The longer I’m around, the faster the days, months, and years seem to just fly by.
Even though you might assume from reading the glossy pages of this mouth-watering site that I just sit around idly on beaches all day, sipping sweet sweet coconut shakes, even the simple act of sitting on beaches burns up a tremendous amount of one’s precious time when you factor in all the travel planning, the frequent moving around, and the actual hard work it takes to get to the point of being able to visit so many beautiful places.
While 2011 might have been the biggest struggle for me both in business and personally, 2012 felt like the craziest year of my life. It was a load of fun, but also just insane and emotionally trying.
This post has taken me about five or six weeks to finally click the “publish” button on. It’s been an immense mental obstacle.
It’s actually been quite a weird, difficult trip—looking back over the last year, going through and editing up photos, retracing my steps to string some sort of a timeline together to share with my generous, lionhearted readers here.
Just over one year ago, my grandfather passed away. I wrote about it here. I realized, only afterward, how huge a role model he was in my life.
Also, towards the end of the year I broke up with my long-time girlfriend, causing just a mild bit of chaotic disarray in my life and plotting me on an entirely different course than the one I’d been planning.
Oh well.
In between all of life’s big changes and rollercoaster-worthy ups and downs, we had a tremendous amount of fun. Like, what’s probably illegal amount of fun in many states back in the US.
I was fortunate to reinforce relationships with my family, have some unprecedented new experiences with old friends, develop relationships with a wide array of new friends, and learn some important lessons.
As humans, we tend to want to cling onto things—people in particular, but possessions, places, our jobs, our identities… We tend to make the logical error of looking at most things as permanent, when nothing is. More and more, that’s one of the biggest lessons that life is teaching me, especially with my travels.
The paradigms of a weirdo
As a permanent traveler, I don’t have many possessions. My life pretty much fits in a bag, and aside from a few gadgets I replaced this year, I don’t really own things. I’m not particularly interested in buying things. (If you’re looking for someone to go shopping with, I’m certainly not the best company in the mall.)
I rent; I don’t own. I even struggle to maintain anything resembling a routine because I tend to move house every few months or so, if not completely changing location.
Even when you do stay in one spot for a few months or years, people come and people go. As a traveler or an expat, you get used to saying goodbye on a regular basis.
So I’m becoming accustomed to having a completely new living situation, life circumstances, work environment, activities, and friend groups quite frequently.
Nothing lasts forever; most things don’t even last long, no matter how much you pay for them. And you certainly can’t take it with you when you’re dead. That’s why I really don’t measure wealth in monetary terms as much as most people do, and certainly not in terms of the ownership of possessions, or toys…
Instead, I look at life as a collection of experiences, and I prefer to invest my resources in having new experiences, fun experiences I can share with the people I care about, and hopefully memories that I can file away in my virtual personal mental memoirs (don’t worry, one day I’ll write a book, when all parties involved are either dead or in prison).
Your memories of great experiences, and even the tough learning experiences, will stay with you and endure the test of time much longer than material objects will. And thankfully today we’re blessed with technology so we can easily capture a lot of our experiences in photographs, video, text and more, to help supplement our distracted, ADHD-riddled, faulty little minds.
That’s why I’ve been wanting (for quite some time) to share just a fraction of my experiences over the last year with you here through pictures. Click here if you can’t see the images above.
In 2012 I probably spent between $10 – $15K on airfare, conferences, hotel rooms, fancy villas, and condos. I traveled a total of 61,559 miles, and visited at least 23 cities in 7 countries.
I celebrated my sixth Christmas and New Year’s abroad…
I saw the Philippines and Vietnam for the first time.
And even though I’ve been location-independent for over four years now, I spent about six months solid living in hotels, which was fun, but too intense even for this nomad (I’m more of a slow travel guy).
And I completely failed to write much of anything about all of my adventures here.
(When you run your own business and travel as much as I do, as well as juggling relationships and all the daily things life throws at you, it means there’s little time left for blogging. As far as my productive time and energy, it’s all gone into my mentoring business for the last two years, and working with my students on five continents.)
So while we’re already well into 2013 (damn, how the hell did that happen already??), I just wanted to look back at the last year, where I’ve been and what I’ve learned. It’s been a long while since we’ve had a chat, and I thought I should catch you up on what’s been happening…
The tantalizing timeline
It starts with an icy snowstorm as I touched down in Seattle last January—the worst in several years I believe—as I was returning home to California, earlier than my expected annual visit, to attend my granddad’s memorial service. It was a sad time, and it had been very difficult in the last few days to know what to do on the opposite side of the world as he succumbed to Alzheimer’s.
On the bright side, I got to spend a lot of quality time with much of my family I hadn’t seen in a long time, my dad collected family photos and pictures, and we had the chance to celebrate his life as we all shared a very special evening together filled with many stories, photographs, laughs and tears.
I caught up with many old friends back home, spent time with my little sister and her fiancee, and was able to meet with Digital Nomad Academy students Timothy Juliussen and Emelina Minero in person. I crashed with my buddy Maneesh Sethi, system-hacker and DJ, in San Francisco for a few nights, finally meeting up with some new faces and a bunch of old friends again.
In February, I left the stormy weather behind on a jet pointed back to the tropics, where I met up with my cousin and a friend for a week just with the boys on the beaches of Thailand. They flew in from South Korea, where they live and play in a few bands, and spent a few nights jamming with local musicians in reggae bars. Then we traveled out to Koh Phi Phi, the island made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio. Overpopulated with tourists, we stayed in a peaceful luxury nature lodge on one of the more secluded beaches… we traveled out to the pristine Phi Phi Leh island where “The Beach” was filmed by day, and by night we partied into the late hours with the revelers in the heart of the backpacker trail.
We then took the ferry over to the more quiet, relaxed island of Koh Lanta, where Emily bussed in to join us, and I treated her to a luxury beachfront villa for Valentine’s Day.
Emily and I finally said goodbye to Ao Nang (where we’d been living together for two years) in March, made our way from the Andaman Sea across to the other side of Thailand’s southern peninsula to the Gulf of Thailand, where we lived for a little over a month on Koh Phangan. Infamous for its Full Moon Party (if you’re a 20-year-old gap year traveler), Phangan is actually also home to a lot of yoga, meditation, and good, clean, quiet living to many people’s surprise.
We enjoyed the beaches on the northwest side of the island, laying low to focus on a service to help others who want to move to Thailand and a few new business ideas, and I worked my ass off in anticipation for a big upcoming tour around Southeast Asia.
I conspired with a few of our friends back in Ao Nang to make a big party for Emily’s birthday in late April, taking her out to The Sanctuary Resort—an upscale but very relaxed spa, detox, and wellness retreat on its own private beach—where the two of us stayed in a treehouse bungalow perched up in the trees overlooking the gorgeous palm forest and the alluring protected cove of Haad Tien beach for a few nights (also a breathtaking spot for stargazing). On day two, we surprised her sandals off with a dozen friends who journeyed across the peninsula to visit her, and decked out one of the nearby beach bars on the next bay over for a special celebration.
Before we left Koh Phangan, my man Maneesh came out for a weeklong visit with us (though his silly brother Ramit was too preoccupied staying at the Ritz in Bangkok!) so of course we ended up going for the Half Moon Party in the middle of the night in the jungle to get some trippy DJ action. And we got to meet with my DNA student Tom Frearson and his girlfriend Elly, who had moved to Bangkok from the UK and were traveling around Thailand.
We spent three weeks running around the Philippines, where I attended the Startup Weekend event at the University of the Philippines in Cebu City with my man Chris Ducker the outsourcing king, my buddies Justin and Joe (the AdSense Flippers), DNA member Mike Stankavich and several other entrepreneurs… we got 5-star treatment from the Cebu City Tourist Police (a story I’ll share another time)… traveled to the opposite side of the island to Moalboal, where we swam with the stunning whale sharks—another experience for the history books—fish the size of school buses!
On neighboring island Bohol, we were treated to an amazing week at the boutique Amarela Resort, where the warm, welcoming owners have a white hot passion for the traditional artwork, beautiful antique furniture, and amazing local food and mix it all with 2 parts relax and 2 parts luxury on a gorgeous private beach on Panglao. We saw the unique furry little tarsier monkey things, the spherical green Chocolate Hills, the centuries-old churches, and many other sights and warm smiles of Bohol.
On Palawan, we stayed right on the beach at the Daluyon in Sabang beach. We made friends with an Aussie couple that oozed with character; Kevin used to have is own jazz combo in the 80s—like Rat Pack style stuff in nightclubs and lounges—and the hotel’s owner took us out for an epic night on the town at one of the local live music bars in Puerto Princesa for music and dancing where Kevin performed with some of the local Filipino band members.
We spent two days in Manila (which really didn’t excite me much as a city). But at least the Dusit Thani in Makati bumped us up to one of their fanciest executive suites and took amazing care of us, so no complaints there.
We spent a month living in the heart of Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City), where we rented a room from a friendly Vietnamese family via Airbnb right in the center of District 1 literally right next to the Bến Thành Market, ate cheap and delicious local pho noodles on the street almost every day, gorged on delectable juicy prawns and crab in the market (Saigon has the most impressive fresh seafood I’ve seen in Asia), worked our asses off, and spent evenings out frequently enjoying sushi, nightlife, and Saigon’s upscale bars with our new friends Jon Myers and Anna Calderone.
I made a few trips to Bangkok, visiting with my best friends—eating street food, and soaking up Vietnamese coffees and sandwiches at Dwight Turner‘s house—and a few stops into Singapore where we often stay with our friend Michelle on the outskirts of the town where she has an amazing 16th-story view of the beautiful forest that surrounds the city, and where I visited again with my friend Derek Sivers of CD Baby, one of the most financially successful, but more importantly most thoughtful, inspiring, and empathetic people I’ve been lucky to get to know on my weird entrepreneurship journey.
In July I finally made it up to Chiang Mai after four years in Southeast Asia! I spent six weeks in Chiang Mai on my own while Emily was back in France taking stock of materials for our new business. I found a nice room at Green Hill Place, with a pool and a view, spent a lot of time concentrating on work, going to my favorite cafe Ristr8to (Arnon has more passion for his craft than just about anyone I know), and getting to know many new friends—travel writer Ash Clark, Ian Borders of MergePay, Scott who runs a regular Biz Meetup here in CM, Doug of Efficient WP, Gabe of Maven Labs, James Clark of Nomadic Notes, and many many more.
Emily and I met back up in Bangkok and flew back “home” to Ao Nang for our friend Huw’s traditional Thai wedding with his long-time girlfriend Kung.
We returned to Chiang Mai together for a few weeks, where we stayed in an impressive serviced condo with floor-to-ceiling windows, a great balcony, breathtaking view of the lofty Doi Suthep mountain, pool and gym (and I actually tried to get back into a gym routine for once!).
We spent a month housesitting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, caring for two gorgeous Weimaraners and a two-story house in the “Beverly Hills” of KL, on the outskirts of town, where we worked hard building the website and finally launching Emily’s new ecommerce business French Antique Textiles where you can buy antique and vintage fabrics online.
We went for a romantic weekend on the river at the illustrious Casa del Rio in Malacca, enjoying the city’s rich history, a mixture of local, Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch culture, and tasty food.
In October we returned to Bangkok for a conference put on by Dan and Ian for their private Dynamite Circle community. I wanted to connect with a bunch of folks I’d known online for ages, to learn more about ecommerce from the masters, get some feedback on Emily’s new business, and make connections with guys doing manufacturing in China. It was a blast, with nearly 70 other nomads, presentations from my buddies Chris Ducker, Ian Borders, Derek Sivers, and others, and I got to finally meet a bunch of good folks like Brendan Tully the dadgum business genius, Edmund John of Flag Theory, and the mysterious Simon Black in person.
He does exist folks!
Anyways, two of my closest childhood friends came out on their first excursion to Asia to visit for two weeks. We spent a few nights in Bangkok, enjoyed my favorite VW van bar, then down south to show them around Railay Beach and Krabi, stayed in a few beautiful beach resorts, had a few fresh coconuts, a few cocktails, a few dinners on the beach, fed a few monkeys, and had lots of laughs.
In November Emily and I decided to part ways, and we spent our last few days together in Singapore just enjoying each others’ company and having loads of fun going out with our friend Michelle, who works for a food & beverage industry startup and loves to show us around all of SG’s fancy restaurants and nightclubs.
I flew back to Chiang Mai, where I met up with old friends, many long-time expats, and a lot of the Dynamite Circle crowd who had come up north after the Bangkok conference, spending a lot of time with friends like John Bardos of Jet Set Citizen, Stacey Herbert of Brazen Copywriter, Travis Jamison of Supremacy SEO, writer Elisa Doucette, Jenny Leonard of Where is Jenny, and building new friendships with web designer Yamile Yemoonyah, Matt Kress of Relate.ly, SEO genius Alexej Friesen, blogger Niall Doherty, sales copywriter Jurgen Dhaese, PPC consultant Alex Fredheim, Will Evans of Chiefs, and many others.
Many of us went and celebrated the fantastic Yee Ping Festival in late November, a mind-boggling display of light as thousands of candle-lit floating lanterns rise up into the night sky.
In December, I spent a week back in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, staying at Chris Zobrist‘s Start Center for Entrepreneurs in District 1 (with great, inexpensive rooms adjacent), hanging out with my old friend and foodie/journalist Jodi Ettenberg, sex(y) blogger Will Peach, and DNA member Barbara Adam, who took us for a nice Saigon street food tour!
I took a weeklong holiday in Bali again, where I met up with my student Tom Frearson after a six month hiatus, and he and his girlfriend (and his sister!) have just moved there and signed for a 1-year contract on a house! Tom is working hard on a great health, fitness, and grooming business and it’s great to see how far he’s come.
I’ve spent a lot of time coworking in cafes here in Chiang Mai, going out for dinners and drinks with new friends, getting to know my students Andre & Marta, Tim Wooten, and Scott Barrick, who are all based here now, and organizing several networking mixers for the huge community of nomads, freelancers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs here around Chiang Mai.
Later next week I’ll be working with John Bardos on his Unconference for Social Good here in Chiang Mai, bringing together nonprofits/NGOs and entrepreneurs to discover new connections. And at the end of the month I’ll be leaving Chiang Mai for now, and I’ll spend the month of March down south in Krabi before I move on to new destinations in 2013.
If you’re around, let me know.
Lessons that sucker punched me in the face
Many of these anecdotes I’ll flesh out into full-fledged stories at some point in the future, but to boil it all down for you here now, after all this, I found that working with ambitious people who really want to change their lives is immensely rewarding. I absolutely love getting on the phone and talking with my students, hashing out people’s business ideas, and just being part of the journey and watching/helping hard-working people create sustainable businesses, quit their jobs, and build lifestyles they truly enjoy.
I’ve watched so many people quit their jobs so far. Just in the last month, our members Eugene and Jason both left their employment to go full-time with their own businesses.
I’ve met with about 10 or 12 of my students along my travels, or here in Thailand (many have moved abroad already!), and I’ve watched stories unfold like Rodrigo’s, an ambitious young guy in El Salvador, who within six months built his own web services business, hustled hard and worked his ass off doing amazing work, and is already earning more from his new business than from his job.
I found that there’s a strange paradox, where when I’m with someone (in a romantic relationship), I have far more motivation to work my ass off to make money and provide a living. I just want to work all the time. Which is sort of counter-intuitive and weird. As nice as it all looks like from the photos, I probably should have spent a lot more time doing the fun stuff and being present, actually enjoying the places we were.
I also discovered that even when I do a crummy job of keeping up with my work, and spend a few months just burning through cash (i.e. traveling for six months nonstop and staying in plush villas and fancy hotels all the time), no matter how broke I got, something always works out and I’ve never gone absolutely bust.
I’ve certainly built up a lot of recurring income and resources over the years, so maybe I’ve just gotten better at business, and at generating value, but sure there have still been several times when I wasn’t sure how I was going to pay the rent. I guess what this year taught me though was that one way or another, I always overcome those obstacles even when I least expect it.
I discovered that being in one place for just three days is too hectic for me. While I saw a lot of new sights, spent time with tons of amazing people, and was fortunate to collect all kinds of fun experiences this year, I really figured myself out a bit, in that I truly prefer slow travel. I like to be able to find a spot I really like, settle in a bit, rent a house, apartment, or condo for at least 3 to 6 months in one place at a time, and experience the local culture, get to know people, and feel like I have a bit of a firm grounding. It’s much easier for getting things done and for maintaining a social life. I still think at this stage in my life, I tend to get tired of a place after a year and a half or so, and I’m going to want to keep exploring new countries and cultures for a few years to come… but I like to take my time.
Another lesson I’ve really taken in over the last 5 or 6 months here in Chiang Mai has been that your peer network is everything. I didn’t realize how much I missed having like-minded people, other entrepreneurs and web freelancers, actually physically around me on a regular basis. Chiang Mai is a hotbed right now for digital nomads, and it’s been great having so many inspiring, motivating people around to share good conversations with and bounce ideas off of.
I think my biggest takeaway from this tumultuous year was the lesson of impermanence; at this point in my life, my philosophy is that everything is temporary, and that it’s unwise to cling too tightly to anything, or to resist change. Our lives… the world around us… the universe is change. But we can have an irreverently good time in the face of that change.
If you want to embrace the change, if you’re someone who’s interested in living a digital nomad lifestyle like me, if you think you can put in the hard work and bear the ups and downs in order to experience the rewards we get to have on this rollercoaster ride of a life, you can read what my mentorship community is all about here.
Two years into this mentoring business—this training course, this community, or whatever you want to call it, it’s sort of taken on a life of its own—I’m starting to really see how important community is for people going it on their own. I’m starting to see how powerful a change this can make in people’s lives. It’s starting to gain momentum on its own, and I can finally see how all this effort and time I’ve put in are actually impacting people’s lives. It’s still got a long way to go, and it’s very early days for this consciousness shift in society at large, but there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing than giving a helping hand in transforming our working world and the way people live their lives.
Come join us!
Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 1 Year in the Crazy Whirlwind Life of a Digital Nomad