Personal Life Update | Digital Nomad Lifestyle Reflections

WTF have I been up to lately in my personal life? Over the last year, things have changed a lot and it's long overdue that I provide an update. I guess I’ll start at the trigger of this all, the “COVID-19 Effect.” Everything lately seems to trace back to this event that impacted everyone and everything in different ways. For myself and my then girlfriend and now fiancé Leena, one of the areas that it touched us was in making us think differently about our place of residence. With us both being frequent work travelers, our small downtown Austin apartment never seemed too crammed or not to our functionality standards. Traveling fractions of our normal rate throughout 2020, we found ourselves struggling to balance two extremely busy 24/7 “work from home” lives. We know we had it much easier than most during this challenging time, but it still made us reconsider our near-term plans to continue living in downtown neighborhoods of a major city. That being said, we decided to do what tons of others in our similar position did and started looking to buy a home in the suburbs. So, that’s what we did and ended up signing a contract to build a new home at the end of 2020. With a projected home completion date in August 2021 and an end date of our rental in March 2021, we decided to book a monthly Airbnb rental, buy a plan ticket, and pack up a large suitcase each. Until the new home was built, we would officially be digital nomads. This was an incredible journey with a lot of ups and a lot fewer downs (even though I admittedly had my share of frustrations). One thing is for sure: I’ve learned a shit load of things living this wacky digital nomad lifestyle. Now that I’ve been living two weeks in the new home, I wanted to share some of my reflections and lessons learned that might inspire you to explore the digital nomad life or maybe just get out of your comfort zone.