Let’s get this party started! Our Journey to becoming Digital Nomads.
The Idea of becoming Nomads
The thought first came to mind after Michael had been working from home for close to a year and Onalea’s heart finally had stabilized enough that the thought of having a normal life was becoming a reality. Michael loved reading online articles about how people were bouncing all around the world with work from home jobs, using the luxury of remote work to be able to explore the world in their off hours. Some places are even incentivizing remote workers to live/work in their town for an extended period of time. These incentives ranged from specialized infrastructure, Wi-Fi, discounts on extended stays, tax breaks and even up to 10K to move into their town and to help stimulate the local economy. We had daydreamed about living a nomadic lifestyle, moving to wherever the weather was warm and spending more time living our dreams in the same way we would idly chat about the things we’d buy if we ever won the lottery. We would text each other crazy blog posts about how other people spent 3 months in Thailand, working from hammocks with Mai Tais in hand and a sunset over the ocean just a stone’s throw away. We both “knew ” that we could not afford such crazy plans, those ideas were for big shots, adventurers, not folks like us. We would probably still be sitting around and dreaming of our current life, if we hadn’t had a jump start to set us off down the road.
We were fully Digital we just needed a push,
Michael’s father, David, had to go under the knife. He had a full knee replacement surgery and his physiotherapy afterward wasn’t going well. Michael being one of the youngest people to ever have both knees replaced knows how important it is to have the right equipment for recovery. The mobility exercise offered by a good stationary bike is critical for reestablishing range of motion and for getting the new knee up and running. Our stationary bike was currently being used as a laundry rack right next to our treadmill clothes hanger, so we decided to take the bike to David in Illinois.
This was a monumental act of kindness as it involved folding at least two loads of laundry, but we firmly believe that family comes first. The timing of our trip to Davids was perfect for us as we didn’t have anything on the burner at the moment, so we decided to make a trip out of it, staying with the family and working from the basement for a couple of weeks.
This was in February of 2021, we stayed for a short time and then returned home, unaware of how formative a trip this would turn out to be. The experience was really lovely, it felt so good to be able to share so much time with family in such a comfortable and non disruptive way. We began to muse about doing trips like this more often, of reconnecting with distant friends and relatives and taking advantage of our working arrangements. Yet the idea still resided in the someday parts of our minds and didn’t really settle into the reality we were building.
The Shove
While we were away the winter intensified back home, for 15 days straight temperatures were well below freezing and even with the proper precautions taken, our pipes froze up like a 6 year old at a spelling bee. We called a plumber to find out what could be done and they gave us two options. Either pay a bunch of money to have them come and defrost our pipes for several hours or they could turn the water off to mitigate damages and let mother nature do the job for us.
We called Michael’s parents and asked if we could come back to Illinois and pick things up where we left off. We didn’t really have any idea of when we would be returning home and something about that felt really good, so we packed up our things and headed back to rejoin our family.
The Plan to actually become a digital nomad
And that is when the plan really started coming together. We were going to dip into our savings and launch a blog, no longer just watching other people living out our dreams, but actively seeking them out and sharing them with others. This journey has been one full of new experiences and continual adaptation, so we plan on helping others by sharing what we’ve learned along the way. We hope you find our tips useful no matter if you’re taking a short 1-month vacation or doing a longer 3 month stay. Where we work no longer determines where we live. Though everyone’s story is different, we hope that joining us will help to inspire you to start thinking about what your dreams are, where are the places you want to see, who are the people you’ve been dreaming of spending time with? There is an entire world of adventure and excitement out there, so come and join us as we head on down the highway.