A week ago I was rooting through my projects folder and I came across something that I had somehow forgotten: a full length book I wrote about Life Nomadic. I gave it a quick read-through and thought, "man... there's some great stuff in here! Why didn't I release it?"
So, I'm going to release it soon. I've spent a good part of the last week doing some light editing, rearranging, and adding in sections that I hadn't quite finished.
The book has a lot of stories and anecdotes in it, but it's really a manual for the nomad or hardcore traveler. It talks about why to be a nomad, what it's like, what to expect, and how to deal with some of the challenges. About half of the book is dedicated to logistics: how to choose gear, how to pack it, where to stay, how to get there, etc.
The best chapter, in my opinion, is the air travel chapter. My goal when writing it was to make the chapter so valuable and practical that the whole book would be worth purchasing, even for someone who only travels once or twice a year. I include every tip and strategy I have for air travel, including a bunch of stuff I've never seen written anywhere else.
The general theme of the book is this: become versatile, see the world and experience everything it has to offer, but do it as cheaply and intelligently as possible. If that resonates with you, you'll probably enjoy the book a lot.
I haven't decided whether I'm going to release it as an ebook, physical book, or both. I thought about breaking it up into several mini books on different travel subjects, but I think that might be annoying.
Once Todd finishes editing it (*nudge* *nudge*) I'll post a really cool video clip from this year's Life Nomadic trip, and I think I'll post a sample chapter or two as well. So if you enjoy Life Nomadic related stuff, you'll have a lot to look forward to in the next couple weeks.
Life Nomadic has begun. Six months of not particularly careful planning and a full week of hectic scrambling to rid ourselves of nearly every earthly possesion has paid off.
As I write our first post for Life Nomadic, Todd's in the next seat over editing our first video. The kid behind me is pounding on my seat. Holy god. It's like he's playing Rock Band back there and the tray table is the drums set.
I'd always talked about freeing myself from a single location... making my income portable, all of my belongings portable, and becoming more comfortable being a nomad. After Todd and I took a random trip to Japan I realized that there are probably MANY places in the world that I'd like as much as, if not more than, the U.S.
First what my high school experience was like and how It got me to where I am now
Growing up for me was an interesting experience. For one I grew up in Puerto Rico, Which from what I have been told from friends who moved to the U.S., is nothing like a "normal" high school life. Having a senior skip WEEK instead of just a day where you ditch school as a class and literally go vacation, No matter where you lived you were only 20 minutes from a beach. Drinking age is 18, and that is barely enforced as well. There was even a day where all the teachers in school EXPECTED students to come in hungover and thus the teachers just showed movies in class while everyone slept. I'm not kidding guys.
Anyways, Throughout early high school I always thought I wanted to be a video game designer. I really liked video games and all I wanted was to live a simple life, make ends meet, maybe a save a bit and just play games and generally not care too much. Then halfway through high school I figured maybe If I found a way to become financially independent I could focus completely on playing video games and then never have to worry about making ends meet (a strategy I had learned from a video game! mentioned in one of my blogposts). This led me to read the four hour workweek which I found somewhere online and in the process I also found out about vagabonding.
If you haven't read vagabonding I suggest you go buy it and read it immediately. This sole book changed my life. I've read it something like 8 times and always become amazed at how good of a job it describes travel philosophy and life philosophy as well. With these two books In hand and reading countless blogposts, and also finding tynan in the midst of life nomadic, I became enamored with the idea of perpetual travel, learning languages, meeting foreigners and just becoming immersed in different cultures. But just one problem... I needed money.
This is where I wish the shoulda woulda coulda aspect of life comes into play.
