Postby garyb » Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:09 pm
Firstly, I can truly relate to parts of your post as I've also always had the dream of living abroad for a lot of my life but I've never done it, apart from a 5-month digital-nomad trip in Spain and Italy, but I'll get to that. I've daydreamed about it since my early twenties, and I'm in the right career for it (Web software), but I've always just had reasons not to do it: mental health, fear, not knowing where to start with finding opportunities and deciding on a place, commitments here like work and playing in bands, and being discouraged by friends and family.
On reflection, most of these reasons didn't have much validity: I could've dealt with the fear and the unknowns by informing myself better (I've found Reddit to be excellent for discussions about the practicalities of moving abroad and which places are good to pursue various careers etc.), my job was nothing special, my bands were clearly never going to go anywhere beyond jamming and small local gigs (for lack of seriousness more than lack of talent), and I should've had more confidence in my own interests and desires. The mental health one is more reasonable, and I probably would've crashed and burned if I had taken the plunge at the times when I was most seriously considering it due to blaming my problems on my location, but then it might've also made me grow stronger faster or at least get on the right track more quickly after the crash and burn. But that's the benefit of hindsight... And now Brexit has made things a bit more complicated.
Then just over two years ago I was looking for a new job and considering opportunities abroad as well as here, and the chance was even handed to me on a silver plate: a decent job offer in Berlin. In the end I decided against it, again for various reasons of questionable validity, although I now believe I did make the better choice career-wise and I dodged the bullet of ending up stuck in a foreign country during the pandemic although of course I could never have predicted that. But I think in a case like this you have to think hard about what you value most at the time, and I chose career progression over experiences and growth in other areas of life. There's never one right or wrong answer to these things, so it's just a case of accepting that by prioritising one area you're likely sacrificing another so weighing up what is more important at that point.
Now in my mid-thirties there's still a big part of me that wants to make a move like that but also a part of me that wants to settle and have a longer-term plan sooner or later, and thanks to my wanderlust I'm still resisting long-term commitments like buying a property and getting into a relationship. But who knows...
As for my 5-month trip... I'd never do it again, and I now don't think the digital nomad thing is for me. I'd rather just move somewhere properly and work there, with other people living in that place, and even in my field I believe that restricting yourself to location-independent work is limiting. But of course it's one option and all options are worth consideration, and I definitely did the digital nomad thing wrong. Partly by trying to make my trip into too many things, and partly because the company messed me around and, in spite of promising to give me non-urgent work that I could do in my own time, mostly made me do 9-to-5 support work which I had to plan at least a few days in advance.
My main advice for being a digital nomad would just be to be realistic about the expectations and the purpose of your travels, and not try to go to too many places. Better to spend longer periods in fewer destinations. Finding accommodation (especially suitable for online working) and organising travel, not to mention the travel itself, consume much time and mental energy, and being in one place for longer is better for social life and by extension language and cultural immersion. Then you can always do weekend trips from that base. But if you just want to visit lots of places and sightsee, just save up some cash then take a few months off and forget about work and go backpacking, if it's an option. I wish I had travelled for two months without working rather than five months with working. I also ended up quite lonely and depressed by the end of that time, between the constant movement and the length of it.
Anyway I'm not sure how useful this post is; it's become more advice to my younger self (and anyone who might be considering doing what I did) than to you and your situation is clearly quite different.
As for my field of work, it's certainly a good one for location-independent work and I'd expect some of the developments of the last few years like digital nomad visas and less restrictive taxation agreements to become more common in future. However it's becoming a very saturated field on the lower end, with lots of people graduating from university or coding bootcamps competing for jobs, and I'd say it would take a good few years to establish yourself in your career to the point where working remotely is realistic and won't hold you back too much. Which isn't to put you off - I still think it's one of the best fields to be in these days and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else - but just to give a fair picture.
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