and every day has some thing to approach with the instruments I'm not happy with. Suddenly that week is when I picked up TES BOS to make the bass sound better, that week was with a few friends, that week was a frozen crown concert, that week was when I got a really cool intro in a riff challenge, that week my teeth confused the fuck out of my dentist and their tool tray ended up as a diorama of a medieval battlefield, ...

bongodongobob 3y ago

Yeah I can't believe more people don't just travel for a decade.

rcbdev 3y ago
It's not as unreasonable as you think - even in lower income / high tax burden countries like Austria an avg. net salary is enough to keep on travelling to all kinds of places. I know people who work for the state government who keep appearing in India, Thailand, Brazil etc. when we're in meetings - usually they're billed as external consultants to avoid tax liability issues. The true crux is that most people don't actually want the digital nomad lifestyle, humans naturally seek out some form of stability.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  Exactly this. But I disagree that settled is natural. Humans evolved in nomadic tribes that followed the herds. Stability is a social technology that was developed alongside agriculture. Stability feels unnatural to me and I get the itch after too many months in one place. My two bases are near family and I have developed friendships with other traveling people. I’ll meet up this weekend in Miami with a Swede that I met in Portugal and last saw in New York.
  - smokel 3y ago
    I think this argument is a bit of a stretch. Nomadic tribes did not travel by plane, and they certainly did not have friends in strange places.
    - dougmwne 3y ago
      Fair enough! The tribe has changed for sure and so have the antelope.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
dougmwne 3y ago
Certainly many people on this website could if it were their priority. Some money is required, but not very much. I’m sure I make less money than many here because I take jobs that prioritize remote work and flexibility. So what’s really the blocker for many is a choice of priorities. I won’t have children. I don’t have a strong need to play homemaker or gardener. My lifestyle is pretty similar to a lot of retirees who have second homes and travel between them. I talk to quite a few in one of my home bases and we have a lot of the same travel plans as well as it’s common for them to try to spend a month or two a year traveling to new places.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  working and travelling on occasion -- "on an average net salary" implies not actually quitting your job -- is not what the GP described. The GP described quitting their job and going traveling for an entire decade, which is an incredible luxury over an enormous timespan that only the luckiest will ever be able to enjoy. The fact that the GP then chooses to treat this gift as though it makes him better than his colleagues who had to stay and work for that decade is.. frankly just gross. "They stood still" no bud, they had a life experience that 99% of the world population has no choice but to experience. Maybe instead of being pretentious about your experiences, try gratefulness? I say this as a "privileged" tech worker, with "only" a six figure salary. I could quit my job and go traveling, maybe for a year, and then be broke and set far back on my retirement goals, and my hopes of ever retiring. And I could only do that if I was tremendously selfish, like you: choosing to have no kids, choosing to allow the elders in my family to face poverty instead of proper end of life care, etc. If you have the ability to not work and travel for a DECADE of your life, I suggest you have an immense gratitude towards everyone else keeping society running while you luxuriate, instead of pretending as though the fact that you've had this opportunity somehow makes you superior to those who had to work
  - xp84 3y ago
    You’ve already been called out but I feel like confessing that I thought the “no kids” decision was selfish until I had kids. For various reasons I won’t bore people with, I now go out of my way to tell young people that they should feel absolutely no obligation to do have kids. Yes, as animals it’s our collective responsibility to bring up the next generation of our species, but that doesn’t mean every individual should, and it’s awful to feel forced into doing so if you aren’t comfortable with the very real risks. And the risks are worse than I ever thought. And I don’t even have it the worst.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wing-_-nuts 3y ago
I had a whole rant queued up until I realized you were being sarcastic. /me with my 15 days of vacation a year
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

1234letshaveatw 3y ago

I'm sure from their perspective you are the one that stood still lol

dougmwne 3y ago
They are probably thinking that life starts to pass by fast and wondering where the last 10 years went. I had some friends living interesting lives when I was settled. Sailing the globe, doing seasonal work in the arctic and backcountry skiing mountains with no name. Doing field work in the African bush. I kept thinking about them and wondering how I could be them, like the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if only you could stop tonguing it.
- librish 3y ago
  I think the intellectually honest counterpoint is more about relationships. As someone who has been a digital nomad, it's hard to form deeper relationships when people are always leaving. It's also hard to have hobbies that rely on the same group of people meeting in person over a long period of time.
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    I don’t think there’s any one size fits all way to digital nomad. I go back to the same places year after year. My friends and family are in those places. They are not in New York and San Francisco, I have no family there. My partner and I enjoy our hobbies with groups of people when we are there. It’s not that different than being a snowbird. The main difference is that in addition to home base time, we also spend 4 months a year traveling, sometimes on our own, sometimes with our people.
scotty79 3y ago
I think they just wonder when the uneasiness that throws him constantly around the world subsides and he'll settle down comfortably in his own skin and mind and start living instead of constantly trying to escape from life into the world.

tetha 3y ago

For me, it's been throwing myself into a complex hobby - music. like, as much as I like where I work, and as much as work throws new and weird challenges at me, but .. it's just computer maintenance. Entire years are kinda the same rote of work-shopping-sleep-work. I don't even have many memories of these years, honestly. Now that I've left my comfort zone with my instruments, do stuff with the instruments, go to a lot more concerts... life is kinda revolving around concerts and every day has some thing to approach with the instruments I'm not happy with. Suddenly that week is when I picked up TES BOS to make the bass sound better, that week was with a few friends, that week was a frozen crown concert, that week was when I got a really cool intro in a riff challenge, that week my teeth confused the fuck out of my dentist and their tool tray ended up as a diorama of a medieval battlefield, ...