A Vagabond with a laptop (and nice shoes)

Last summer, I ran away from home. 5 weeks, 7 coun­tries, 6 cur­ren­cies, 6 lan­guages, 9 dif­ferent beds, 4 planes, 7 buses, 9 trains, 5 fer­ries, 3 cars, and innu­mer­able rides on the buses, trams, and metros of dif­ferent cities later, I returned: blisters on my feet, forever altered.

My busi­ness weathered the exper­i­ment better than my feet. One of the things that most excites me about design is that, in theory, I can do it from any­where in the world–all I really need is my Mac­book, an internet con­nec­tion, and the con­tents of my head. The idea of being free to come and go as I please–of being truly mobile–is intox­ic­ating, espe­cially when I’ve become such a travel junkie. Not only does travel make me stronger and more inde­pendent, but the exposure to new con­cepts and cul­tures is cer­tain to shape me as a designer. How could it not be bene­fi­cial to my career–wandering through strange streets, finding new museums, con­stantly pho­to­graphing the new visual land­scape? (Note to the taxman: I will here­in­after be claiming all air tickets as busi­ness expenses, okay?)

Prague is a city of anim­ated and bizarre statues, like this one, which is much larger than it looks here. There’s also Mucha influ­ence every­where! The main post office is one of the most gor­geous places I’ve ever seen (and it’s open ’til mid­night, but an angry Czech security guard wouldn’t let me take photographs.)

Of course, it’s never quite has easy as it seems! While more and more people are becoming self-confessed “digital nomads“, it’s not neces­sarily an easy trans­ition to make, nor is it an ideal life­style for everyone. I con­sidered it for a good long while, but a number of factors (not­ably my attach­ment to the people I love, and to my shoe col­lec­tion) led me to think of things on a more tem­porary basis. This summer, for example, I’m plan­ning another trip–a full two months around France, Spain, Por­tugal, and Morocco.

I think I’ll be better equipped to bal­ance the varied stresses of travel and work this time around. What did I learn that I wish I’d known?

Old (Renais­sance) meets older (Roman ruins) meets new (con­struc­tion) in Rome, Italy’s city of per­petual cul­tural thievery. Note how they can’t engineer a lamp­post to sit in a straight line, and appar­ently this whole “internet” thing is equally challenging.

Reli­able internet access is more vital than water, but some­times harder to find.

Who needs water, anyway? If you’re in Europe, the wine is usu­ally cheaper, and nicer. What they lack in out­rageous wine prices, though, they make up for with utterly ter­rible internet access. I was sur­prised to find that Italy was far worse than any of the Eastern European coun­tries I vis­ited: I spent three hours run­ning around the neigh­bour­hoods around Ter­mini, des­per­ately trying to find any­where that would let me beg, borrow, or steal their internet. Even internet cafes were use­less; they just looked at me as though I’d grown an extra head when I explained that I needed wire­less, unless their machines came with Illus­trator and Pho­toshop and all my fonts installed. The little Croa­tian town I lived in for two weeks had only one “internet club” that was run by a fourteen-year-old who spent most of his time eating ice cream and playing video games. He didn’t under­stand why I wanted receipts for my pay­ments, and would close the place down at the slightest instig­a­tion. (I even­tu­ally found a fant­astic bar with wire­less instead, but not until I’d already wasted a good deal of time and money cooped up in a little dungeon.)

When you’re plot­ting out routes and sights, do a little extra research and figure out where the most useful internet access points are. Take into con­sid­er­a­tion costs and avail­ab­ility of power out­lets. Have a list of places ready before you land in a for­eign city. Everything else you can gamble on–internet is a necessity.

Stari Grad (Hvar Island, Croatia), where my Grandad lives part of the year. He has no internet and no tele­phone, and when I showed up just before mid­night one evening, he wasn’t even aware I was coming!

Don’t count on being able to work, sleep, or do any­thing even mildly pro­ductive while in transit.

I planned for a great deal of night trains, buses, and fer­ries, thinking this would be a great time-saver. In some cases, it was: the ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik was one of the most fant­astic sleeps I’ve ever had, and I could sleep on some of the buses I took, albeit fit­fully. Sleeping pills will help (bring lots, as European phar­ma­cies are rather a mixed bag), but some­times the jost­ling, uncom­fort­able pos­i­tions, and con­stant jar­ring visits from uncaring border guards demanding to see a pass­port will just get to you. When I got to Sara­jevo after eight hours of frag­mented bus-naps (and I was stretched out across the back row, no less!), I was so weary and exhausted that I curled up on a card­board box in a park and slept for another two hours. (I was woken up by a little girl beg­ging for money. I guess in Bosnia, sleeping on a box in the park isn’t enough to make you look like a transient?)

As for working, I could actu­ally see that poten­tially being a little easier, although you’ll need to account for the lack of internet and power. Prac­tise at home first–I often work on public buses these days. Cross your fin­gers that you don’t have a seat­mate, or learn to con­trol your elbows.

But gen­er­ally speaking, assume that transit time is going to be lost time, and plan for it accord­ingly. If you can get any­thing done, you’ve come out ahead.

Statue Park in Bud­apest, where they hid all the relics of Com­munism. Soviet sculptors, from what I can tell, are typ­ic­ally either hor­rific­ally dull, or five year olds on bad acid.

Take it a little slow.

Before­hand, I’d only done short weeklong trips (Mexico’s Yucatan, New York City). I don’t think I really take vaca­tions, per se, so I worked while I was trav­eling then still, but I did far less, as my time was so lim­ited. If you’re plan­ning to work while you travel, you need to account for the extra time.

If you want to work an eight-hour day, you won’t be able to spend six­teen hours sight­seeing. How­ever, if you can work, say, a six-hour day, you’ve still got plenty of time to take in your sur­round­ings in the evening. I think here’s where you need to figure out what works best for you–if you’d rather do one day off and one day on, or work half-days every day, or whatever arrange­ment suits you, and your busi­ness, best. The nice thing about being nomadic like this is that you’re free to set your own rules.

Just make sure that you don’t end up feeling as though you’re wasting days, either by working, or by not-working. Even if you spend the whole day in a cof­feeshop some­where, you’re soaking in a little bit of the cul­ture around you. (One of my favourite finds was S&M Bar in Budapest’s Jewish dis­trict, where they had teddy bears in cages, and the bar­tenders gave one another spank­ings when it was slow. Free wire­less, right next to my host’s house, and cheap wine!)

A cat sits in the sun­shine in the hills of Sara­jevo. (Light on tour­ists, heavy on fas­cin­ating his­tory, cul­ture and Turkish influence.)

Make sure everyone knows where you are.

I’m the world’s least organ­ized person ever when I’m home. When I travel, I become a dif­ferent person entirely. (I actu­ally wear little to no makeup, the same pair of almost-flat shoes, and a dif­ferent per­fume than the one I wear when I’m home, so I most likely look like a dif­ferent person, too!) Jug­gling sights and an array of trans­port­a­tion timetables, it becomes neces­sary to schedule out the days of your trip.

When I left last year, I plotted out my route and my travels over the course of a few weeks, taking all timetables, sched­ules, and costs into account. Then, I worked the times and dates into a cal­endar, which I even­tu­ally final­ized and put online using Google Maps. I was then able to share my schedule as required, which was great–it meant that my cli­ents would know where I was at any given time. (Oh! She’s on a bus in Hun­gary. Alright then.)

How­ever, I wasn’t as good as I should have been at sending this out to all of my cli­ents, and in fact, most of them weren’t aware that I was trav­eling. This year, I’m sending my schedule, along with an explan­a­tion of how fre­quently I’ll be checking in, and how their prob­lems will still be dealt with expedi­ently, to all of my cli­ents–regard­less of whether or not they’ll notice I’m gone.

Enjoy your­self!

It can be easy to let the stress of work get to you when all your belong­ings are strapped to your back and everything is in flux around you, but if you aren’t having fun, you aren’t doing it right. Remember to breathe, look around you, and get excited about all the new things around you!

One of the love­liest, and most serene, places on earth. The water is bright blue and the per­fect tem­per­ature, and the only sign of human life for ages is a tiny fishing boat moored a little fur­ther out to sea. In order to get here, you need to hike down the crum­bling cliffs. After three weeks of non­stop, whirl­wind travel, this is the first place I finally learned to stop, relax, and enjoy myself.

Tags: balance, business, life