At the end of January, I celebrated my two-year nomadiversary – for the past two years I’ve been living as a digital nomad, travelling slowly around Europe running my business on my Mac while exploring different places, experiencing other cultures, and trying lots of delicious local food and wine!
Life as a digital nomad and solo female traveller has been as exciting and fulfilling as it has challenging and, at times, downright testing. I’ve had incredible highs and some fairly low points too.
If you’re curious about digital nomad life or thinking of giving it a shot, here are some nuggets of wisdom I’ve learned from my first two years on the road.
As I mentioned at the start of my review of 2016, I was kinda glad to see the back of last year. It was my second year as a digital nomad and I had another great year of travel. But I struggled with some aspects of my business and I was distracted by the fallout from the Brexit referendum.
So I felt ready for a fresh start.
I love planning for the New Year, and always surround myself with a variety of planners and workbooks, looking back on my achievements and noting where I can improve things.
One of my first posts on this blog last year was my goals for 2016. I felt a little uneasy putting them out there, then realised my blog was new and no bugger was probably reading it anyway. Because promotion… But I realised I liked having them up there to keep me accountable, though my perfectionist tendencies were screaming, ‘but can you admit if you fail so publically?’ Well, yes I can. Because goals are meant to be challenging. What’s the point of setting something that isn’t going to stretch you personally and professionally?
One mistake I did make while setting my goals was not making some of them measurable. So I aim to put that right this year.
Things are still unsettled in Brexitland and I’m still struggling with the uncertainty of it all. Not only do I believe the EU to be largely positive, if in need of reform, we seem to be hurtling out of control towards a ‘hard’ Brexit at the hands of an unelected Prime Minister, which has the power to completely change how I live my life and, depending how things pan out this year, I may need to make some changes. But for now I will only focus on the things I can control.
So without further ado, here are my goals for 2017…
