Slow Travel and Thriving Abroad

Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Anna Claessen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location and dependency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadsstoriesco. Alright, let's go into today's episode. Hey, hey, nomads, welcome to a new episode. Today I'm here with Kayla, and she's the founder of the blog Riding From Nowhere, and she is also the author of how to Be a Digital Nomad build a successful career while traveling the world. I'm very excited to have her on the show to share her story and her experience nomadding, but of course, also I want to learn all the tips that are in your book, kayla. So welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so tell me, where are you today? Where are you calling it from? From Split, chroma, asia today. Oh, nice, very nice. How long have you been in Split For?

two days. Oh wow, it's still fresh. Yeah, it's still discovering new secrets of the Airbnb at this point, Are you staying for a longer time?

Are you fast traveling right now Pretty slow.

We're pretty much. My husband and I are traveling together and we're staying places, usually for about a month right now, so we're slow, slow men.

Slow manning love it. That's definitely also my traveling style, for sure, absolutely yeah.

What's your preferred length? Like I feel like that's such a personal question for a nomad. What's your perfect length in a place, not this guy's length.

Well, I used to also do a month in a location, but actually recently I discovered, maybe, that two to three months is my perfect length for a stay in most countries. Yeah, I stayed for in some places for one month and it didn't feel like enough. I was not ready to leave, so then I went back. So it's also not a problem, of course, but yeah, I feel two, maybe even three months is good for me, just getting into the routines, seeing the place, and then, yeah, move on to the next. Yeah, good question Before you take over the interview no, I'm joking, it's all good. Can you tell me a little bit more about your life? What does your life look like? What is a typical day or maybe a week for you?

Right now my husband and I are fully nomadic. So we gave up our apartment seven months ago and we got rid of all of our stuff and we had been living in the Netherlands. So I'm originally from the US but we had been living there. So we've just been drifting around for the last few months and staying places kind of for a month at a time, because you get a nice discount on Airbnb if you stay from in one Airbnb for a month, and that's pretty much our pace and writing. I'm a writer, so I just wrote my book on how to be a digital nomad. But I'm also a freelance writer for Hubbot and GoDaddy and I do ghost writing for clients. So we kind of just have a very slow. That's where my blog writing from Network came from. Actually, you're kind of just here and there doing our work, writing articles, enjoying it, trying to get out in the sunshine. It's very relaxed, which I know. I think listeners can understand, because whenever I'm talking to people who don't have never experienced digital nomadism, they're like tell us about the day to day and I feel like it's really not what you think it is. I'm just like we finish up our work and we take a walk to the water and have a cup of coffee and it's so slow and happy and peaceful.

Love it. So do you work Monday to Friday kind of like typical business hours, or are you really flexible with your schedule? What does that look like usually for you?

I like to plan things out by the week. So some weeks I'll work like seven days, but never the whole day, and it's very like to me. I enjoy the work so much and it's always about like half of doing client work and then half business building for my business. So I guess I'll let you say it doesn't feel like it's like overworking to work maybe more than normal. I plan things out at the beginning of the week what needs done and if I feel like it, I postpone all of it until like Saturday and Sunday and do it all. Then If, like, the weather's nice or you're just like feeling drawn out, you know like I, to me I can't plan day to day Like, if it's something's due, I'll do it, and I usually do things ahead of schedule. I normally do things like one day before they're due in case the wifi goes out Been burned many times. So yeah, it's a pretty loose schedule and even within the week, yeah, some days I have I literally save everything that needs done for like the last day and then I'll work for like 15 hours and get it all done, but I'll have this whole week of doing whatever I was excited about. I'm somebody who really follows my own personal energy of the day.

I love that. That is awesome. I'm trying to do that, but it's for me. It's not easy, so I love that you're doing it. That's awesome. That sounds really good. So what are things do you like doing while traveling other than working? Like, do you have any hobbies that you take with you that you do in every location, or is it really a lot about sightseeing and enjoying the culture? Or, yeah, what do you do when you don't work?

It's a lot of being out and just kind of people watching. Like I love just sitting, like right now in split, there's like a wall kind of on the water in the old town with palm trees and I love just sitting there. Well, we were in split a couple months ago as well and we liked it so much that we came back so we were just sitting on the wall for like two or three hours a day like playing cards, you know, sipping coffee, playing chess. My husband and I have a little travel chess board that we take everywhere. Oh cool, and just like watching people go by and seeing how people you know interact and I don't know, just seeing. I just love like being a wall, fly on the wall, and it's pretty boring actually I know that I'm saying it, but and walking, we try to walk like 10,000 steps. So really just, even if it's boring like okay, let's take this road home from the grocery store, because you know we haven't taken this before and trying to see literally like how much of the city we can see, and sometimes, if it's a small place, we can literally walk every single street, like we walk all the way out of town and then around and back. We think we've walked every street in this whole town and that's kind of like I don't know. I feel like it's like this little mental map of all these places, you know, and how different the streets look and I don't know. It's not very like flashy. You know, like we, I don't like to go to museums a lot, or I feel like a lot of it's lost on me because I'm not history about. So I used to go and pretend to like it and then it occurred to me I just enjoy people watching on the sidewalk more.

Yeah, but I think that's really interesting because it looks like you're really observing a local life way more than doing all the touristy things and just taking things off because it's the 10 things to do in split, but it's really being part of more local life, which sounds really good, and it sounds like you're just living life in these places and not necessarily running around and, like I said, doing all the touristy things, and that's also something that I've enjoyed lately. And I think it also comes with slow travel maybe, that I often spend two or three months in a place and then just have not really seen any, or not definitely not all of the touristy things. Or like people who come for a weekend are like okay, well, then we go to this museum and then we go here and then we go there, and like in Valencia, it took me a good four weeks to go to the beach even once, and it was not far, it was like 15 minutes by bus, but I don't know, I just didn't prioritize it because I was like it doesn't matter, I'm just living here, so I just want to go to the gym and go to the grocery store.

You're the only person who has ever we not only exact same way. I feel like you're the only person I've ever talked to, yes, who says this as well. I think it's really boring to a lot of people. Someone told me somewhat recently it's like you're not even really traveling and I was like, yeah, okay, what's quote traveling, you know like because I didn't go to every museum. But at the same time I thought in a way, it's like a really like nice thing, because I really feel like exactly what you said. I'm just living here right now and like even like getting to know like the local cats on the streets, like on the way home from the grocery store. We're like let's go pet that white cat that sits on the corner and it feels so at home and comfortable and like finding live music. I also love, like my husband I sometimes it's like a warm night I'm not in split right now because it's cold, but like let's just go out and see if we hear live music and like go into a bar and like listen to the music or go into pool halls. You never see foreigners at pool halls. That's a really funny. I went into a pool hall we were in Nicaragua and I don't even think there was a women's bathroom, like I don't think any woman, I think it was the first woman to go inside. I literally saw a man using the urinal and while leaning out looking and still watching the pool game, I was like there's never been a woman in this place before, let alone foreigners. And we're like twice as tall as everyone because I'm really tall and my husband's taller than me, so we look like so out of place. I love those moments, like you can have a finite guidebook.

No, exactly, but I think actually you have a great point like are you traveling or are you just living life abroad? I think that is actually the difference. That's so funny, you're really cool.

Yeah, you know.

Very random with great tip. So tell me a little bit more about 2017. I think is when you started traveling, what made you start? What made you decide? You know what? I'm just gonna go.

I was so excited to enter the corporate world. It was like a dream to me. I had this like job in Chicago and my own apartments. I'd never lived along before so I felt like I kind of made it in life. And then I discovered that it felt like everyone around me Kind of a lot of the people around me they just like waited all day for 5 pm and then they waited all week for the weekend and I only felt like we were supposed to be madly in love with our careers. I mean I was still pretty young. I mean I was 23, 24, so I was like right out of university age still where I'm like this is, you know, it was like the music booming in the back of my mind. So you felt like we're supposed to be madly in love with your career and then to like enter the world of the working world and have so many people be like, yeah, it sucks, but someday we'll all retire, don't worry. And I remember it saying somebody saying once oh well, you know, only five years until you retire. They were like comforting someone else who was complaining about the winter or something. And this woman who was five years away from retirement said how sad is it that we are all wishing away our lives. And then she like walked out of the room and everyone else kind of like went back to typing and I was like they're like jaw dropped. I'm like, oh my gosh, that is the most horrifying realization I've ever heard. So I Started thinking about all. Everyone is always thinking about travel at least everyone listening, I know I feel like, you know, it wasn't always kind of in the back of everyone's mind I could throw it all away and you know, go start a new life and go see the world. At least it was in the back of my mind, even though I had never really been abroad before. But I found that people online who were doing remote work and traveling and it felt like this portal into a whole other alternative life and I just disappeared into it and became obsessed and got rid of my apartment and Put some stuff in storage and took off. I found a job doing freelance writing online and yeah, about a one-way ticket and I really had no plan at all, but I've been abroad most of the time ever since then, so it all worked out.

Love it. So what was the corporate career that you started?

I was in marketing, so I'm still in graphic design mostly.

Okay, and how then did you translate that into remote work, into that freelance writing gig that you got? Was that easy to say like, hey look, I work in marketing now so I can do freelance writing for you, or that's a huge. Did you have to do a lot of Upskilling and things like that to land that freelance gig?

The freelance game was actually very easy to land. They just wanted to see three writing samples, and I said them like three Google Docs that I wrote. It was really simple, but it wasn't a good opportunity. It wasn't a really good publication. They weren't good stories. It was kind of like a kind of like a tabloid in a way. It was all digital. It was not a really good experience, and it was okay, though, because it was me getting my foot in the door, working remotely, and me realizing, hey, I can write these articles and people are telling me that they're good, and that made me realize that freelancing was this whole like ocean of opportunity, that I can do something and deliver and Somebody will pay me for that. And they'll pay me a lot more than they're paying me right now, because I was not paid a lot for that initial job.

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. It's just step one into the whole digital world, like you said. That's really cool. And where did your one-way ticket go to?

It went to Mexico and then from there I didn't have a plan at all, but I went from Mexico, traveled over land through Central America and then I went down to Peru and Columbia, peru, and then I after that I went back. I went to the Netherlands because I met my husband and and that's where his family was, so we were gonna go there and it's supposed to be temporary but ended up being longer and I'm actually like integrated and got Dutch nationality earlier this year.

Cool. Well, congratulations as a fellow Dutchie. Yeah, oh.

I forgot you were Dutch. Wait, where did you grow up? Not that we should go down this whole rabbit hole.

I grew up in the south of the Netherlands, so really really south, close to the German border.

Oh, okay, yeah, I lifted from in for five years. It's like my home base.

That's cool. That's exactly the other side of the country and I know it's not a huge country, but I have never been there Like I've literally been to the other side of the world. But no, not, not honey.

I Know whenever I would meet Dutch people and I would tell them I was moving to the Netherlands, because you meet Dutch people everywhere, absolutely. For every one American, I mean 10 Dutch people.

Yeah, and it's interesting because they're not that many of us, but they're just all abroad.

Yes, very much so. And then it's funny because there are like tons of Americans but none of them. Okay, some of them are, but it's the opposite thing them fewer people leave. Yeah, I would tell people I'm going to probably in every 100% of Dutch people and I never been to the Netherlands. They said why, like, why would you go to party? It's small and it's. It's cute though, it's very charming. Everyone should give it a try whenever they're in the neighborhood.

It's also more the city that you. I think not many people would go there as tourists, right? I mean, everyone goes to answer them, maybe it's like, but then maybe the Hague, but then other than that, no, no one who is traveling around Europe Will go to calling us. So you again, you have that local experience which is probably interesting To see the real Dutch life and not the Amsterdam Dutch life, because I feel like that's a whole separate thing and whole different bubble.

That's what I say. I've done a lot of travel writing about it and I always say that it's in fronion You're actually experiencing Dutch, dutch life, because in Amsterdam, like such a small percentage of the people who live there are Dutch. I mean, maybe not such a small percentage, but anyway, that's quite the aside for people who don't care about the regional, different regions of the Netherlands but how was it to go from traveling around Latin America to then moving to the Netherlands, like, how was that Changed?

you got a culture shock or yeah? Just like also maybe like slowing down traveling and more settling down. How was that?

It was super, super, super hard. I thought that it would be fun. Like travel is because everything's new and different Whenever you're traveling and that's the enjoyable factor. But whenever you're trying to integrate as like an expat, like digital nomadism and expats, you know like there's a lot of Overlapped. But they're very different mindsets and I was shocked to find that Like I don't know, like it wasn't comforting to be on the outside anymore, like I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to understand things and not be like can feel like I didn't want to buy the wrong butter. You know, like I've only never been traveling. You like make all these mistaken purchases at the grocery store and you're like, oh, that's funny, I thought this was like apple pie in here. It's like Pam. You know, it's like something totally different and that's funny because it's like a funny experience. And it's not funny anymore Whenever you're at home and you like bottle brought all the groceries, how to cook dinner and you keep buying the wrong things. Like it may be upset and Dutch this cultures are also very different because I think in Latin America, I find it people are open, like, people like smile at each other more and like, are really friendly and Even if, like they, people like want to talk to you if you're foreign and I didn't find that in the Netherlands. I and everyone that I know who's Dutch has assured me that it's not that people are unwelcoming to foreigners. It's just that they're unwelcoming to each other, to everyone, and I've heard that the north of the Netherlands is specifically more intense for this. So I don't want to say that it's like a big generalizing statement, but that's kind of like my research. That's kind of where it's settled, yeah yeah, it was hard.

It sounds like a very big difference going from Latin America to the Netherlands. It's also obviously a lot colder and different culture. Yeah, I can totally imagine. So from the time that you moved to the Netherlands to seven months ago, when you gave up your apartment and started traveling full-time, what did you do in those in those years between? Did you have a place in the Netherlands and then travel from there, and then how much did you travel? Can you share a little bit more about that?

I had a home base and traveled nine or three months out of the year, so it would have been more, but I couldn't leave the country for more than 90 days a year because of the visa I was on. So I did a little bit of travel, some house sitting within the Netherlands, so I wasn't just to kind of scratch that edge of being somewhere different. But that was a really a period of business building. I thought about integrating into, you know, like the Dutch workforce and try and find a job, and I just couldn't really justify it because I thought I love Chicago with like a higher salary and a job I really liked in a culture I understand, because I was bored and I wanted to travel and if I get a job here, I'm just gonna be in the same place in a few years. So I worked on building my online business and for two years I was not making any money Like online. No money was coming in. So I was also nannying Dutch kids who didn't speak English because the parents wanted them to be exposed to English. But yeah, so two years of like being screams like three-year-old screaming curse words at me and me not knowing and yeah, that was quite the Rocky chapter and then my business was able to support me and it was like I can just work on this and you know and that, look forward to the future and not be in survival mode anymore. So yeah, I wasn't nomadic the whole time and it was all. It was like quite the squiggle of success. If anyone has seen that like, imagine like what success looks like and it's like a pointed arrow with like a bunch of turns and twists and knots in it. It was really ugly there for a while in terms of making money.

Well, thank you for sharing that, because I think it's really important to also share that part of the journey, because my journey, I think, was pretty similar to yours, where I started traveling in 2018. So a year after you and I also started by probably also like two years before that I learned about digital nomadism, long-term travel. I listened to a ton of different podcasts and just kind of learned everything there was about about this lifestyle and thought, okay, well, if all these people are doing it, I could probably also make it work one way or another. But no one really shared this part of it. You know, everyone was like oh yeah, I'm Bali, I make a gazillion dollars and life is good, especially back then. I think now there's a little bit more transparency and openness about this. But I started my business and I also had the twists and turns and it was not a linear journey at all. It was also really tough. So thank you so much for sharing that. It was not just I started my own business.

when traveling, everything was happy, yeah it's so nice to share Like I love that together you also. It was hard for you because there's a lot of stories of ease with building a business and being abroad and I don't know. I kind of felt like a loser, like I was not smart enough to figure it out, and I kept looking at all these success stories online Like if they're doing it, why can I not figure it out? And it felt quite lonely and I always like to share it. Yeah, two years, and also it's okay if you have to do something to get by, like I think some people they have this attitude like charging on your credit card. You know, get coaching, do whatever you can to survive. You know to like push yourself to perform. And for me it was like I just need to like not get into financial trouble. Like trouble, you know, like charge it guy charged quite a bit on my credit card. At one point I was like this is about to become a problem. I need to. I can't sustain myself and it's better to kind of like survive the winter, so to speak, and then still be like ready, you know, fighting come spring. Then to, yeah, just pack it up and say like online business isn't for me, being abroad wasn't what it turned out to be and, yeah, figuring out how this like sustained through the low points, because there are gonna be low points despite, like, any kind of despite Instagram?

Yeah, absolutely, and I think now, also, looking back for me at least, I feel like I had to go through that to learn what I needed to know, because you know people can tell you everything you need to know, but I think we're usually not really listening. You know, at least I'll speak for myself I'm usually not really listening. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, great tip, great tip. But then sometimes I feel like you just got to learn it the hard way and now I'm kind of happy that I went through all of that because of you know, all the skills and lessons that it gave me, just like going forward. I take that into my business, which is amazing and invaluable. But how did you actually build your business, if that makes sense, like in those two years of business building? What did that look like for you? Did you take courses or did you I don't know do a lot of experiments to see what worked, or can you share a little bit more of the actions that you took?

I had a great business mindset in the beginning. I started a blog which was writingfromnowherecom, and I kind of bought that on a whim and I thought, well, I'm gonna blog because a lot of people are and I liked to write. So, just, I did like to write and I'd actually started a blog before, so I kind of had an idea of what went into it. But I thought everyone's making money blogging. I could too then theoretically. So I started blogging and I took a few courses. A lot of free resources like HubSpot Academy is free, highly recommend for anyone who's trying to business build that's a whole lot of free online courses and like watching YouTube and podcasts were huge for me. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be where I am now in life if it wasn't for podcasts. And then I was just kind of learning all these like online skills. I kind of thought I'd consider myself like a failed blogger because I wasn't making good passive income, I wasn't scaling to like this big, you know, like viewership. But then I discovered services, kind of rediscovered because I was doing freelance writing whenever I started my whole experience traveling, but I got away from it. And then I started doing freelance Pinterest management in 2020 and somebody literally sent me a Facebook message that I was answering her Pinterest questions that she had because I was really good at Pinterest at that point for my own brand, so I was just helping people in my spare time and she said can I pay you to run my account? And I had never thought of it before of doing that. But I said yes and then I took on another account and another account and I quit nannying. I think two months later I was making like three times. I mean, I was making like almost no money but I had scaled that to be enough to take care of myself bare minimum, and I did Pinterest management for three years. It was actually like a really big part of my business and then I built up the other sides after that. Then I started doing freelance writing. I had more confidence and I was you know, I wasn't charging like bare minimum anymore. I was able to say you know what. I actually really know what I'm doing, because I had been doing it for myself. Like I knew how to rank on Google and I knew how to write good articles that retained people. Like I can see in my Google analytics that people were staying on my website for like 20 minutes on, you know, and most websites people leave after like seven seconds. So I knew something I'm doing is working and I build up that confidence. And for me that all started with my blog and that's also how I got my book deal as well. It also all ties back to the blog.

I love hearing this, because I think a lot of people they start an online business because that online business that needs to be it right, like, okay, this is the way you have to sustain yourself, this is how you'll make money, this will be the thing that you'll do forever, at least for a really long time. But what I'm hearing you say, and what I also experience, is that starting a business it just gives you all these skills and also something that you have built and you can monetize that in a lot of different ways. You know, like yes, you can make money in the actual business, but you can also then offer services to other business owners, like Pinterest management, for example, or using it as a portfolio of your writing pieces. Or like, look, I'm good at SEO because I've done this for myself and there's actual proof, and here you have it, so I can do that for you too. So I think that is also something that I never realized, but kind of fell into and I'm like wait, online business is amazing, not just for the actual business, but also what it teaches me and all the experience that you gain from just starting the business and also figuring stuff out. I think that's also amazing, hearing your story, that it sounds like there are some income strains that were not necessarily planned but just kind of happened because of the blog that you started.

Yeah, it's amazing what people point out to you whenever you think your work public. Like I would say, you want to be a writer but you're never publishing, you're just writing in Google Docs. But if you publish that, somebody can tell you and people will tell you if you're publishing enough work. Hey, you explain things so well. I love the way that it sounds like you're writing, sounds People start to tell you what your gifts are and you kind of need to put your work out into the world. I think, to have that reflected to you from other people. I don't know, I think it's scary. I was scared to publish my work, but it's a really kind of liberating thing. I also think there's an element of manifesting there. If you say that you are dying to be an SEO writer, or, let's say, like a user, what is it? Ucg, user generated content, ugc like making content for brands, but you're not doing it. I kind of ask do you want to do that Because you're not doing it? I think there's an element of manifesting there as well.

Yeah, and I think also dedication. I mean, what you did is, even when it didn't go your way, you just kept going at it and you just kept like, literally kept going and made it work. I think that's also something that is maybe undervalued in online business space, where a lot of people are like, like you said, they say, oh well, it's not working for me, and some people also. Sometimes you also have to pivot right, but if you can just keep trying and keep reinventing the online business that you're building, I think there's also a lot to say about that, about just keep trying.

Yeah, I think you're right. And if you keep to like, keep going, like the secret, it's almost like a picture looking graph with like a steady align going steadily up and like on one side it's time pass, like you just keep going. But there's also education on the other axis Like you're getting, like you're keeping doing it, but you're also educating yourself and getting better. And I think that everyone should find a podcast, at least one podcast about their niche, whatever it is, their industry, their skill, and every single week should be tuning in to like hear what's going on, you know, hear new insights from people, hear people say things that you know, people who are like farther down the road from you and like what are we? What lessons learned that they have that can and will change your life completely and kind of put you in the position of like I'm always like every time gets better, every week gets better, every week I'm educated, I'm better educated, I'm going after better.

Yeah, that's a good tip. What is your favorite current favorite podcast for that?

I'm in major book mode with my book going out, so my favorite podcast is on good authority by Anna David. She it's a. It's about publishing, so that's a very good listen If anyone is interested in writing books.

Okay, cool. How did you get the book deal? Did you seek it out, or did someone approach you for it, or how did that work exactly?

The publisher approached me. They found me writing on LinkedIn about digital nomadism and then they went to my blog and saw that I was a writer and they liked my writing. And then they sent me a DM on LinkedIn and said, hey, we are looking for someone to write a book about digital nomads. Do you want to talk? And I thought that they want. Like my husband was like to see what you'd write a book and I said, no, I think he wants me to introduce him to somebody. I was like so detached from the reality that, like I just didn't it was, it wasn't this like aha moment On this Zoom call. He's like I said, but who do you want to write it? And he was like you, it was borderline embarrassing. But, yeah, I. Then I wrote the book proposal together. We like outlined it and then it got approved and they offered me like a formal book deal, so that was all through LinkedIn. Linkedin's amazing. I could talk about LinkedIn all day and, yeah, that comes out in January, so it's pretty crazy, and it's not just about my experiences. It's very much about like the history of the movement and telling people's stories and helping that readers realize, like there's so many paths that you can take if you want and so many gifts that this lifestyle I can give to you. Like finding people who, like, moved abroad for love and took you know for their families and made these like big decisions, and what I kind of consider like plan A, like a lot of people think well, plan B is that I do this. It's like tell me what your best cases, though. Like what's the best case scenario? What's plan A? A lot of people who, like, were able to go after plan A because of this amazing gift of working online.

Yeah, exactly what are some things that you learned over the past years digital nomadding and maybe it's in the book. Maybe it's not in the book, but like what is kind of like the key lessons.

If you're not happy, you cannot change your location and be happy Ooh, that's a good one. Like you take you everywhere and you can run for a while, but it will. Everything, absolutely everything, catches up with you. That's actually a segue. Like if you're lazy with how you name files on your computer or responding to emails, or even like texting your mom back, you know. Like if you're always away and long distance. In every relationship that you have or most of them are digital like these are all remote, long distance relationships. Like every relationship in your life will be like eroded if you don't maintain it. Like you cannot half-ass anything important and what I think is really nice about the digital nomad lifestyle is that you can actually remove the unimportant. Like if you don't find like going into the office setting and like if you're not finding those like in-person connections important, then you remove them and you don't have to worry about half-assing the things you don't care about anymore. I think that there's a lot of like design and kind of like ruthless editing that goes into your life and it's kind of like Marie Kondo. She's the Japanese decluttering expert. I don't know if you're familiar with her book, but she says that you need to only keep things that bring you joy, and I feel like that's what this lifestyle is Like. It's not about like the pants that bring you joy, but it's about only keeping in your life what like most of it should be joyful, and then you have to ruthlessly like advocate for those things, because everything good can like disintegrate if you don't pay attention to it. Like every good relationship, every like good, like business deal, you need to keep feeding, keep investing.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You have to prioritize really well, and I think in this lifestyle as a digital nomad, there's so much freedom you can literally do whatever you want, like you can go wherever you want. So then the next question is what do you want? These really really important questions that I think many people don't even think about, but we have to think about them Every I don't know every month or every single time that we're thinking about moving. Also, are we gonna move or we're gonna stay longer? Why? So? Yeah, I think you also have a really good point about locational being the solution to most problems, because, yes, you cannot outrun the problems that you like, a lot of the problems that you have, especially if it's like really within you. I do think it can make some things easier though. So, being strategic about locations, it can make. For example, if you really struggle going to the gym in winter this is absolutely me. I just don't like leaving the house when it's cold and rainy, when I'm, and in summer, I don't have that problem. So when I spend time in beautiful, sunny places, I'm fine walking to the gym doing my workout, walking back, so I think you can use it to some extent to your advantage. But yeah, you're also totally right that there are many things you cannot run away from, for sure.

Yeah, and sunshine helps a lot of things and not to discount that Like just being somewhere warm and sunny can change your perspective on life. But I think that you have to kind of get away from the feeling that you're running away from unhappy things and feel instead like you're going towards happy things, Like you're not running, you're kind of pursuing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. Do you have an intention, for places that you pick, to spend a month like next locations? How do you really pick the locations where you're gonna stay?

We pick it based on B&B. So well, normally we know what kind of region we're in, but we will pick things Like we look for a nice B&B and let that kind of decide, because we get huge discounts In Europe and also in Latin America. We saw a huge discount staying for a month, so like we weren't necessarily coming to Split, we thought we wanted to come back, but then we found this apartment, for it's normally $3,000 for a month and now it's 1,000. So we were like, yes, check, it has like heated floors. It's so much nicer than our normal standard. It was like luxury apartment quotes and normally I kind of think nothing in our you know like who budget is luxury. But no, I'm feeling it. It's Mediterranean view, so that's what decides, and usually warmer weather, warmer weather, and then from there we just want a really comfortable place to be and have a be walking distance to the old town, the center, and, yeah, something interesting.

And do you stay in any digital nomad hubs or is meeting other digital nomads not that important to you Is more like having a nice place to live and work and being with your husband more important.

Meeting people is not that important. I think that the pandemic kind of deconditioned me to be social, where I might have needed like a lot more social exposure before the pandemic. But after spending, like I feel like my personally, like my bubble got small. But it was also like I maintained my relationships really well, like my closest friends and my family, like I'm very actively engaged in those relationships like FaceTime with friends, so I don't feel lonely. But I know that's different for everyone. A lot of people do need that in-person stuff and I think it's great that people can go to the hubs and find that.

Yeah, and I think it's also very different if you travel with a partner versus traveling completely solo. I think that's also a huge difference, so I think it makes a lot of sense, definitely when you have your travel body built in. Basically, then it's a lot easier, probably. Yeah, awesome. So what are some things that you're looking forward to Do? You already have some really cool locations where you wanna go next. Or I mean, of course, you have your book coming out. I think at the time that we're releasing this episode, the book will already be out, so we'll make sure to link it in the show notes as well. But apart from the book release, what else are you working on? Are you excited about?

The thing I'm most excited about right now. We are training to do the Via Francigena in 2024, which is the old Pilgrim Road from Canterbury to Rome. So we make a lot of plans. We've actually talked about this several times, but we're training right now and we're hoping to do that in the summer. So feeling really excited about that and actually waiting up our packs and walking around Split trying to get all the steps in, because there's quite the training plan if you're gonna walk for four months- especially over the Alps. It's a couple. It'll take us longer because we're gonna stop and work a little bit as we go just to keep everything going. But it's months of walking.

Wow, that is insane. That's such a challenge Very cool.

I hope that it happens. I hope it works out. Yeah, so cool, We'll see where everything is, but right now, that's the obsession Do you do this? Other people do this too, right when you get obsessed with things for six, three months and then maybe it never happens. Like every once in a while, I meet someone who's like oh you, how's your move to Aruba that you were planning? And I feel like, wow, that was like a month in 2020 that I was obsessed with moving to Aruba. And every once in a while, I talk to someone again who I met during that time. It was like I'm Kayla, I'm moving to Aruba, which did not happen, Do you?

do this too. I do, yes, absolutely, yeah, no, I do. But I also think I always say, oh, yeah, someday I will probably do this, like if I'm that obsessed with it. Then I always just say, oh, yeah, not yes, but maybe next year. My thing is always saying maybe next year. So also, you know, digital nomad life too, it started as a plan of, oh, someday I want to do the digital nomad life, but first I'll just start my corporate career. You know, get some experience, get some work experience, pay off my student loans, things like that. And then I was like, no, you know what I'm gonna do it now. And then, you know, went from there. But that obsession was there already for a few years before I pulled the trigger and actually made it happen. But yeah, no, I totally, totally also do that like obsessed with van life for a while, but then I don't actually drive cars. So that's kind of how it's there.

That's hilarious.

Yeah, but someday.

Yeah, or sailing. I feel like every digital nomad goes through like a water and aquatic phase where you're like following all the YouTube channels about buying a sailboat and then you find yourself making comments like well, there's this marina. You know that's like a double haul. It's actually really it's not the best you know. You're like feel like this like expert, because you get obsessively, you're obsessively researching and then it never happens. Yeah, it's a little embarrassing. I feel slightly embarrassed to say the thing about the Francigenet, but I actually think this is the highest. We actually did a test run of it for like a day or like. We just like did a little bit and then it all went wrong because nothing was open. We actually almost ended up like we were like stranded in France, so it was not the best test run. Oh, okay, so it'll go better the next time, I hope. But no, it's, it has high odds of happening. But the thing is, whenever you're traveling full time, everything is high odds of happening. You like might be invited out on somebody's boats and then you just say yes. So all these plans it's like you can never submit to Matt Jensenstone, because an opportunity might come by and you need to be able to say yes if somebody invites you to. You know, go somewhere. Like one time we were hiking in the US and buried all of our food and we went to the road and we're hitchhiking and this guy and this old, like retired man and an RV pulled up and he, we said, we're going to like this town because that was like the nearest town, you know. We're like, well, we need to get out of here and get food because we have no food. And he said, well, I'm not going there, I'm going to Galex for the Fiddler Convention. And we were like, okay, we'll go there. And then we went and we spent three days with him at a bluegrass convention, a bluegrass festival in Galex, virginia, and we like pitched our tent outside of his RV. We spent three days in. You know what you have to be able to say yes whenever life throws weird opportunities at you.

Yeah, and that's a great story now. That's really cool. He was so nice Going with the flow, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you have to. I think if you plan very rigidly, you're going to it's going to backfire, Even like technically speaking. Like I had a friend who like planned out this whole four month trip in South America. It was like very regimented, and she like booked her ticket to Machu Picchu and it like way in advance, and I was like whoa, that's pretty like.

I'm like.

I don't plan anything that far in advance, but everyone should do what they like. But then by the time she got there, there was like a state of unrest in Peru and it was unsafe to go to Machu Picchu. Like the train line was blocked. And I felt like, yeah, well, you only booked like two days in Cusco, so you can't, you know, and it was like, well, I already booked the flight out like three months ago, so that was like very setting stone. So I feel like that's also a part of the lifestyle. If you book too much, you just don't know. There's like a lot of moving pieces you do not know when things are going to become like untravelable or there's like a weather issue or unrest happens every day somewhere in the world.

Yeah, yeah, it's difficult. I'm trying to find a balance still, you know, five years in, but I'm still trying to find a balance between planning a little bit or having an idea where I'm going to go, but also not planning too far in advance, like you said, because things will change and can happen. But then also I get some things that you want to do. You have to plan in advance. You know, especially I like staying in co-living spaces, and co-living spaces they fill up, so you cannot be two days in advance like, hey, I want to stay at your co-living space. They're like cool, but we're full, like usually that happens. So it's. I think it's. There needs to be a balance, for sure.

Yeah, nobody knows the balance either. There's no like secret equation for balance. You just guess and you hope that you, yeah, it works out, and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you go somewhere and you're like, wow, this was a mistake. Yeah, this was like the wrong time of year, or this B&B was not as nice as it looked, or there's like cockroaches, everywhere there's bugs, yeah, oh yeah, bugs, ooh, yeah. I could tell stories. I have like flashbacks. I remember saying this one B&B once and it was kind of dirty and we were like, well, it's okay, it's okay, we're not going to be those people. And then I went in the bathroom and like I was just unpacked and that night I went to brush my teeth. I picked up my toothbrush and there were tiny bugs crawling over the bristles of my toothbrush. Oh, wow, yeah. And I had like nothing to do. I literally like, well, what's grosser, me using this toothbrush or me not brushing my teeth? So I just like, wash the bugs off and brush my teeth. They will be regrets.

And what are you doing? You win some, you lose some, yeah.

If you're not losing some, I feel like you're not being advantageous enough. That's like, that's my personal Like. If every B&B we stay at is like super nice, then we're not being budgety enough, because you know you need to take a little gamble every once in a while, like is this too good to be true? This is. You know why is this beachfront property only $500 a month? Let's find out.

I love that. Well, kayla, I think you have so many more stories to share, but luckily we have your book coming out super soon, so we can all read more about your experiences. As they don't know about there, where else can people find you and follow you?

If anyone wants to come say hi, they can send me an email or ask questions. Kayla at writingfromnowherecom is my email and I live online at writingfromnowherecom, so I would love for anyone to come to you there. I have links to all my social profiles. I'm really beginning to LinkedIn. If anybody wants to come connect on LinkedIn and talk about how amazing LinkedIn is, I would love to connect with anybody Awesome.

Well, thank you so much, and thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure talking to you and hearing your story and I feel like we have so many parts of our stories in common, which is super cool to see and hear about. And yeah, I'm excited also for you for your huge hiking trip. Also hope it happens, but if not, then there will be something else cool coming on coming along. So, yeah, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks, it was so much fun. And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it very, very much. I would appreciate it even more if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts for me. That way, more people can find this podcast, more people can hear the inspiring stories that we're sharing, and the more people we can impact for the better. So, thank you so much if you are going to leave a review. I really appreciate you and I will see you in the next episode.