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Being and having been a digital nomad for the past several years, it can become tiring having to switch up location and work setting so often. While living in R
by personlurking 13y ago
Being and having been a digital nomad for the past several years, it can become tiring having to switch up location and work setting so often. While living in Rio de Janeiro, I often wondered how people who are from there work in office buildings in the wealthy neighborhoods (which are a stone's throw from the beach), deal with knowing that fun and sun is literally 5 minutes away at any given moment, that people are always on the beach enjoying themselves while you have to be stuck up in your office with a possible view of the sea.
In any event, I wasn't one of these people as I could take a break when I wished and hit up the beach, etc. It was great...until the project that kept me financially stable went under. Instead of looking for more work, I sacrificed the need to work more for the free time (and ability) to very cheaply or freely enjoy myself in my surroundings, eventually tiring of demanding little of myself after a few months (you can only be young-ish and 'hang' for so long). It's great living in a beautiful place, but even better when that place is very affordable (or, in the least, when you've found a way to make it affordable...almost an art in itself).
In the Bay, I almost never went out because everything cost money and therefore my friends only did things that cost money. Being poor in US standards was social suicide.
In Brazil, I was going out 4-5x per week! My average night out in Rio I'd spend about US$5, maybe $10 (drinks included, try doing that in SF!). Plus, there just so much to do for free, from hiking to beaches, to free concerts and art exhibitions...you name it. Things that other young people are also doing, mind you. In developing nations, or even economically strained ones (I'm in Portugal now), where most people are on a budget, I find the amount of fun and interesting things to do, for free or cheap, increase. Not only do the events and activities increase, but the number of people doing them increase, too.
Being a digital nomad, with at least one stable project, in places like these is where the 'good life' is. But when that stable project goes bye-bye, the sense of the good life goes with it, no matter where you are.
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As an aside, having just read the article, I saw that it's a minimalist blog (post) on github.io, which I'm not familiar with. From their landing page, I don't see any offer for blogging.
On Wordpress, I couldn't find any theme like this but on HN I come across these types of entries somewhat often, though this is the first I've seen from github.io. Anyone know how I can get a free one like this, where there's just a white page and words, via any blogging service?
- digitalboss 13y agoUsing Jekyll with Pages https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with-pages https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with-pages
- alexp 13y agoAuthor here. Exactly as digitalboss commented plus a custom crafted html/css on top of twitter bootstrap. It's not perfect, but it does the job. Best, Alex.
- keithpeter 13y agoAnd it looks clean. I use 'noscript' and had to enable the javascripts in the page to get sensible justification.
- keithpeter 13y agoDo you speak Portuguese fluently? Language is the thing...
- personlurking 13y agoYes. I learned beforehand. I couldn't imagine living somewhere w/o speaking the language (though now that I'm in Portugal, European Portuguese feels like it actually is another language, lol).
- keithpeter 13y agoGood for you. I teach some Afro-Portugese students who have washed up here in the UK. I always think they are talking German amongst themselves in the cafe!
- personlurking 13y agoIn Lisbon, I feel like I'm hearing Russian half the time. It's like riding the bus in San Francisco, old Russian people. Speaking of, Lisbon is chock full of the elderly. One of the interesting parts of living here is the African diaspora. It's really nice to get my fill of African culture in a language I can understand. Speaking a few words of criole is even considered cool among Portuguese teens.