Lifestyle Choice – The Modern Nomad
I stumbled upon a blog today in the Huffington post about people who have decided to leave the rat race and use the internet to do it. Like the guy featured in Ben Fogle’s series who bought a little Island that I wrote about previously, this story fascinated me. It’s also yet more proof that in the digital world we live in we can make the lifestyle choices we want.
This blog is by a guy called Gustav Andersson – The Modern Nomad – and it’s an interesting read.
Gustav lives quite an extreme version of The Laptop Lifestyle I guess but the point is that he’s able to live life exactly the way he decided to by leveraging everyday technology. This is a guy who was living a comfortable 9-5 lifestyle in London working a well-paid job in IT.
Basically he just decided one day that he was going to spend the rest of his life in this hamster wheel routine if he didn’t do something about it.
Online income = Lifestyle Choice
I’ll let you read the blog for yourself but this guy’s lifestyle choice is pretty extraordinary and judging by the many comments on the blog, there are a lot of people out there looking to do something similar. (although maybe in a less full-on way) I do love the idea of jsy being a citizen of the world though and moving around in it as you please: Reminds me of the book Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein that I read several times as a day dreaming kid.
The point is, like our own Greg and Fiona who are also from a corporate background, but who now travel most of the year, people are using this ability to leverage the internet to their advantage in all sorts of ways. You may not want to dump all your material possessions and head off into the wide world with no agenda and no time limit like Gustav but if you did want to, he proves that it’s possible to make an online income to finance pretty much any lifestyle choice.
The Lifestyle Choice of the Sophisticated Nomad
Gustav is at pains to explain that despite describing himself as a nomad, he’s not talking about the type of lifestyle that might suggest. He’s not sleeping rough, living from hand to mouth or scavenging for food. He is using the Internet to provide an income so that he still has a decent standard of living on his travels. He just doesn’t have the baggage most of us have been trained to see as essential: The mortgage, the car, etc. So whereas in the old days of the Dot com boom and bust it really was all about the fast buck, now it’s more about freedom and lifestyle choice.
Some people just want to earn the same income they already have but don’t want to have to commute, work for an idiot, spend time with people they don’t like and have no energy left to enjoy the little spare time left to them. Others want to build a massive multiple 6 or 7 figure online empire and that’s fine too – and equally possible.
It really is about choice and freedom and it really is possible – whatever you want or need to get out of it. The modern nomad thing is not exactly my utopia but elements of it definitely are. This new reality of only really needing a laptop and an internet connection is a never ending source of wonder to me. It’s the kind of lifestyle choice I used to day dream about.
